Don Nelson Was the NBA's Johnny Appleseed, Spreading Celtics Basketball as a Coach

Don Nelson was the NBA’s Johnny Appleseed, spending his life traveling through the NBA, spreading the principles of Boston Celtics basketball, even if people didn’t realize it.

Nelson spent 11 of his 14 NBA seasons with the Celtics, winning five championships under Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, and Tommy Heinsohn, and always running the classic (at the time) Celtics uptempo style. He took that style to the sidelines with him as he became a Hall of Fame head coach, and morphing it into what we know as “Nellie Ball.”

”It all happened in the Celtic practices,” Nelson said in a 2012 interview with NBC Bay Area. “What Auerbach would do when it got to midseason and practices were drudgery, was he would play big guys against the small guys and the smalls would always win. You put Bill Russell on the other team and everybody else big, and put the smalls on the other and it wasn’t a close game as long as it was a full-court game. Now half-court you couldn’t do that. But full-court, the smalls always won, so I’m sure that was the start of it.”

Nelson’s life almost took a very different turn when he was waived by the Los Angeles Lakers. They had just lost to the Celtics in the 1965 NBA Finals, but Auerbach clearly saw something he liked in Nelson. When he was cut loose, Auerbach paid the Lakers a $1,000 waiver fee and signed Nelson as a free agent.

He became an important glue guy with the Celtics, playing alongside more famous and more accomplished players, but always finding a way to make a big impact on the game. Like many successful players-turned-coaches, Nelson didn’t rely on some magical gifts to become what he was. As his teammate Paul Silas said, “Nellie used what God gave him better than any basketball player I’ve ever seen.” Nelson had to be smarter than everyone else to be his best as a player.

“Don Nelson’s success as a Hall of Fame Coach is so vast, that it could overshadow his playing career, but it would be a mistake to do so,” the Celtics said in a statement. “A favorite of Red Auerbach’s, ‘Nellie’ was a tough and reliable all-around player whose tenacity and ability to ‘think the game’ was on full display throughout his 11 seasons with the Boston Celtics, where he was a key member of five championship teams across two eras.”

That ability to think the game and absorb what Auerbach, Russell, and Heinsohn taught him is what created “Nellie Ball.” It was rebranded in his name, and refined as the sport evolved through the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, but its roots were in Boston. Nelson spread that style to Milwaukee, Golden State, and Dallas. He helped give rise to the shooting big man by maximizing Dirk Nowitzki as a three-point shooter.

Even what we’re watching today in Boston can find some of its lineage through Nelson and back to the original Celtics uptempo practitioners. The Celtics certainly do not play fast, but the tempo of “Mazzulla Ball,” at its best, has some footing in Nelson’s offensive concepts. There's a seed of it in there that, maybe, as the roster evolves, can see some faster pace blossom.

Rules change, and it takes the game to different places. What we see today is the basketball version of scientists watching the universe expand after the big bang. What Auerbach started has been passed on to many generations, and Nelson’s long tenure as a coach might be the biggest reason why it propagates today.

What Nelson did for the game is a story that's being told in many places today as we celebrate the life of a lost legend. He thought his career was over when the Lakers cut him, but it was only just the beginning. He got his revenge on them in 1969, when a ball tipped away from John Havlicek found its way into his hands for a jumper that bounced high off the rim and in. It was one of many lucky bounces for Nelson, who lived most of his life in the NBA.

But luck, as they say, is the residue of design, and no one capitalized on what the basketball gods presented him quite like Nelson. He was born in Michigan and he retired to Hawaii, but when it came to basketball, he was purely Boston.

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