Catching Up With Former Boston Celtics Walter McCarty

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In July 2011, I was getting ready to launch CLNSRadio’s newest show Crunchtime with Macattack and was looking to start the show off with a bang. I wanted to make sure I had a guest for the premiere that would have people thinking that maybe the show could stick around for a while (it worked for about 5 months and then school happened). With the roots of the site being in Boston Celtics coverage, the guest had to be perfect. There was only one choice, and that was Walter McCarty.

When I caught up with Walter for the interview, it was not the same Walter McCarty that Celtics Nation remembered him as. And when I spoke with him for this piece, the Boston Celtics icon was not the same Walter McCarty that I spoke with eight months prior.

The Early Years

The Walter McCarty that most Celtics fans know began his journey at Harrison High School in his hometown of Evansville, Indiana. And this is something that McCarty has not forgotten. While many times star athletes tend to forget their routes, McCarty never has:

“I was actually at Harrison a couple of weeks ago and am still involved in a lot of the projects over there. I’m still very in tune with the school. The head coach & the AD was one of my high school teammates. That’s where it all started. Over there with Calbert Cheaney”.

At Kentucky, things really took off for McCarty. The transition from high school to college ball came with new, welcomed challenges:

“It was great. I grew up right over the bridge from Kentucky so I knew what Kentucky basketball meant. It was a lot of fun because it was a big challenge. You were playing against all these high school All-Americans and guys that you’ve seen have success at that level on TV. So, it was weird, but fun. You’re really challenged and you have to step up to the plate and improve your game to show that you belong there”.

During the 93-94 campaign, McCarty made the most of his 14 minutes a game putting up just over 5 points and 4 boards a game. The next year was the breakthrough year. With over 22 minutes of play per game it was as if Coach Rick Pitino had put a little confidence into the big man. And McCarty did not disappoint, doubling his point production and pulling down over 5 rebounds per game. His ability to continue to improve heading into the 95-96 season was crucial for the success of the Kentucky Wildcats. On a team with future NBA players up and down the roster like Tony Delk, Antoine Walker, Ron Mercer, Nazr Mohammed and Wayne Turner, McCarty had to take on the difficult role as the leader:

“I don’t want to be arrogant in saying this, but I think I was the heart and soul of that team. I was the energy. Obviously we had great talent and a lot of pros, but I was the guy who kept everyone cool, brought everyone together and made sure we all did our jobs”.

And it was that group of stars that was able to cut down the nets after knocking off Syracuse in the NCAA Championship to cap off a 34-2 season, an experience that McCarty will never forget:

“It was a lot of fun. There’s no better way to go out as a senior than to win a national championship. You think about all the practices that you go through and all the ups and downs. Then you come to the realization that you were able to get through all of that and walk away a winner. That was a special group. All we cared about was winning and playing together as a team”.

Headed to the Association

When the 1996 NBA Draft came around, Walter McCarty was a hot commodity. A 6-10 big man who is not afraid to attack the glass and knock down a three from the outside is sure to garner attention. And that is exactly what he did. On draft night, when the 19^th overall pick came around, Walter McCarty officially became a New York Knick. McCarty remembers what it was like to hear his name called:

“It was a dream come true. First thing I thought about, a couple of weeks before, during our run to the championship, coach mentioned ‘Walt you continue to play tough because you may play for the Knicks one day’. When they called my name, I was like ‘damn, coach was right haha’”.

But his rookie season in New York proved to be less than memorable. Whether it was the difficulty of finding a player to steal minutes from (this was a team with guys like Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson and Charles Oakley on it) or the fact that maybe he never really got comfortable in New York, McCarty put up underwhelming rookie numbers. Appearing in just 35 games, McCarty put up less than two points and a rebound per game. However, this could be seen as somewhat of a blessing in disguise. After the 96-97 NBA season, McCarty was traded by the Knicks to the Boston Celtics, thus launching the beginning of the Walter McCarty that Celtics fans remember very well.

#0 Finds a Home

This brings us here. After high school ball at Harrison High, winning a national championship at Kentucky and being drafted by the Knicks, Walter McCarty found his home away from home in Boston playing for the Boston Celtics, and he would call the city home from 1997-2005. If you were an outsider, and just looked at the numbers McCarty put up in his time as #0, you would probably wonder what the big deal was about him. He never averaged 10 points per game and rarely started after his first season on the Celtics. But McCarty was never concerned with the stats:

“I was the energizer for the Boston Celtics. I got all the loose balls, extra possessions, rebounds, knocked down open shots. Just doing whatever I could to give us a chance to win the game. A lot of people don’t know, but that’s really what started the whole ‘I love Waltah’ thing. Tommy Heinsohn, he understood how important and how valuable I was to that team and that I did the things that may not have shown up on the stats sheet. You need players to do what I did. You need players to do the dirty work…90% of all players in the NBA are role players. My thing was to make sure that I am valuable in different ways”.

