Havlicek

Johnny Havlicek steals the ball!  This is how weird aging is. He was always old to me, because I was a child, and he was already a professional basketball player.  He has just died at 79 years old, which no longer seems all that old. Half a generation.

Notice he is from that other genetic group good at basketball, the Slavs.  Also strange how that is. He retired after two terrible seasons for the Celtics, filled with knuckleheadds, just before Larry Bird came in.  He'd had enough.  He later said he hadn't believed the Bird hype but after seeing him, wished he had stuck around for three more years to play with him.  Had that happened, Hondo would be even farther up the all-time statistical lists, top-ten and top-twenty in a few categories. I think the example of how to ease out might have extended Birdie's career as well.

He played some pickup, but mostly just stayed active, and amazed everyone at the Celtics all-time reunion game in 1986, when other players kept shaking their heads and saying he could still play! in his mid-40s.