Billy Cunningham: The "Kangaroo Kid" has Never Forgotten his Tar Heel Roots
This article was originally published in the January 2006 issue of Tar Heel Monthly.Billy Cunningham was known as the "Kangaroo Kid" because of his tremendous leaping ability but that nickname also aptly describes how he successfully jumped from playing to coaching to broadcasting to being an owner.
Cunningham starred at North Carolina from 1961 to 1965, a turbulent period for the Tar Heels program. He recalls, "The school was on probation and wasn't able recruit outside of the state. At that time there was segregation in North Carolina, so there were no black athletes—there were black students but no black athletes—and at the time I was there many people wanted him (Coach Dean Smith) removed. He was hung in effigy. It was not an auspicious start. People didn't accept the fact that the school was on probation and he was limited in regards to recruiting. We even had walk-ons who were starting when I was there, which you don't see very often." Despite these difficulties, when asked his fondest memory of his Tar Heel days, Cunningham replies, "Just being part of the program is probably as much of a highlight as anything."
The lessons that Dean Smith taught Cunningham not only helped him to become a Hall of Fame player and a member of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players List, they also inspired Cunningham's approach during his successful stint as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers. Cunningham explains, "Most importantly, that you try to treat everybody on the team the same. It didn't matter if it was the star or the guy who was the 12th man on the bench, you had feelings and concerns about everyone that was involved with your program. He was such a detail oriented coach—(focusing on) every little detail--probably coming from his mathematics background (and) that was something that carried over a great deal."
Cunningham played the key sixth man role on the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers. Led by Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain and Hal Greer, Philadelphia won a then record 68 regular season games and rolled to the championship, defeating the Boston Celtics—winners of eight straight NBA titles—along the way. Cunningham made four straight NBA All-Star Game appearances (1969-72) before leaving the 76ers to join the Carolina Cougars in 1972-73; Cunningham won the ABA MVP that year after averaging 24.1 ppg, 12.0 rpg and 6.3 apg. Carolina was led by an ex-North Carolina point guard who had recently ended his pro playing career to take his first head coaching job—none other than Hall of Famer Larry Brown. Cunningham says, "It was a unique experience because Larry and I played together at (North) Carolina and then in his first head coaching job I had the fortune of playing for him. From day one you could just see that he was made to be a coach. He was very comfortable and it was just one of the enjoyable periods of time for me in my basketball career, playing for Larry."
Cunningham rejoined the 76ers in 1974-75 but a devastating knee injury brought Cunningham's playing career to a sudden end in 1975-76. He replaced Gene Shue as head coach of the 76ers early in the 1977-78 season. Cunningham reached the 200, 300 and 400 win plateaus in fewer games than any previous NBA coach. His 1982-83 squad, led by Hall of Famers Moses Malone and Julius Erving, won the NBA championship, posting a 12-1 playoff record that would not be surpassed until the 2000-01 L.A. Lakers went 15-1. Cunningham's .698 regular season winning percentage ranks second only to Phil Jackson's .725 mark and his playoff winning percentage is the fourth best all-time (.629).
Cunningham retired from coaching in 1985. He was a commentator on CBS' NBA broadcasts before becoming one of the founding co-owners of the expansion Miami Heat in 1988-89. The Heat made it to the playoffs in the franchise's fourth year of existence, a tribute to the sound personnel decisions made by Cunningham and the team's front office. In 1994 Cunningham sold his interest in the Heat to the Arison family.
Cunningham enjoyed the Tar Heels 2005 championship run: "I said hello to the players last year. I don't even know if they know who I am. I stay in touch with Roy Williams. I spoke with him this week. I'm a huge fan of North Carolina and always root for them." He maintains his connection with the professional game through the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA): "I stay very involved with the Retired Players Association because I think that Mel Davis (CEO/Executive Director of the NBRPA) and the Board have done a great job watching out and trying to help everybody who is a retired player, offering all kinds of different things for them and trying to help in every possible way—trying to help in any way financially, with scholarships and all sorts of different things. I think we're just getting bigger and stronger as time goes on, with the help and consideration that we get from (NBA Commissioner) David Stern."