And it was that attitude that transformed him into a Celtics legend. As a part of the most accomplished organization in NBA history that includes players like Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Paul Pierce, Walter McCarty is a much different kind of legend. It was the constant hustle, the consistent “dagger” from beyond the arc and quality crunch time play that made the city of Boston fall in love with McCarty. This is a city filled with blue-collar workers who get just as excited for the hard-working underdog as they do for the team’s star. Walter McCarty never had anything handed to him, and wasn’t necessarily a naturally gifted star. This was a big man who worked day in and day out to get to Kentucky and then to the NBA. A predominantly blue-collar population can appreciate that. He earned every minute that he got on the floor and Boston Celtics fans commended him for making the most of each one. Whether it was through the “Waltah” chants filling the Garden or Tommy Heinsohn screaming into his headset that he loves Walter or to “give him a Tommy Point!”, Celtics nation always wanted to let McCarty know that he was the most irreplaceable 15 minute per night they had ever seen. McCarty remembers one time in particular:

“When we got back to the playoffs and we were going to play against Philadelphia. A lot of people were counting us out. I have a picture where I made a big play during the game and I’m clapping. It was a great picture. The place was so loud. The fans just appreciated how hard we were playing. I remember everyone was saying Allen Iverson and the 76ers were going to come in a blow us out. We’re at home and right before the half, Tony Delk gets the rebound and he loses it and it comes to me and I threw it up from half court and it swishes. It gave us a lot of confidence and made us think we were going to win the series”.

The truth is, even today Walter McCarty has not been replaced on the Boston Celtics. The Celtics have failed to find a player since 2005 who generates as much excitement from the fan base and can give the team as much positive energy as McCarty was able to do during that 7+ year stretch. Sure, the Green have been able to bring in high energy scorers or defenders that can come in for 10-15 minutes a night, but nobody that brings as much to the table as McCarty did. The numbers he put about on a nightly basis are the last thing fans remember about him today. But I am willing to guarantee you that if you went to a Boston Celtics game tonight and asked fans over 15 years old if they remember Walter McCarty, the first thing they would say is “I LOVE WALTAH” because he’s not a forgettable figure. But today he’s hoping to make a name for himself in a different way that will still have Celtics fans confessing their love for him and maybe also singing one of his songs…

From the Hardwood to “Emotionally”

After a little more basketball and a few stints as an assistant coach, Walter McCarty was ready to move on from the game he loved to try new projects. One of McCarty’s greatest passions is music, and it was his goal to make it as an R&B performer. In 2003, while still a member of the Celtics, McCarty released his first CD “Moment for Love”. The CD got excellent reviews from critics, but McCarty never really did much with it as he told me during our interview back in July:

“It sucks to put an album out there and that be the end of it. That’s what I did with my first album. I didn’t really spend any time to promote it & I didn’t do anything to back it up.”

A large focus of the interview in July was on McCarty’s time with the Celtics, but another large chunk of the discussion was on his new “baby” as he called it, his recently released album “Emotionally”. McCarty notes that he thinks that he put “this album together a bit differently. I self-produced it and did a lot of the work myself, want people to hear it and see this side of me”. Whatever McCarty has done differently from the first album to his most recent one is working. When I chatted with Walter in July, his Twitter follower count was a shade under 900. Now, as the album has become available through Amazon, Itunes and plenty of other media resources, that Twitter followership has grown to over 5,000 people. In terms of performance bookings, when we spoke in July, Walter was working on putting together a tour schedule. Today it is as if McCarty has a show every week. Recently, some exciting news came for everybody’s favorite versatile big man as McCarty signed a distribution deal with Bronx Bridge Entertainment almost guaranteeing that McCarty’s success as an R&B artist is far from over.

With all this success, one would think that McCarty must have really put together a deep album when he finished “Emotionally”. But when I asked him about his influence for the album, he chuckled before explaining:

“To be perfectly honest…I remember one day being on my Facebook page, and posting ‘somebody send me something to write about’. And from there, people started sending messages and I wrote back, ‘the first person to come up with the best idea to write about, I’ll write a solo about that’. Somebody sent me something about cheating emotionally and not physically. That’s how the song ‘Emotionally’ came up and that one song speared the whole album”.

Yes, Walter McCarty has changed since our talk in July. He has taken his project to a new level and may be bigger now than he ever has been before. Boston Celtics fans may start to associate more than just the Tommy Award with the name Walter McCarty soon enough. But one thing that has not changed and will not change about Walter McCarty is his hard work and ability to make the most out of a given opportunity. And, of course, everybody still loves Waltah.

Get your copy of “Emotionally” today on Amazon!

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