There are greats in sports, and then there are legends. Red Auerbach is the epitome of the latter.

Red died Saturday at the age of 89. There will be many remembrances on his career over the next few days. I’ll leave the retrospectives on Red the man and the coach to those who knew him and saw him coach. All I’m qualified to talk about is Red the general manager and the legend.

The closest I came to meeting Red Auerbach was sitting next to his bronze, cigar-holding likeness in Quincy Market. I was on a high school class trip to the Freedom Trail, and while everyone else was looking forward to the Bunker Hill Museum or Old Ironsides, I couldn’t wait to go to Quincy Market so I could pretend I was sitting next to Red on the bench as he began celebrating yet another Boston Celtics world championship.

I can’t believe I didn’t have someone take my, uh, our picture. That statue is the perfect tribute to Red, and if I were in the Boston area, I’d have laid a box of cigars on the bench yesterday.

My generation of Celtic fans never saw Red coach, but he still loomed large over the franchise when we had posters of Larry, McHale and the Chief covering our bedroom walls.

Red was the guy that brought our hero Larry Bird to Boston by drafting him a year before he left Indiana State. That move alone would have gotten him enshrined in Springfield.

Red was the guy who robbed the Golden State Warriors for Robert Parish AND Kevin McHale. A couple of generations before, he fleeced the rest of the league to get the likes of Bob Cousy and Bill Russell, and here he was, in his 60s, still duping them. That is genius.

Red was the guy who stood up to the Toronto Blue Jays to get Danny Ainge out of his baseball contract so he could come to the Celtics. The two sides went to court. I mean, he almost provoked an international incident. That took guts.

Red was the guy who came down from the stands to go after Moses Malone when the Celts and 76ers traded blows in a preseason game. That took guts, too, and a little bit of insanity.

Red was the guy who swiped Dennis Johnson, a documented malcontent, from the Phoenix Suns for Rick Robey. And Red was the guy who brought Bill Walton, a walking stress fracture, to the green and white to complete what to this day is the greatest NBA team of all time – the 1986 Celtics. That took vision.

Of course, Red is also the guy who didn’t spot Len Bias’ fatal flaw, the guy who drafted Michael Smith ahead of Tim Hardaway in 1989, and the guy who held a grudge against Cedric Maxwell for too long. He wasn’t perfect. Legends don’t have to be perfect.

To my generation, Red was the cantankerous uncle, the one who sat you down and told you how the world really worked, without sugar-coating anything. If the Celtics were great, as they were in the 1980s, he would let the world know about it. He was cocky as hell, and everyone outside of New England despised him for it. We loved him even more.

If they stunk, as they have since 1993, you could tell just by the look on his face. You never saw a quote from Red about how much they stunk. He didn’t believe in talking bad about the family outside the family. He was a loyal Celtic all the way. But it was obviously eating him up inside.

Unfortunately, Celtic Pride died before Red did. That tells you more about sports today than it does about Red Auerbach. The money and egos that have overrun the NBA rendered Celtic Pride little more than a myth. They won’t destroy what Red meant to the NBA, to basketball, to sports and to New England.

The myth is dead. Long live the legend.