Celtics legend Cousy fired by Comcast SportsNet as analyst

Comcast SportsNet has fired former Celtic great Bob Cousy from his job as a courtside reporter, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.

Cousy, 80, started his work as an analyst for Boston Celtics' games in 1974. He had been working 10 games in each of the past nine years as part of his consultant contract with the team.

Cousy had planned to return this season, but he was not retained. Steve Reagan, CSN vice president of programming and operations, told Cousy on Sept. 18 that network was moving on with out him.

"Some low-level executive called me and basically said that they decided to do two-man booths and they no longer needed my services," Cousy told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "I said thank you very much, have a good year and I hung up on him."

Celtics president Rich Gothman had called Cousy earlier in the day to tell him he'd have a position with the Celtics for life.

"The Celtics, in my judgment, said and did all the right things," Cousy told the Telegram & Gazette. "Comcast can hire or fire anyone they want. But after 34 years, I thought I needed a little more handling."

Cousy is not upset with the decision.

"You get to be 80, your priorities change," Cousy told the Telegram & Gazette. "I enjoy keeping my hand in in a minimal way. But obviously this is a very exciting time to depart after 22 years of mediocrity. All of a sudden, it's fun again for all of us. If I had my druthers, I would have preferred there not be a change, but is it a high priority item? I doubt it."

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Anxious Darius Miles ahead

AMHERST - This isn’t Darius Miles’ first rodeo.

His first NBA preseason game was eight years ago, and since then he’s been employed by three other organizations. He turns 27 today, so he’s no kid.

But as Miles tied his sneakers before the Celtics exhibition opener against the Philadelphia 76ers at UMass last night, he was a kid again in many ways. Having missed the last two seasons because of a right knee microfracture, this was some unfamiliar turf.

The work the forward has been doing paid dividends in the Celts’ 98-92 loss. Miles had six points, hitting all three of his shots in 16 minutes. A few seconds after entering the game late in the first quarter, he sagged over and tied up the Sixers’ Louis Williams for a jump ball, which Miles won.

“It was fun,” Miles said. “I had butterflies all the way up until I went in. I felt good. I wasn’t getting beat off the dribble; I got back on defense. Running, jumping, everything felt good. . . . I enjoyed myself every minute I was out there.”

The word from acting coach Tom Thibodeau was positive, too.

“I thought Darius was solid,” Thibodeau said. “He had some good sequences defensively. I thought he moved well. His cuts to the basket (and) cuts along the baseline were very good. I think for a player who’s been off as long as he’s been off, he did a very good job for his first game back. His conditioning still has to improve, but overall I thought he was very good.”

Miles cruised into the practice facility in Waltham at 8 a.m., a full two hours before the Celtics’ scheduled shootaround.

“I was the first person at the gym this morning,” he said.

The Celtics are carrying 16 players and have just 15 spots available. And he’s the only one without a guaranteed contract. For a former No. 3 overall NBA draft pick, the feeling has to be odd. It’s been a while since he actually had to try out for a basketball team.

“Probably sixth grade or maybe fifth,” Miles said after pondering the question for a moment. “Ever since then, the coaches always knew I was coming. They were waiting for me. They wanted me.”

It’s not that the Celtics don’t want Miles, but the burden of proof is clearly on him to show he belongs. That’s why last night was such an important step.

“I don’t have a job yet,” he said. “I’m just trying to do whatever they tell me. Anything they want is what I’ll do. I’ll run through a wall if they want me to.”

Miles was running, too, in his rookie season with the Los Angeles Clippers back in 2000-01.

“I was more anxious that time,” he said. “I was trying to prove to everybody that I belonged. I was trying to show that I made the right decision coming right out of high school to the NBA. But I had a contract and I had a job. This is all different from that. But this is great. This is where I really want to stay. Every other year I’ve played, I was the guy who was going to get the ball. I was the guy my team was counting on to put up numbers.

