Horseman stabilized Celtics
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist
Boston Globe
October 26, 2008
Harry Mangurian was a big man with the ponies. I really had no idea
just how big until he died last Sunday and the tributes came pouring
in.
I guess all you need to know is that he won the 2001 Eclipse Award of
Merit for his lifetime contributions to the sport of thoroughbred
racing. I learned how he was the leading North American breeder by
earnings four consecutive years (1999-2002), that he was the leading
breeder by individual stakes winners from 1999-2001, and that he was
twice recognized as the national Breeder of the Year (1998, 2000) by
the Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association.
And all I knew was that he owned a horse farm in Florida.
All of this is very interesting. To me, Harry Mangurian was the guy
who saved the Boston Celtics from being turned into the Anchorage
Iceboxes or Key West Keystone Kops by buying out John Y. Brown. If
that guy had maintained any kind of influence with the team, Red
Auerbach really would have gone to New York, Larry Bird would never
have signed here, and there is a very real possibility the Boston
Celtics would have ceased to exist.
So, yes, say a prayer for the man, or whatever it is you do to honor
the distinguished deceased. Harry T. Mangurian was a very important
figure in the history of Boston sports.
"That was a very dark and difficult time in the history of the
franchise," asserts Jan Volk, then the Celtics’ assistant general
manager and later, of course, the successor to Auerbach as GM. "I
think Harry Mangurian is underappreciated and under-recognized for who
he was and what he did for the team at that particular point in
time. Some of it was circumstantial, but he certainly provided a
necessary alternative to John Y."
"He was an owner at a very interesting time," said NBA commissioner
David Stern. "He had a colorful and interesting partner, and he was a
key component in holding that team together at a very difficult time."
The Mangurian money had come from a family furniture store in
Rochester, N.Y. Harry T. Mangurian Jr., born 1926, died 2008,
parlayed the money he made from the store into a merger with the
General Portland Cement Company. He had interests in banking, real
estate, and construction. He founded Drexel Investments Inc., a Fort
Lauderdale-based firm that constructed and sold 10,000 units in South
Florida.
He entered sports by buying into the Buffalo Braves, who were, for a
brief time, an important part of the fabric of life in Western New
York. He was John Y. Brown’s partner in the great team swap of 1978,
when Irv Levin bought the Braves from them and moved the franchise to
San Diego, with the two Buffalo owners assuming control of the
Celtics. The man who brokered that deal was a bright young league
counsel named David Stern.
John Y. Brown was the bombastic big mouth married to the Miss
America/CBS-TV personality, Phyllis George. Harry Mangurian was the
so-called "silent partner." (With John Y., there was no other
kind). He wasn’t exactly the loquacious type, but he had excellent
powers of observation, and he must have recognized what his partner
was doing to this historic franchise and knew only he could stop Brown
from destroying it.
Accordingly, he bought out Brown when the latter decided to run for
governor of Kentucky and was in firm control of the team when it came
time to sign the No. 1 draft pick from 1978 before a calendar year
expired, or the Celtics would lose the rights to Indiana State star
Larry Bird.
There is a longstanding urban myth that Harry muscled aside his GM to
take control of the Bird negotiations with agent Bob Woolf. Not quite,
says Volk.
"But he played a role, absolutely," Volk recalls. "He was the
owner. He had to play a role. He didn’t do any of the negotiations
that I know of. But it was the biggest rookie contract in the history
of the league and it had to be approved by the owner. He had to take
the risk on it."
"Horses," Bird says. "That’s the first thing I think of with Harry
Mangurian. I remember being in contract negotiations and he said he
couldn’t pay me that number because it was more than one of his horses
was worth. It gave me a good laugh."
Though Mangurian may have started out as John Y’s "silent partner,"
Volk quickly discovered after Mangurian took charge that he was now
working for a demanding and inquisitive owner.
"He was a very, very strong-minded guy," says Volk. "He was a
hands-on, active owner. He wanted to know everything that was going
on, and we would talk for hours every day, more than once."
"He was a complete gentleman," remembers Stern. "He was protective of
the Celtics and viewed them as under constant assault from the Lakers
and the Knicks."
Volk’s first major experience with Mangurian came when John
Y. personally traded three No. 1 picks that had been carefully
collected by Auerbach to the Knicks for Bob McAdoo.
"That deal was done without Red’s input or approval, and, in fact,
with Red’s disapproval," Volk explains.
That was bad enough. But when Mangurian discovered that as part of the
deal the Celtics would be assuming a rather large financial obligation
to McAdoo that carried over from the contract he had originally signed
with Buffalo, he said no.
"He said to me, ‘I don’t care how you get it done; that has to go
away,’ " Volk says. "He was decisive and he was smart."
He was probably the most stable owner the Celtics had known since
Walter Brown, and now we’re going back to the mid ’60s. He was the
owner when the Celtics went from 29 victories in 1978-79 to 61 in
1979-80 and then to a 14th championship the following year. He just
wasn’t in it for the long haul, selling the team to the triumvirate of
Donald Gaston, Alan Cohen, and Paul Dupee for $18 million in 1983 and
then heading down to Florida for good. That was more than 150 stakes
winners ago.
Messrs. Gaston, Cohen, and Dupee rode the NBA wave before selling to
the current ownership for $360 million. No one ever heard Harry
Mangurian complain. He liked his horses and he liked his life in
Florida. But it is too bad people forgot about him, because every
Celtics fan owes him thanks.
"He was the right guy at the right moment for the Celtics franchise,"
maintains Volk. "It’s fortuitous that he was there."
Save a little spot for him in your Winner’s Circle of Boston sports,
OK?
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
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