With a core of young players that stayed mostly intact as the team moved to North Carolina, they’ll be a contender again. Playing a day after 22-year-old sister Chyna Thomas was killed in a car accident in their home state of Washington, Thomas led the top-seeded Celtics with 33 points. The team hired Noll in 1969 and he promptly went 1-13, somehow fitting for the sad sack Steelers. The organization’s president, Janette Fennell, said blind zones in the front and back of cars cause such tragedies.