Labels: Billy Cunningham, Carolina Cougars, Philadelphia 76ers
posted by David Friedman @ 1:24 AM
Artest versus Ariza
"You're a player but only because you be playin' yaself."--Jeru the Damaja, "Ya Playin' Yaself"
A prime example of the media's never-ending quest to completely misunderstand how basketball games are won and lost is the sudden elevation of Trevor Ariza to "elite" status. I've lost track of how many different outlets have recently slapped that title on Ariza, who averaged 8.9 ppg and 4.3 rpg last season as the L.A. Lakers' starting small forward; Ariza
would not have started for most of the championship teams of the past two decades and, by any objective reckoning--either using a skill set based evaluation or even the "advanced basketball statistics" that are so popular in some quarters--he is at best an average starting small forward. Ariza is a good finisher in the open court, he can make open three pointers and he is a good defender but he is below average at creating a shot (for himself or others), ballhandling, passing and free throw shooting. Ariza is a classic role player--a Bruce Bowen/Shane Battier/James Posey type of player--who started for the Lakers because the Lakers are woefully thin at the small forward spot, something that I have written about for years; most elite teams have a starting small forward who is a major offensive threat: the NBA's other Conference Finalists in 2009 started LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Hedo Turkoglu at small forward. The 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics started future Hall of Famer Paul Pierce at small forward; Trevor Ariza would have been the third small forward in their rotation behind Pierce and Posey.
Being a Laker should have been a dream come true for Ariza; he went to high school and college in L.A. and playing alongside Kobe Bryant meant that Ariza never had to create a shot for himself or anyone else: he simply waited for Bryant to draw a double team and then either drilled wide open three pointers or slashed to the hoop for dunks. Bryant not only created open three pointers for Ariza but Bryant also
taught Ariza how to make those shots. You could not design a more perfect situation for Ariza--and now Ariza has thrown it all away because either he or his agent vastly overestimated his value. The Lakers quite understandably did not want to pay Ariza "elite" level money but they offered him fair market value to re-sign with them. Instead, Ariza decided to shop his wares on the open market and the Lakers took the opportunity to sign Ron Artest, a former All-Star and the 2004 NBA Defensive Player of the Year. Artest is a legitimate starting-quality small forward at both ends of the court, a lockdown defender who is more physically powerful than Ariza while also being nearly as quick; Artest also can create shots for himself and others. Some foolish people used to say that good players do not want to play with Kobe Bryant--and that such players would certainly not take less money to do so--but Artest gladly accepted a pay cut to team up with Bryant. Artest has the talent of an "elite" player, though it must be said that he does not consistently play at an "elite" level; however, considering that Bryant won a championship with one "elite" player and a cast of role players--including starting small forward Ariza--it is intriguing to wonder about just how well Artest may play when he joins forces with Bryant.
Artest can do everything that Ariza does and then some; from a talent/skill set standpoint there is no comparison whatsoever. Ironically, Ariza ended up signing with the Rockets for even less money than the Lakers offered him; Ariza gained nothing financially but instead of being a starter on a championship contender he will now go back to being a journeyman player on a team that has no realistic shot to win the title.
There are only two possible drawbacks for the Lakers:
(1) Ariza proved that he could accept his limited role, while Artest has often tried to be his team's number one offensive option even when he had teammates who were better suited to do so. Clearly, Bryant should be the Lakers' number one offensive option and Pau Gasol should be the number two offensive option. Lamar Odom has flourished as the third option but the shot distribution dynamic will be interesting to watch in 2009-10; will Odom accept possibly dropping to the fourth option and will Artest be content as either the third or fourth option? This was not an issue with Ariza because he knew that he could not create shots, but Artest likes to have the ball in his hands even though his shot selection can be highly questionable at times. Ideally, the Lakers would like to see Artest only shoot three pointers when he is on balance and receiving a pass from a double-teamed Bryant, as opposed to Artest dribbling for 10 seconds and firing an off-balance trey. Artest will also have a mismatch advantage against many smaller forwards and Coach Phil Jackson will surely encourage Artest to take those players into the post and go to work; Bryant will be on board with that as well: Bryant always has encouraged Luke Walton to go into the post against smaller players, so he certainly will want Artest to do that as well.
