Today in Boston Celtics history: Seven-time champion Celtic forward Frank Ramsey born
Today in Boston Celtics history, Frank Vernon Ramsey Jr. was born in Corydon, Kentucky, in 1931. As a young athlete, Ramsey took part in a number of sports at the collegiate level, but excelled in basketball for the University of Kentucky Wildcats in the NCAA ranks. The Corydon native played baseball as well as basketball under famed Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, and later helped his Wildcats roster win an NCAA title in 1951 over the Kansas State Wildcats. Kentucky then got the so-called “death penalty” due to a point-shaving scandal that rocked the school and the sport and dominated the news cycle. (Ramsey and Lou Tsioropoulos were not among those accused.)
That point-shaving scandal rocked the game to its core, and ended the senior season for the Kentuckian and one of his future teammates on the Celtics as well, Tsioropoulos, as well as Cliff Hagan, another future NBAer. The trio graduated in 1953 and were all drafted by Boston (Hagan would later be dealt to another team), Ramsey going fifth overall. With a year of eligibility left, the trio then returned to Kentucky despite having been drafted by Boston (Hagan never played for the Celtics, his rights dealt for Bill Russell), winning all 25 of their regular-season games and finishing the campaign ranked No. 1 nationally.
The Wildcats declined their NCAA invite, however — rules in that era forbade graduate students from playing in the tourney.
Ramsey’s career with Boston was interrupted by military service after his rookie campaign of 1954-55, but he won his — and the Celtics’ — first title in 1957. He won six more consecutively beginning the season after the next spanning 1959-64 in what he would help pioneer as a role in the NBA — a sixth man — and garnered a Hall of Fame nod some years after retiring from the sport as a player in 1981. Ramsey tried his hand at head coaching briefly in the NBA’s chief rival league at that time, the American Basketball Association (ABA — it merged with the NBA in 1978).
At the helm of his hometown Kentucky Colonels, Ramsey’s squad would make it to the ABA Finals, where the Colonels would fall to the Utah Stars, coached by Ramsey’s former teammate Bill Sharman. The Celtics star passed away at the age of 86 at home after a post-basketball career as a bank president — rest in peace.
This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Today in Boston Celtics history: Seven-time champion Celtic forward Frank Ramsey born
