Ten Times a Champion: The Story of Basketball Legend Sam Jones

By Mark C. Bodanza

Sam Jones spent his boyhood in a small city tucked away in the segregated south. In many ways, it was the most unlikely of settings for the start of a professional sports career marked by a rare kind of success. Guided by humble beginnings and values that included hard work, maturity, and respect, Sam soon discovered how much those early preparations would mean in the future as he entered college and set out on a trajectory that would eventually intersect with the Boston Celtics and produce astounding results.

In his biography of the basketball legend, Mark Bodanza chronicles how Jones overcame obstacles on and off the basketball court to capture the attention of the Boston Celticsfresh from their first NBA championshipand become a surprising first-round draft pick in 1957 and, for the next twelve years, one of the games greatest champions. As Bodanza reveals Sams ultimate challenges and joys, it soon becomes evident that Jones was an extraordinary testament to what can be achieved through perseverance, integrity, and a faithful and determined effort, not just for himself but for the benefit of his team.

Ten Times a Champion shares the fascinating story of a basketball legend who displayed unshakable tenacity and helped his beloved Boston Celtics achieve extraordinary goals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491785232

Mark C. Bodanza

Mark C. Bodanza is a historian and trial lawyer who has written numerous historical newspaper columns, guest commentated on radio and television programs nationwide, and lectured at schools and colleges throughout the country. Bodanza lives in Leominster, Massachusetts, with his family. Ten Times a Champion is his fifth book.

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Copyright © 2016 Mark C. Bodanza.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-8524-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8525-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8523-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016902497

iUniverse rev. date: 04/13/2016

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Interviews

1. Growing Up in Laurinburg

2. College Life and Military Service

3. Earning a Roster Spot

4. Rookie Season

5. Race, the NBA, and a First Championship

6. Two in a Row

7. Team Play and Continued Success

8. Veterans Retire, and the Celtics Continue to Win

9. Sam as a Mentor and a Visit to the White House

10. Putting Up Big Numbers

11. A Record Championship

12. A New Coach and a Season without a Banner

13. Retirement and One More Championship

14. Life after the Celtics

15. Epilogue

Outline

Career Statistics as of June 2015

Bibliography

To

Sam and Gladys Jones

and the bonds of love that have

united generations past and present

and

to

my wife, Adele; children,

Melissa, Kathryn, and Nicholas;

and grandson, Brody, for all

their love and support.

The people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered.

---St. Augustine

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IT ISN'T OFTEN YOU GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO WRITE THE STORY OF A TEN-TIME NBA champion. I am honored that Sam Jones has entrusted his biography to me. Sam and his lovely wife, Gladys, have been helpful and gracious in articulating their wonderful story. Likewise, I am grateful for the assistance of their sons Aubre and Ashley. Sam is a family man in the truest sense, and the assistance of his wife and children has been an invaluable resource.

I am grateful to Sam's teammates who have been most kind in relating the story of his basketball career and their friendship. I wish to sincerely thank Tom Heinsohn, John Havlicek, Frank Ramsey, Gene Conley, and Tom Satch Sanders. I am indebted to my friends JoJo White and his wife, Debbie, for their insight on the Celtic way and the workings of Arnold Red Auerbach.

The earliest drafts of the manuscript were greatly improved by my friend Nancy Bell. As was the case with my earlier books, she challenged me to refine and tweak the pages. Kathi Wittkamper, my editorial consultant, as always has been a great resource. I am thankful for her sage advice and the time she has given so generously. My friend Linda Pinder was a big help with the book's images and is deserving of my gratitude. My friend Michael Clementi was very kind to drive me to Sam's home. We enjoyed our trips and our visits greatly.

My law office staff has been so very helpful in the preparation of the early drafts and of the manuscript and many other tasks associated with publishing this book. They are dedicated professionals, and I sincerely thank Kathleen Welch, Gabriella Goodale, and Amanda Mastalerz-Maselli. My brother and law partner, David Bodanza, has once again been a great source of guidance. I am fortunate and blessed to be able to work with him daily.

To my wife, Adele; children, Melissa, Kathryn, and Nicholas; and grandson, Brody, too, thank you for always being there, for understanding, and, most of all, for your unending love and support.

INTRODUCTION

IN AN AGED SECTION OF MY MASSACHUSETTS HOMETOWN STANDS AN OLD SCHOOLHOUSE. It is named for James Bennett, who worked in early nineteenth-century comb manufacturing shops before he became a local educator. Some of those old factory buildings still surround the school that bears his name.

For the past fifty years, a well-worn basketball court has been a prominent part of the school yard. Over the decades, that court has seen some great competition, from pickup games to organized league play. Countless games were played there during the glory years of the Boston Celtics when championships were as predictable as April showers. One youngster who could be found on that neighborhood court almost every day lived across the street. He was such a fixture there that the front porch of his house served as the unofficial storage site for basketballs. Mike Bangrazi remembers how well the honor system worked as kids would faithfully return a borrowed basketball to his porch when their day on the court was finished.

Mike's boyhood idol was unmistakably Sam Jones. He imagined himself as the Celtics' clutch shooter. Small in physical stature, Benny, as he was known to his friends, worked to develop a great shot just like Sam Jones. Today, he remembers that his interest in Sam's career and Celtic basketball was so great that his mother allowed him to nap afternoons to listen to late-night West Coast games on a transistor radio. Those were the days that Benny would not trade for anything. His neighborhood was a veritable basketball incubator where friendships grew and young men entertained themselves, and anyone who ventured by could watch the games from a small set of stands.

