Many of the greatest players in NBA history have had their praises sung in fawning profiles, examined front to back in biographies or immortalized with unforgettable nicknames.
And then there’s Sam Jones, where the praise sent his way always was simpler, more muted, but in its own way spoke volumes.
“All he wanted to do was win,” legendary Boston Celtics coach and president Red Auerbach once said of Jones, who died Friday at the age of 88.
His given name didn’t lend itself as easily to nicknames like teammate Bob Cousy’s did, so Jones ended up with a number of generic-sounding monikers: “The Shooter” and “Mr. Clutch” (although Jerry West co-opted the latter). But there are three facts every self-respecting Celtics fan knows as gospel.
1. His bank shot is purportedly one of the best of all time.
2. His humility was inseparable from his success.
3. His clutch exploits made even Bill Russell, his teammate and the greatest winner in major North American team sports, marvel.
“His presence gave me comfort in key games,” Russell wrote in his autobiography, “Second Wind.” “In the seventh game of a championship series, I’ll take Sam over any player who’s ever walked on a court.”
When you’re the No. 1 choice by an 11-time champion, you did something right.
Yet an Amazon search for “Sam Jones Celtics” yields just a single book on the 10-time champion’s life, a 172-page biography from 2016. Meanwhile, you could fill a library with the tomes written about Russell and Larry Bird alone.
That sort of fits Jones’ story, though. Tom Brady recently remarked that ex-teammate Julian Edelman “likes operating from a place (of), he’s going to get cut tomorrow,” but that’s literally how Jones’ NBA career began. He never thought he’d crack the lineup, never mind reach the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Time after time after time, though, he came through. In terms of pure quantity, he may have more amazing Game 7 performances than any player in NBA history, and that’s not hyperbole. But he remained just one of the “Jones Boys,” forming a perennial championship backcourt with K.C. Jones, a hard-nosed Hall of Famer in his own right but nowhere near the caliber of offensive stud that Sam Jones was. Decades later, stars bristle when they feel a teammate is stealing their limelight. Jones, one of the greatest shooters in NBA history, had no quarrel with sharing his legacy with a defensive-minded, 7.4-points-per-game role player.
As tends to happen, of course, the world waited to send flowers until Jones was gone. The Celtics issued a statement and will surely memorialize Jones with a tribute video or No. 24 jersey patch soon. Praise rained down on social media when news of his death broke.
The best summary might have come from Cousy, though, because in befitting fashion for Jones, it was direct and to the point.
“Sam,” Cousy told Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe, “would never (expletive) miss.”
