Boston Celtics: 25 Best Players To Play For The Celtics
By Phil Watson
1951-61. Bill Sharman. 7. player. 18. <strong> How Acquired: </strong>Trade, Fort Wayne Pistons, April 26, 1951. SG
Bill Sharman’s NBA career got off to a rocky start as he was property of three teams before ever playing a full season in the league.
But after he was acquired from the Fort Wayne Pistons by the Boston Celtics in an April 1951 trade, Sharman became a key cog to the early years of the NBA’s greatest dynasty.
He was an eight-time All-Star after coming to Boston, earning MVP honors in the 1955 All-Star Game. Sharman was also selected to seven All-NBA teams and was fifth in the MVP voting in 1955-56.
One of the game’s greatest free throw shooters in the early era of the NBA, Sharman led the NBA in free-throw percentage seven times, including five seasons in a row from 1952-53 through 1956-57.
He was also part of four championship teams in Boston, averaging 19.8 points in his five NBA Finals appearances.
Sharman retired after the 1960-61 season to assume coaching duties for the Cleveland Pipers in the rival American Basketball League, winning the title in the league’s only full season.
In 10 seasons for the Celtics, Sharman averaged 18.1 points, 3.9 rebounds and three assists in 32 minutes per game, shooting 42.8 percent from the floor and 88.3 percent from the line.
Taken in the second round by the Washington Capitols out of USC in the 1950 NBA Draft, Sharman played only 31 games before the team folded in the midst of the 1950-51 season.
He went to Fort Wayne in a dispersal draft in January 1951, but never played for the Pistons.
He would go on to coach the San Francisco Warriors for two seasons, going 87-76 from 1966-68 and leading the team to the 1967 NBA Finals.
From there was three years with the Los Angeles and Utah Stars of the ABA, where Sharman’s teams posted a 133-113 record and won the ABA title in 1971.
In five seasons coaching the Los Angeles Lakers from 1971-76, the team was 246-164 and won the title in 1972.
Sharman was the ABA Coach of the Year in 1969-70 and won the NBA honor in 1971-72.
He later spent seven years, 1976-82, as general manager of the Lakers, assembling teams that won titles in 1980 and 1982.
Sharman is one of the few to be named to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach. He was inducted as a player in 1976 and went in as a coach in 2004.
He is 13th in NBA history with a free-throw percentage of .883.
After suffering a stroke, Sharman died a week later on Oct. 25, 2013, at the age of 87.
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