“Here I’m just a role player and I love that. I love that there’s no pressure on me to do too much. It’s great when you have the kind of stars we do. All the attention’s on them. All I have to do is fill in the gaps and take advantage of all the attention that gets put on them. This is great.”

Despite his contract status, Miles is hardly seen by the rest of the Celtics as a hanger-on.

“The guys have treated me really well, especially Ticket (Kevin Garnett), Ray (Allen) and Paul (Pierce),” he said. “Those guys know me from before. I’ve had some wars with those guys, so they know what I can do. That makes me feel more comfortable.”

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Celtics Wearing the Banner of Unity

The Boston Celtics opened camp at Salve Regina University last week, a little more than three months after winning the franchise’s first championship in two decades.

The 6-foot-11 Kevin Garnett, one of the greatest all-around players in NBA history, set the tone for the season in brief remarks to the team. He cautioned that this season would be infinitely more challenging than the last one, that every game would be harder, more intense.

Garnett also reminded the team of ubuntu, a South African concept introduced by Coach Doc Rivers last season to underline the importance of selflessness, unity and teamwork: When the team is elevated, the individual is elevated; when the team is diminished, the individual is diminished.

“Kevin said: ‘Hey, you guys. This is a different journey, but ubuntu never leaves the way we play,’ ” Rivers recalled. “I couldn’t have summed that up better.”

Garnett and Ray Allen, perennial All-Stars, joined Paul Pierce on the Celtics last season to form the so-called Big Three. Rivers knew that the only way three superstars could flourish was if they embraced the essence of ubuntu.

“A person is a person through another person,” Rivers said. “I can’t be all I can be unless you are all you can be.”

We like to write sports articles about teams with less talent defeating the more talented team because of grit and superior teamwork. In an era of ferocious individualism, the Celtics are an example of great individual talent yielding to the team concept.

Before practice on Thursday morning, Rivers asked the rookie Bill Walker to read a passage about unity. The theme was: the strength of a team is its players; the strength of the player is the team.

“You can’t do it by yourself,” Rivers said. “Individuals don’t win, teams win.”

As Rivers spoke about team and unity, I thought about a brief but poignant visit to the Knicks’ camp two days earlier. That trip underlined the necessity of quality leadership and the perils for teams — and franchises — that fail to develop it. The atmosphere at Celtics camp was a sharp departure from the mood in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the Knicks opened camp at Skidmore College.

While the Celtics’ best player was talking to his teammates about maintaining an “all for one and one for all” mentality, the Knicks’ best player, Stephon Marbury, was embroiled in a controversy that had nothing to do with winning or losing. Would Marbury stay or would he go? Was he the cure or was he the problem?

Contemporary millionaire athletes walk a difficult line between the love of the game and the business of the game. This creates constant tension to avoid the love being used against them and the business making them cynical.

The Celtics have a clear view of a second straight championship because the best player is also one of the team leaders.

I asked Rivers if he saw hope for the Knicks. Ever.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I was a part of it when the Knicks were good. I was there. There was no better feeling as a player than playing in that city when you’re winning. It was a phenomenal feeling, with that whole ‘Go New York, go New York, go.’ The city was going nuts. That will return. I don’t know what day, what year, but it’s going to return.”

Rivers spent two-plus seasons with the Knicks and came close to a championship. He was part of the 1992-93 team that lost to the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals and the 1993-94 team that lost to the Houston Rockets in the N.B.A. finals. He never won a championship in 13 seasons as an N.B.A. player, and began to wonder if he would ever win one as a coach. Rivers remembered being serenaded by chants of “Fire Doc!” two seasons ago — during a loss against the Knicks in Boston.

What made the championship so sweet was the hard road it took to get there. Walking that road required Rivers, Pierce, Garnett and Allen to move out of their comfort zones and accommodate one another.

