His Own Hook Shot Is Highlight of His All-Star Memories

Tom Heinsohn, CBS pro basketball commentator, played in five NBA All-Star games, coached in two and Sunday will work his third as a broadcaster.

That adds up to a lot of All-Star memories. So ask him about highlights, and what’s the first thing he mentions? The long hook shot he made from the corner over Johnny Kerr during last year’s legends game.

After the shot, Heinsohn won a dispute with referee Norm Drucker over whether he should be credited with a three-point basket. Said Heinsohn at the time: “That’s my first three-point shot and the first time I’ve won a dispute with a referee.”

His most memorable real All-Star game was the 1963 edition in Los Angeles.

“The West had (Wilt) Chamberlain, (Walt) Bellamy and (Bob) Pettit in the front line, so (Elgin) Baylor was forced to start in the backcourt with (Jerry) West,” he said.

“Jim Murray wrote before the game that the West team may be the first in history to score 200 points in a game. That got us a little fired up.”

The East, with Heinsohn and Jack Twyman at forward, Bill Russell at center and Oscar Robertson and Bob Cousy at guard, won, 115-108.

Add Heinsohn: Ask him to name his current All-NBA team, and he quickly names Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Then, after some thought, he puts Isiah Thomas in the backcourt with Magic.

“Picking the other forward is tough,” he said. “Dr. J is on the down side of his career and now playing guard. Maybe James Worthy, who’s become a real force for the Lakers, or Dominique Wilkins.”

So how would that team fare against the best of the star teams when Heinsohn was playing, 1956-65?

“I’m not sure, but I’d pay $100 for a ticket to see it,” he said.

Heinsohn knows one thing for sure, that there is no one in the game today who can pass the way Cousy, his old teammate with the Celtics, could.

“Magic can do a lot of things Cousy couldn’t do, but Magic isn’t half the passer Cousy was,” he said.

Cousy will be among those participating in this year’s legends game. Heinsohn will not. “They didn’t ask me,” he said. “I guess they want to spread it around.”

The legends game, a slam-dunk contest and a long-dis- tance shooting contest will be held Saturday at Dallas, and packaged into a two-hour show to be televised on WTBS Saturday at 7:05 p.m. Highlights of the three events also will be shown on CBS during halftime of Sunday’s game, which will begin at 10:30 a.m.

Feuding sportscasters: You wouldn’t want to invite KMPC’s Jim Healy and KABC’s Bud Furillo to the same party these days. Did you hear what Healy had to say about Furillo and his KABC colleague, Tom Hawkins, the other night?

Talking about local sports talk shows, Healy said:

“Then there’s the long-running one on KABC. You’ve got one guy who sounds like he’s got a whole pumpkin pie in his mouth, while the other guy is always mad. Sounds like he never forgave the world for Mussolini’s death.

“The show is also jammed with commercials and other things to break up any continuity. It doesn’t move. It stands still. If Mussolini isn’t screaming at listeners, he’s doing a puff piece on Al Davis, Ted Tollner or the Dodgers. That is, when a commercial isn’t on. His colleague, meanwhile, just mouths you to sleep.”

As Healy’s Howard Cosell impersonator says, “Jim Healy, that’s your lowest shot ever.”

Furillo said he did not care to comment.

Add Furillo: On Monday night, after he was informed on the air by Herald Examiner sportswriter Ken Gurnick that he would be presented with the Bob Hunter media award at the Baseball Writers Assn. dinner, Furillo came back with an unusual response. He complained about the name of the award.

“Nothing against Bob Hunter (a longtime Los Angeles baseball writer now with the Daily News), but the award should be named after Vincent X. Flaherty (former L.A. Examiner columnist),” Furillo said, adding that Flaherty played a prominent role in bringing major league baseball to the West Coast.

The next day, Furillo apologized both on the air and to Gurnick privately and said he would be honored to accept the award.

McMahon and Carson: Jim McMahon appeared on the “Tonight” show the other night and came across pretty well. Although he wasn’t wearing socks, McMahon was dressed conservatively, for him. And his sunglasses were conventional Foster Grants.

Carson, meanwhile, didn’t handle McMahon very well. First, he asked McMahon to participate in a bad joke and read the following make-believe commercial:

“Hi, I’m Jim McMahon of the Chicago Bears. After every game when I shower I use the No. 1 dandruff shampoo of professional football players, Head and Shoulder Pads. Use Head and Shoulder Pads, it will remove all the dandruff flakes. I should know about flakes. I’m the biggest one in the NFL.”

Carson then tried to get out of that embarrassing moment by telling McMahon he was an exciting quarterback, an individual with a lot of color and the type of person football needs more of.

“Joe Theismann doesn’t think so,” said McMahon, referring to derogatory comments made by the Washington quarterback earlier in the day. But Carson, obviously unaware of what Theismann had said, missed a perfect opening to talk about a topical story.

Notes There might seem to be considerable more interest in the NBA All-Star game than the NFL’s Pro Bowl, but football is football, and the Pro Bowl gets better ratings. The national Nielsen rating for last Sunday’s Pro Bowl was 16.3. The L.A. rating was only 11.3, but the national average was pushed up by the 27.3 rating the game got in still football-crazy Chicago. Last year’s NBA All-Star game drew a national rating of 10.9. . . . This week’s resignation of Jim Spence as the senior vice president of ABC Sports did not come as a surprise, since Spence had been passed over for a promotion to president of the division when Roone Arledge named Dennis Swanson to that post. In this reporter’s opinion, Spence was somewhat afraid of Arledge, always weighing his comments carefully. Insiders are saying it was Spence’s lack of confidence that cost him the promotion.

Among the wide variety of sports on television this weekend is the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. ABC is offering coverage both Saturday and Sunday, with Jim McKay, Dick Button and Peggy Fleming reporting. Fleming, the darling of the figure skating world after winning America’s only gold medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics at Grenoble, France, is now 37, lives in Los Gatos, Calif., has a 9-year-old son, and still skates occasionally. She’ll stay in the East to take part in the four-day ice show at a hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., next week. . . . On “Sports Sunday” at 1:30 p.m., CBS offers Alexis Arguello, continuing his comeback, against Bill Costello at Reno, and on ABC at 2:30 Marvin Johnson and Leslie Stewart meet for the World Boxing Assn. light-heavyweight title vacated when Michael Spinks won the heavyweight crown. . . . Also on “Sports Sunday” will be taped coverage of Saturday night’s Vitalis/U.S. Olympic indoor track meet at the Meadowlands Arena. The meet features most of the top names in the sport.

There will be no Angel homes games on SelecTV this season, but the club is beefing up its Channel 5 schedule from 35 telecasts to more than 40. . . . Prime Ticket had hopes of making a deal with the Angels because the cable service will be hard-pressed to come up with sports programming this summer. Tom Feuer, Prime Ticket’s director of communications, said that in addition to sports the service may offer some entertainment programming, such as concerts at the Forum.