What Benny never envisioned during those days of youth occurred forty years after Sam Jones won his last championship with the Boston Celtics. Benny and his friends who played on the Bennett School basketball court in the 1960s got a visit from Sam Jones in 2009. Sam toured the court, met some of the teachers at Bennett School, and even visited Lein's Market, right across the street, where youngsters quenched their thirst after some inspired play. Visiting neighborhood basketball courts was something that Sam did even during his playing days. It brought me back to the days when I visited Roxbury's neighborhood courts, said Sam. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting those kids. It was a place where you could see the best young basketball players. If I could reach a kid, or some kids, it would be worth everything. It was about giving back.

To say Sam's visit to the Bennett School court was a great day for Benny is an understatement. Meeting the Celtic player who was special to him as a young man was memorable, but what he never expected was the kind of attention that Sam gave to his mother. From the moment Sam met Benny's mom, the former Celtic star was nothing but kind, making sure to recognize her on her birthday and Mother's Day as well. Meeting Sam made the star basketball player even more special to Benny. Benny and Sam became friends that day, and the two still keep in touch.

In January 2015, I visited Sam at his Florida home to talk to him about this book. During my first day of interviews, I mentioned knowing Benny. Sam tilted back in his chair and flashed a big grin. How do you know Benny? he asked. I responded, to his astonishment, that Benny and I were from the same place---Leominster, a city located in the north-central part of Massachusetts. His grin got even bigger, and he laughed heartily. It was just one of the connections we discovered as we talked about his career and life off the court.

In 2012, I had the privilege of writing the biography of Celtics' great JoJo White. Ironically, JoJo was the guard who replaced Sam when he retired after the 1969 season. Their careers did not overlap, although that would have pleased Red Auerbach. Unlike Sam, JoJo didn't have the benefit of veteran players like Bill Sharman and Bob Cousy to lead the way. The playing days of Sam Jones and JoJo White represent more than two decades of Celtics' backcourt play, and I am more than privileged to have had the opportunity to write about it.

Along the way, I have had the opportunity to interview a number of Celtic teammates. What soon became apparent was how good these men are. Their talent and accomplishments from playing days long ago are only a part of the story. One day, I reflected on this with JoJo White's wife, Debbie White; she noted that it was no accident. That's the way Red wanted it; that is how he selected his players. In that simple statement is the formula for Celtics' success, how the Celtics created a winning culture and maintained that tradition for a very long time.

Sam Jones represents all of those ideals. He spent his boyhood in a small city tucked away in the southwestern corner of North Carolina. In most ways, the city of his birth was a typical small southern city. As the county seat, its official buildings included a courthouse with a pediment supported by four large ionic columns. During Sam's boyhood, the city's commercial district was comprised of about fifty buildings, many of them of art deco design. As a youngster, he could walk by the Central Hotel, Barne's Drug Store, McDougald's Dry Cleaners, and Morris Funeral Parlor.

The city of Sam Jones's formative years reflected life in the South complete with segregated schools and facilities. In many ways, it is the most unlikely of settings for the start of a professional sports career marked by the rarest kind of success. Humble beginnings and perceived restrictions regarding educational opportunities were not obstacles for Sam Jones. Those early days in North Carolina were guided by fundamental values. Hard work, maturity, and a deep respect for mentors and teachers who cared greatly about his future were features of his youth.

What Sam didn't know during those days growing up in that small North Carolina city was how much those early preparations would mean in the future. His earliest experiences included all of the necessary training for truly understanding the nature and value of teamwork. When the basketball opportunity came, Sam Jones was aptly prepared to demonstrate not only his natural talent and the fundamental skills he had learned but also an acute awareness of how to contribute as a teammate. It was a question of making those around him better, and it was a talent that set him apart.

As a college student-athlete, he experienced a measure of success. He was happy to continue his education, and Sam was the last person to expect that his exploits on the college basketball court would someday be translated to outcomes rivaling the greatest achievements in professional sports. If Sam's thoughts were rooted in humility, his future was more predictable to a young coach then at the helm of the Boston Celtics. As it turns out, players like Sam Jones, mature, capable, and humble, character guys, were just what the Celtics were looking for. Those attributes would transform what otherwise might be ordinary to the extraordinary and help create the winningest of sports teams in history.

No one knew it when Sam Jones entered college in the early 1950s, but he and the Boston Celtics were on trajectories that would intersect with the most dramatic results. There was a measure of fate in the eventual union of Jones and the Celtics. There were several stops along the way that might have prevented Sam Jones from ever donning a Boston Celtics' uniform if things had gone a different way.

When Sam finally made his way onto the Celtics' roster, great things started to happen. While his success was more than notable, the story of Sam Jones has never quite gotten the notoriety it deserves. Whatever the reason, Jones's story is nothing short of astounding when taking stock of all the circumstances.

Forty-six years have passed since Sam Jones retired and left professional basketball behind. The NBA has changed greatly since Sam was sinking clutch shots and winning championships with the Celtics. Television and the glare of media attention have inflated the careers of NBA talents and their contracts to proportions unimagined when Sam was playing the game. Notwithstanding all of the trappings and hype of the modern game, the accomplishments of Jones and his Celtics teammates are as compelling today as when he and the Boston Celtics were creating a dominating legacy. Sam Jones's career with the Boston Celtics lasted twelve seasons---1958 through 1969. Ten of those seasons ended with his team hoisting an NBA championship trophy, then named for Celtics' original owner, Walter A. Brown.

What follows is a story with lots of basketball history woven throughout. To be clear, however, the pages are not just about the sport. In fact, to fully appreciate the story of Sam Jones and the Celtics requires