“There’s an amazing amount of hurt that goes with that,” Rivers said. “The only way you’re going to win is that you’ve got to open yourself up to hurt. You’ve got to open yourself up and go for it. You may have to pass more, you may have to set an extra pick, you may have to dive on the floor for a loose ball.”

The team has no new phrase or slogan this season. The Celtics’ motivation comes from the city itself. The Boston area has become a nominal Titletown. The Red Sox are the defending World Series champions; the Patriots were undefeated before losing to the Giants in the Super Bowl.

Rivers’s team is competing against the N.B.A. and the franchise’s legacy. The Celtics have won 17 championships, including eight straight from 1959 to 1966.

“We’re one of many banners,” Rivers reminded his players.

That theme again: one of many.

Rivers’s concept of ubuntu is a beacon for all players — from Stephon Marbury to Kevin Garnett: putting ego aside, putting team first.

Sounds old-school, but it works.

Cassell back to help Celtics defend NBA title

BOSTON - Of all the issues Doc Rivers had to deal with in his first summer as an NBA champion — replacing the free agents who left, working on his golf game, figuring out what to wear to the White House — there's one thing that never came up.

"I can't imagine even seeing a laid-back Kevin Garnett," Rivers said Monday. "I don't think that will happen. So I don't worry about that part."

The Boston Celtics coach gathered with his title-winning team for media day at its practice facility, where a shiny white 2008 championship banner is already covering the empty spot where Rivers pointed a spotlight last year — just in case anyone didn't get the point. It was the NBA-record 17th title for the team, the first since 1986, and no one in the organization wants to go through a similar drought before Banner No. 18.

"You do not get to a level and then step backward," Garnett said. "It will probably be the hardest thing we've done, other than getting the first championship."

The Celtics won last season after one of the most dramatic offseason overhauls in NBA history, bringing in Garnett and Ray Allen to join with Paul Pierce in a new Big Three that managed, in its first year together, to add to the title cache amassed by previous Boston legends like Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale.

But the original Big Three didn't stop at one — they won in 1981, '84 and '86. And, after showing last season what a little championship hunger can do, the new threesome wants more, too.

"You look around at all the banners, all the great teams, all the great players that have been here, they did it more than once," Pierce said. "That's what it's going to take to get to that next level with the other Celtics greats."

The team begins that effort on Tuesday when they begin training camp in earnest at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. It's not exactly Rome, where the Celtics trained last year as part of an effort to bring all of the new players together, but the mission is different this time, too.

"The bonding is there," Rivers said. "When you do something we've done, and we went on that long journey. That can't go away. I don't think we need to go to Europe again."

Rivers said the team had to deal with the pressure of being the favorite all last season, when it won its first eight games, opened 20-2 and cruised to the best record in the NBA.

"We were on every magazine cover you could be on without actually doing something," he said. "At least this year we've earned that right."

They'll collect the rest of their spoils before the season opener on Oct. 28 against Cleveland and LeBron James, whom Boston dispatched in the Eastern Conference semifinals in an epic seven-game series. Past Celtics greats, and NBA commissioner David Stern, are scheduled to be in attendance when another banner is raised above the Boston Garden court and the players will get their championship rings.

Then, if Rivers and the Big Three have their way, there will be no more talking about last season.

"The three of us are not going to be answering a lot of questions dealing with '08," Garnett said.

After spending part of his summer talking to coaches — many of them retired, or from other sports — who have won back-to-back titles, Rivers knows what he has to do, too.

"We need to shake ourselves out of the parade route," Rivers said. "We won because we were a hardworking team. We have to get back to that."

Also Monday, backup point guard Sam Cassell showed up for media day and signed a new contract.

Cassell had been in touch with Rivers during the summer, but the Celtics coach didn't know if Cassell had decided to come back for another season with the team until last week.

The 38-year-old Cassell joined the team in March for the playoff run, playing in 17 regular-season games before averaging 4.5 points in the playoffs.

"I think if I put it out there, no doubt about it, I could probably play somewhere else," he said. "Why would I?"