Boston Celtics ultimate contributor Satch Sanders gets inducted into Hall of Fame: NBA Update
Former player and coach of the Boston Celtics Satch Sanders’ name was inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a Contributor by the Veteran's Committee. Sanders, who had an outstanding record at the college
level while playing for the New York University was jubilant over this honour.
Sanders said, "Let's put it this way. This really brings an air of familiarity to it. I've been there (to the Hall) for so many years, to see others inducted and be part of the Hall of Fame itself on different levels. This will
have some familiarity to it. But to be the person going in, that certainly will be a different feeling."
This time Sanders is going to Springfield not to see others inducting there name in the Hall of Fame, but to register his own name, as a contributor. Which tells a lot about his professional career and his contributions continued
even after his retirement he started working for the league's player programs division (Sanders basically initiated the program) and also aided to launch the rookie transition program.
These programs saved many players especially the young rookies. Both programs remained successful and were widely copied. Sanders done all this by remaining behind the curtain and maintained the anonymity successfully.
In addition to that there is a high possibility that his defensive tactics which earned him lot of fame on eight NBA title teams from 1961 to 1969 might have played a strong role to record his name as a contributor.
Sanders childhood friend Cal Ramsey said that, "He should have made it, no question about it. He is the best defender I ever played against. Ask Elgin Baylor and Bob Pettit and all those great players from that era. If you saw
him play defence, you'd know that stats don't apply in this case. "
In spite of his defensive skills and seizing the title on eight occasions with the C’s, Sanders wasn’t able to bag the ‘Star’ label throughout his career. However, induction of his name in the Hall of Fame has compensated for that
label. At the time of his retirement back in 1973 Sanders was maintaining a career average of 9.6 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game.
During his entire career (equal to 13 seasons), Sanders remained with the Celtics which proves his loyalty towards the franchise. Besides winning the championship on several occasions, Sanders was selected once for the National
Basketball Association All-Defensive Second Team and also won the Haggerty Award in 1960.
Sanders contributions over so many years deserve more recognition and undoubtedly he is the “unsung hero” as Auerbach mentioned him in his book back in 1965.
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