(2) Artest has a well-documented history of serious anger management problems, on and off the court; his issues go well beyond anything that Dennis Rodman went through: a significant portion of what Rodman did was a harmless act that did not impact his on court performance (such as his varying hairstyles/bizarre clothing choices) but when Rodman lost focus during games all it took was for Jackson or Michael Jordan to give Rodman a certain look and Rodman got back down to business. In contrast, Artest has committed repeated acts of violence that resulted in league suspensions and/or the involvement of law enforcement personnel. There is a real--and frightening--possibility that Artest could just snap and go off. That said, Jackson and Bryant are probably the coach-player duo that is best equipped to keep Artest in line; Jackson has a unique way of establishing parameters without making his players feel hemmed in, while Bryant commands universal respect (which is not the same thing as being liked--it is much more important) among his peers and will constantly challenge Artest to match his work ethic and focus.
Thanks to Ariza's miscalculation, he "played himself" and the Lakers managed to make a major talent upgrade. It will be interesting to see how Houston utilizes Ariza, because objectively speaking he is not even the team's best small forward; Shane Battier should be the starter, though because of Battier's unselfishness and willingness to accept coming off of the bench Coach Rick Adelman may install Ariza as the nominal starter while still giving Battier at least as many minutes as Ariza gets. Unless the Rockets make a major deal or Tracy McGrady miraculously becomes fully healthy they will not have a player who commands a double team, so Battier and Ariza will not get as many open three point shots as they did last season when they played alongside Yao Ming and Bryant respectively.
Labels: Houston Rockets, L.A. Lakers, Ron Artest, Trevor Ariza
posted by David Friedman @ 5:01 AM
Is There Mandatory Drug Testing at the Sporting News?
According to a feature in the July 6, 2009 issue of the
Sporting News called "SN's 2009-10 Power Poll," the Washington Wizards rank third in the NBA, just behind the reigning champion L.A. Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The reason given for that ranking is even more hilarious than the ranking itself: "The Wizards picked up Miller Miller and Randy Foye for a draft pick, girding them against the injuries that tore them down last season." Miller and Foye? That duo vaults the Wizards ahead of the Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics? I don't know what they are smoking/injecting over at SN, but whatever it is has very strong hallucinogenic properties. If things break right then the Wizards have a good shot at making the playoffs next year--but the Wizards have not been an excellent defensive team since they were known as the Bullets and Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld were in their primes. It is highly unlikely that Miller and Foye will spearhead a defensive revival in Washington.
I don't know what kind of player Gilbert Arenas will be in 2009-10 in the wake of his multiple knee surgeries but his return is a "bad news/bad news" story for the Wizards: even if Arenas can play the way that he did prior to getting hurt,
I still don't believe that Arenas can be the top player on a team that advances past the second round of the playoffs--and if Arenas never regains his old form then the Wizards will be paying max contract money while getting very little in return.
"SN's 2009-10 Power Poll" also places the Houston Rockets eighth and the Utah Jazz 21st. The Rockets will be without the services of Yao Ming, Ron Artest and, most probably, Tracy McGrady; the makeshift lineup that pushed the Lakers to seven games in the playoffs is not going to look so great over the course of an 82 game season. Injuries to multiple All-Star players are the only reason that the Jazz were not one of the top teams in the West in 2008-09; it is absurd to suggest that with Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur healthy the Jazz will miss the playoffs entirely.
Labels: Houston Rockets, Sporting News, Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards
posted by David Friedman @ 4:30 AM
Stephon Marbury: Insert Your Own Punchline
Stephon Marbury says that collecting roughly $18 million from the New York Knicks for not playing for the team in the 2008-09 season "mentally damaged" him. You cannot make this stuff up; just insert your own punchline--and I'll even give you a head start by quoting a statement Marbury made four years ago: "I'm telling you what it is: I know I'm the best point guard in the NBA. I don't need anybody else to tell me that." Are we supposed to believe that Marbury was not "mentally damaged" when he made that statement?
The best thing that New York Coach Mike D'Antoni did last year--and the thing that I said for years that the Knicks should do--was banish Marbury, even with the Knicks getting nothing in return; this was the ultimate example of "addition by subtraction." The funny thing is that even though the Marbury-less Knicks won nine more games than they did in their scandal-scuttled 2008 season, their 32 victories fell one short of the team's win total in 2006-07--and the reason for that, as I
explained near the end of the 2009 season, is that D'Antoni juiced up New York's offense but he did nothing to improve the team's leaky defense. They scored a lot more points and they got off to a 6-3 start by beating teams like Charlotte, Washington, Memphis and Oklahoma City, but they could not guard anyone and down the stretch they fell apart like an old folding chair trying to support the weight of a sumo wrestler: the Knicks went 4-13 in the last month of the season. The Knicks' problem is so obvious that even the admittedly "mentally damaged" Marbury knows what's up: "That system can't win championships. You can't win championships if you don't talk about defense. In Boston, the coaches even play defense.''
