Bob Cousy

Bob Cousy organized the first NBA dynasty with a style of play that defined the point guard position for two decades. His six championships with the Boston Celtics between 1957 and 1963 arrived before the NBA had a reliable consensus for what a facilitating guard was supposed to look like, which means Cousy was inventing the vocabulary as he used it. His behind-the-back passes, no-look dishes, and court awareness at a pace the game of his era rarely demanded were innovations that contemporaries cited as unlike anything they had previously encountered in professional basketball.

Cousy was selected to 13 consecutive All-Star Games from 1951 to 1963 and won the NBA's assist title eight consecutive seasons — a record that has never been approached by any guard at any era. His assists-to-turnover discipline, in an era where the metric was not formally tracked, suggests a player operating with the decision-making efficiency of a later era.

He is the foundational point guard in franchise history for a team that has produced more championships than any other — his six rings are the third-most in Celtics history, behind only Bill Russell — and his style of play created the operational template that Red Auerbach built everything else around for an entire dynasty.

Cousy attended Holy Cross, where he led the school to a 1947 national championship, before becoming a Celtic through a dispersal draft following a franchise dissolution. He won his own Rookie of the Year award in the league's infancy and spent the next 13 seasons proving that everything attributed to him was accurate.