THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2020 Page 7 Celtic Number 25 By The Old Sachem, Bill Stewart K .C. Jones was a Celtic through and through. He was born on May 25, 1932, in Taylor, Texas, but he spent most of his life in the Boston area. In his career in the National Basketball Association (NBA), he won 11 championships, eight as a player, one as an assistant coach and two as a head coach. He died this week on the 25th, but will be remembered as part of the great Celtic teams of the sixties. Jones is tied for third for the most NBA championships in his career; he is one of only three NBA players with an eight-wins and no losses record in NBA Finals series. He and Bill Russell are the only African-American coaches to win multiple NBA Championships. Jones was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989. K.C. graduated from Commerce High School in San Francisco, California, where he played both basketball and football. He then joined Bill Russell at the University of San Francisco, the two leading the Dons to two NCAA Championships, 1955 and 1956. The two also achieved the Olympic Gold Medal at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. After college he considered playing professional football and he participated in a tryout, then failed to make the cut. But he was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the 1956 second round as the 13th overall player selected that year. Jones went on to play for nine seasons with the Celtics, 1958–1967. K.C. retired after the Celtics lost to the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1967 playoffs. Only eight NBA players (Jones, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Jerry Lukas, Clyde Lovellette, Quinn Buckner and Anthony Davis) have won the big three: an NCAA Championship, an NBA Championship and an Olympic Gold Medal. After retiring from the Celtics, Jones joined the staff of Brandeis University as the head coach, serving from 1967 to 1970. In the 1970 and 1971 seasons, he was an assistant coach at Harvard University. K.C. became an assistant coach with a former teammate, Bill Sharman, for the 1971–1972 season with the NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers, and the team won a record 33 consecutive games during the season. On August 8, 1972, Jones became the first ever head coach of the ABA’s San Diego Conquistadors. After one season with the Conquistadors, Jones signed a three-year contract to coach the Capital Bullets in 1973, and the team became known as the Washington Bullets in 1974. K.C. ran the team for three seasons, building a record of 155 wins and 91 losses. The team was swept by the Golden State Warriors in the 1975 NBA Finals, and in the next season had a seventh-game loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. His three seasons contract was not renewed after the high-level losses. In 1983 Jones became the head coach of the Boston Celtics, and with Larry Bird as a player, won championships in 1984 and 1986. He was the head coach in 1986 of the Eastern team in the NBA All-Star Game in Dallas’s Reunion Arena, which beat the Western team 139-132. He led the Celtics to five Atlantic Championships and his squads reached the NBA Finals in four of his five seasons. He retired, surprisingly, after the 1987-1988 season, spending some of the 1988 season in the front office of the Celtics, then resigned to join the Seattle SuperSonics as an assistant coach for the 19891990 season. In 1990 he became the Sonics head coach for two seasons. His next assignment was as an assistant coach for the Detroit Pistons. Jones returned to the Celtics in 1996 as an assistant coach for a single season. He finished his coaching career as head coach of the New England Blizzard of the new women’s American Basketball League for a season and onehalf. The Blizzards made the playoffs in his second year, but were defeated by the San Jose Lasers. During his nine playing years with the Celtics, his statistics were 676 games played, 25.9 average minutes per game, a field goal percentage of .387, a free throw percentage of .647, 23.5 rebounds per game, 4.3 assists per game and a percentage of 7.4 points per game. K.C.’s statistics for playoff games were 105 games played, 23.8 minutes per game, .367 field goals per game, .691 free throw percentage per game, 3.0 rebounds per game, 3.8 assists per game and 6.4 points per game. His greatest season was the 1961-1962 year when he had 9.2 points per game and 9.0 points per game in the playoffs that year. K.C.’s career statistics as an NBA head coach were 774 games, 522 wins, 252 losses and a winning percentage of .674. He won two NBA championships, lost three times in NBA Finals, lost in Eastern Conference Finals once, lost in Conference Semifinals twice and lost in the First Round once. Only in his final coaching career in 1991-1992 with the SuperSonics did his team fail to make the playoffs. Jones was the NBA All-Star head coach five times. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989 and the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006. K.C. Jones as a player and coach will go down in history as one of the greats for the sport of basketball.
8 Publizr Home