1957 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Bob Cousy

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Neil Johnston (19), Tom Heinsohn (12)

Bench (10+ points): Mel Hutchins (10)

Game context

The 1957 All-Star Game returned to Boston Garden for the third time in the series' seven-year history, and Boston's own Bob Cousy delivered one of the signature highlight moments of the event's early decades in front of his home crowd. With the West holding a 43-39 lead midway through the first half, Cousy — perhaps the sport's most inventive ball-handler and passer at the time — let fly with an audacious roughly 70-foot heave intended as a length-of-the-floor pass to a streaking teammate; instead of finding a receiver, the ball dropped through the basket, an accidental (or at least ambiguously-intentional) shot that pulled the East back within two points right before halftime and electrified the Garden crowd. The East carried that momentum the rest of the way, eventually pulling away for a 109-97 win, and Cousy was named the game's Most Valuable Player for his floor generalship and highlight-reel moment alike. Red Auerbach, fresh off building a Celtics roster around Cousy, Bill Sharman, and a promising rookie named Bill Russell (who would debut for Boston in exactly this same 1956-57 season after his Olympic commitments), coached the East, while Bobby Wanzer of the Rochester Royals led the West bench. The 1957 event also marked a new addition to the All-Star Weekend concept: the league staged its first-ever NBA Old-Timers Game as a companion event, pitting retired Eastern stars against retired Western counterparts in an early exhibition of basketball nostalgia programming. The Eastern old-timers won that companion game 42-38, with Joe Lapchick coaching a roster that included retired players like Sonny Hertzberg and Connie Simmons; the concept did not become an annual fixture immediately, going on hiatus until it was revived in 1964. Cousy's MVP award was his second in the series (following his overtime-heroics-driven win in 1954), cementing him as one of the young event's early signature stars alongside Bob Pettit and George Mikan. The game came at a pivotal juncture for the Celtics franchise specifically: Russell's arrival that season, paired with the veteran Cousy-Sharman backcourt, was about to launch a dynasty that would dominate the NBA for the next decade-plus, and Boston's continued hosting of high-profile All-Star Games throughout the 1950s and 1960s reflected the city's rapid emergence as the league's dominant on-court power, a status the Celtics would hold essentially uninterrupted from Russell's rookie title in the spring of 1957 through the end of the following decade. The 1957 game itself drew a strong Boston Garden crowd typical of the city's enthusiastic early embrace of the All-Star showcase, one of several signs that the event, only in its seventh year, had already become a genuine annual attraction rather than the risky novelty it had been at its 1951 inception.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1957 NBA All-Star Game