In 1984, I went to Boston to write a magazine story on Red Auerbach, as he had recently announced his retirement.

The first thing he did when I went into in his cluttered office inside the old Boston Garden was set a timer that was on his desk. Then he began to talk, and it was vintage Red. He talked about the Celtics of the 1950s and '60s. He talked about the Celtics of what then was the Bird Era. He told great stories, one after another, all the while puffing on one of his trademark cigars.

Then the timer went off.

"That's it," he said, in mid-story. "I have to watch the program."

The program?

Hawaii Five-O, he said. "I watch it every day at 4 o'clock."

End of interview.

That, too, was vintage Red.

He was many things in a career that was one of the greatest in American sports. He could be brash and abrasive. He could be shrewd and cunning. Through it all, he did things his way.

"Arnold was never a loveable figure," Bob Cousy has said, Cousy being the player who might have had the closest relationship with Auerbach. "He was the ultimate survivor, someone who would do whatever it took to accomplish his goals."

Not surprising.

Auerbach had come out of a Brooklyn ghetto in the 1930s, the son of a man who had fled Russia as a teenager and ran a small dry-cleaning business. Auerbach carried those ghetto lessons with him all his life, the ingrained awareness that no one was ever going to give you anything. It was that hunger that made him a college player at George Washington, even though he was only 5-foot-9.

Tommy Heinsohn once said that while the rest of the Celtics of his era certainly wanted to win, Auerbach -- along with Cousy and Bill Russell -- had to win, as though winning had become a form of validation. That all three had an insatiable need to win again and again, a hunger they could never satisfy, no matter how many cheers, how many victories, the legacy of their difficult childhoods.

Auerbach certainly was an NBA pioneer. He also did it in an era when there were no assistant coaches, no scouting directors, no personnel people. Just him. He was the coach. He was the general manager. He gave out the meal money. And all the while, he was trying to pump up both the team and the league to a Boston media that tended to have little interest in basketball.

Oh yeah, he also drove one of the cars on the endless trips the Celtics spent barnstorming around New England in the early '50s, although none of the players liked to go with him because he drove like a maniac.

In many ways he was an overgrown adolescent, eating junk food all day, then Chinese food at night, smoking his cigars. His wife and two daughters lived in Washington, D.C. He lived in the Hotel Lenox in Boston's Copley Square. In many ways the Celtics were his family, the game his life.

And his greatest strength as a coach?

It wasn't necessarily his strategic basketball knowledge, Auerbach believing in the simplest of beliefs, namely that the team that took more shots usually won, thus his affection for the fast-break offense. It wasn't his game plans, or his ability to give win-one-for-the-Gipper speeches before big games, or the symbolic lighting up of his victory cigars, none of the things that became part of the legend.

It was that he knew talent, and how to acquire it. More important, he knew people. What made them tick. What motivated them. What they wanted. To him, that was always more important than X's and O's scribbled on a blackboard.

That, and the knowledge that people were different, had to be handled differently. Russell didn't like to practice hard? No problem. Russell didn't have to practice hard. Because Auerbach knew Russell played hard in games, and it was all about winning, not always about imposing your will.

In retrospect, that might have been Auerbach's coaching genius. He was able to create an environment that was about winning, nothing else. Not race. Not whether players liked each other or not. Not if they liked him or not.

Winning.

A lot of coaches pay lip service to winning. Auerbach lived it.

He dealt with the black players the way he dealt with everyone else. He made fun of them. He occasionally berated them. He never let any of the players forget he was the boss, controlled their fates. He was not particularly close to any of them. Still, it was never about being one big happy family. It wasn't about civil rights. It was about winning.

And win they did.

From 1957 to 1966, the Celtics won nine NBA titles.

Then he quit coaching.

He was only 48.

And unlike many coaching greats who were lured back for one more run, only to see their legend tarnished, Auerbach's only grew as the years went by. For the last two decades he stayed around the Celtics, even if he had officially retired back in 1984. The players came and the players went. The coaches did, too. So did the owners. Red was always there, one way or the other, even if for the last decade or so it was nothing more than symbolic.

If the Celtics made a great move, then that was Red, right? A bad move? They don't listen to Red anymore. That became the perception, fueled by talk shows and spin, so that as the years went by his stature only grew, almost mythic.

To the point that he long ago became the Celtics. Celtic Pride? The Celtic Mystique? It all started and ended with him, this iconic figure in American sport. This man who always did it his way.

Even to the point of watching Hawaii Five-O reruns every afternoon at 4 o'clock back there in 1984, interview be damned.

breynold@projo.com / (401) 277-7340