Karalis: On Tommy Heinsohn day, Boston Celtics disrespect his basketball legacy

When we lost Tommy Heinsohn late last year, we lost a true connection to everything that made Boston Celtics basketball great. He and Bill Russell led the team to its first of 17 titles, and only Heinsohn was affiliated with the team in some way for all of them. He is in the Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach, one of only four people to ever hold such an honor.

The almost cartoonish character that he had become on the television broadcasts was a fun evolution for a man madly in love with the game. While I wouldn't dare try to guess how Heinsohn would truly feel about the 2020-21 version of his beloved Celtics, I will say that the brand of basketball this team displays on a nightly basis is disrespectful to his legacy.

The organization spent this Sunday honoring Heinsohn with tributes on television and on the scoreboard during the game. His name was emblazoned on the sideline, but the tributes felt empty and flat against the backdrop of yet another Celtics first half shellacking.

The boos of the fans were still echoing through the rafters as the Celtics ran a halftime tribute video to their lost legend. The voice of a man who won eight championships as a player and two more as a coach flowed out of a scoreboard that displayed a 26 point Celtics deficit in a game deemed by all to be a pseudo-playoffs game of utmost importance.

"We know what’s at stake," Jayson Tatum said after the game. "Things continue to fluctuate with the standings. I guess that just makes Tuesday even that much more important for us to get a win."

Do you know what's at stake, though? If you did, then maybe these games would look different. 

Times have changed a lot since Tommy's days of broad collars and plaid suits jawing with Mendy Rudolph. Maybe a coach can't ride his players like Heinsohn rode his or Red Auerbach rode Tommy. But one thing is translatable through the decades.

Hard work and effort are universal. Heinsohn preached a work ethic unlike any other team, and it brought that Celtics to championship heights.

"We made teams crack in these playoffs," Heinsohn once told the Boston Globe. "We got them to points in big games in the fourth quarter where they just didn't want to play anymore."

Nowadays, it's the Celtics who seem like they don't want to play, at least for about 30 minutes or so.

This team spends its first halves looking more like the Sidney Wicks-Curtis Rowe Celtics that got Tommy fired before switching over to an actual basketball team. They trip over themselves over and over again, unable to roust themselves from their pregame naps until their deficit hits a couple dozen.

Heinsohn played and coached with a simple philosophy that if everyone on the team just did what he was supposed to do, everyone in the arena would go home happy. Even on nights where the team lost, they'd only lose because the other team earned the win.

This season is unlike any we've seen, and there are certainly certain allowances that need to be made as we acknowledge them, but cavalier attitudes and, as Tatum said after the game, being "too comfortable," aren't among them.

This team likes to think they're Mr. Freeze, but they've rarely had the kind of kick to make it all the way back. Aside from a couple of miracles, the Celtics have simply fallen short over, and over, and over again. Yet, here we were again, watching them spot someone a big, big lead.

“There's no excuse for that. Certainly anybody on the Celtics side, we're all responsible for that. But first and foremost, I think that would fall on me," Brad Stevens said. "When you look out there, we're small and so we have to fight. We have to be super hard-playing, super physical, and super difficult to play against and we weren't in the first 24 minutes.”

Evan Fournier, the new guy with a fresh perspective, doesn't have the answers either.

"It’s something that’s from within. It starts with yourself," he said. "I have to bring it, then the next guy has to bring it, and five guys bringing it on the court together, then good things happen. It’s a very hard question to answer, to be honest. I wish I had the answer. I mean, we all wish we had the answers. But no, sorry."

Sorry is about all these Celtics have been. They've teased us with their promise, but in the end, the only thing they've earned is the right to be forgotten by history.

For a team built on legends, this is the worst offense a team can commit. They are the antithesis of everything great this franchise has produced, and the "efforts" they put forth are becoming insulting to the men and teams whose numbers and banners hang above them.

The Celtics were supposed to be honoring a legend on Sunday afternoon, but the team on the floor did nothing to live up to anything Tommy Heinsohn represented.