Watch Uncovered Footage of the Boston Celtics’ Red Auerbach Teaching a Basketball Camp in 1974

Camp and basketball go hand-in-hand in New England summers. One of Adam Sandler’s most popular movies ends with a hoops showdown right on a lake in Massachusetts.

For me, it was Winnacunnet’s hoops camp as a kid, then the Phillips Exeter camp as a teen. Friends used to go to the camp run by Celtic greats Don Nelson and Tom “Satch” Sanders. But imagine taking direction from the patriarch of the Celtics himself: Red Auerbach.

To many of us, Red was one of those guys who was exactly 65 years old the entire time we knew of him. But Auerbach was actually a standout college player at George Washington.

Long before his biographer speculated how the late Auerbach would’ve felt about the Marcus Smart trade, some lucky campers in the '70s got to see why the longtime Celtics President would’ve had an affinity for players that instigate.

In an old clip dusted off by Boston’s WGBH, Auerbach drops the cigar, and trades his tie and plaid sports coat in for some shorts and sneakers to teach kids about footwork, head fakes, and that all-important first step. He shows kids in Connecticut how to be, as Auerbach called it, “an instigator.”

There’s some typical Auerbach brashness and simplicity, breaking down the basic physics of why you shouldn’t need to look at the ball to dribble.

Auerbach first came to the Celtics as Head Coach in 1950, winning nine titles before taking over full-time as the team’s General Manager. He presided over four decades of dominance, before several setbacks and tragedies in the late '80s and '90s, capped by the tragic death of the team’s captain.