arnold and i. yesterday, a basketball legend passed away. i'm not sure how many basketball fans nowadays understand who red auerbach is. to them, he may be a face, a name, a hazy vision of basketball's past. little do they realize that without red auerbach, there would be no nba as we know it today. he led the celtics to sixteen championships -- mainly as a head coach, and later as a general manager -- creating the definitive dynasty in basketball. he regularly produced hall of famers from his roster and the style of play he championed forty-years ago influences the league even today.

i've been a huge celtics fan ever since i was into basketball; despite never really being old enough to enjoy the celtics during their heyday -- i was eight when they last won an nba championship. but i've read all celtic related books, researched their history, watched any video i could get my hands on, and grown up with all of the celtics' legends. and almost all of those stories involve red auerbach.

in 1963, he utilized the first all african-american starting lineup in the nba. he was responsible for creating, and glamorizing, the sixth man position. he traded for the defensive minded bill russell -- the cornerstone of eleven world championships. he drafted larry bird, a year before bird declared himself eligible for the nba. red turned a number one overall pick into kevin mchale and robert parrish. two hall of famers from one pick...

red had an incomparable eye for talent and was able to outmaneuver entire organizations with his acumen and foresight. the only reason the celtics dynasty didn't continue in the post-bird era was the untimely deaths of len bias and reggie lewis. and, of course, when the celtics missed out on tim duncan in 1997 -- even though they, statistically, should have won the first pick that year -- that near miss doomed them to mediocrity. duncan as a celtic pivotman would have been perfect. but bad luck wasn't red's fault. he was a seer and a sage for the entire celtics organization.

i guess it's fitting that red passes on now, right before the celtics debut their new dance team. they are the last nba team to have cheerleaders/dancers and now red will get a chance to turn over in his grave when the "celtics' girls" trot out onto the fabled parquet. the celtics -- and red -- are, were, about tradition and class. half naked cheerleaders probably didn't fit into that equation. but times they are a changing. red was sometimes deemed too anachronistic for the "rah-rah" nba by his critics, but while he may have resisted change, he was by no means a dinosaur. he just had a clear vision of how things were and how they should be.

auerbach was truly the wizard of oz, but unlike that fictional creation, he wasn't a humbug or a charlatan; red was always the real thing. he was personally responsible for the mystique that enshrouded the celtics and his trademark move of lighting up a victory cigar near the end of games symbolized the celtics' winning ways.

the celtics were red auerbach, and red was the celtics, so his death seems like the death of the celtics as the die-hard fans know them. to be quite honest, the celtics had been on life support for quite some time already but this is the last reality check. red's dead and with him goes the old-school celtics.