Mike D'Antoni is a very good coach. He understands that a coach has to work with the material provided to him; his Steve Nash-led Suns were never going to be a defensive juggernaut, so D'Antoni ramped up the tempo, ran teams off of the court during the regular season--and then suffered annually during the playoffs versus a well-rounded Spurs team that could play offense at any tempo and always played good defense. The Knicks probably did not have the necessary personnel last year to be a great defensive team, so D'Antoni once again floored the accelerator, scored as many points as possible and hoped for the best--but if the Knicks are ever going to rise out of the mediocrity that they have been mired in for nearly a decade then Donnie Walsh must acquire some defensive-minded players and Coach D'Antoni must prove that he is willing and able to implement some kind of effective defensive system.
Everyone understands that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the Knicks is LeBron James--but James knows that ultimately his legacy will be determined by whether or not he wins multiple championships and James also knows that you have to play team defense to win championships. Anyone who thinks that James will go to a team that does not have a defensive mindset is more "mentally damaged" than Marbury is. The Knicks have one year to prove that they are putting together the type of program that can annually contend for titles; otherwise, even if James leaves Cleveland he will certainly not go to New York, because the last thing that James wants is to be on the list of the greatest players who never won a championship.
Labels: LeBron James, New York Knicks, Stephon Marbury
posted by David Friedman @ 3:52 AM
Larry Miller: Tar Heel Legend and ABA Single Game Scoring Leader
This article was originally published in the October 2005 issue of Tar Heel Monthly;
since that time, L.A. Lakers guard Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in a game versus the Toronto Raptors.Larry Miller won both the ACC Player of the Year Award and the ACC Tournament MVP in 1967 and 1968 as a Tar Heel, an accomplishment that not even Hall of Famers Bob McAdoo or Michael Jordan matched. North Carolina won most of its games by comfortable margins in 1968, but South Carolina took the Tar Heels to overtime in the ACC Semifinals. Miller played all 45 minutes, scoring 24 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in an 82-79 North Carolina victory.
North Carolina earned an NCAA Tournament bid by crushing North Carolina State 87-50 in the ACC Championship. The 6-4 Miller had 27 points and 16 rebounds in a 91-72 rout of undefeated St. Bonaventure in the NCAA East Regional Semifinals, outscoring and outrebounding Hall of Fame center Bob Lanier (23 points and 9 rebounds). Miller says, "That showed what we had been trying to tell people all year--that we had a really super team. To this day I believe that we had the best team in the country that year, player by player."
After victories over Davidson and Ohio State, North Carolina lost 78-55 to John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins in the NCAA Championship Game. Miller declares, "I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but it came down to this: they asked us what we wanted to do—'Do you want to run?' I said, 'Let’s run with them. We can beat them.' But the decision came out that we didn’t want to run with them. Of course, Alcindor was the greatest player, but I believe to this day that we had more talent than they did."
Miller regrets a missed opportunity when he drove to the basket against Alcindor, the NBA's career scoring leader who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "My first shot of the game I clanked (off the back of the rim) going for a layup. I should have dunked it. Even if it wouldn't have counted (because of the no dunking rule in college basketball at that time), I should have done it just to let them know that I wasn’t scared."
Miller set the ABA's single game scoring record as a member of the Carolina Cougars with 67 points in a 139-125 victory over the Memphis Pros on March 18, 1972. Miller broke Jerry West's mark for most points by a guard in a pro basketball game and to this day only David Thompson (73), Michael Jordan (69) and Pete Maravich (68) have surpassed Miller.
One of Miller's favorite Cougar memories is playing alongside George Lehmann: "If you gave him the ball he could shoot it but he could also pass it. When he was running the fast break, if he didn't shoot the ball he knew that I was on the wing somewhere and then I would get the ball and I could take that one step and take an easy jump shot. That was the best situation I was ever in. Unfortunately, it only lasted about half a season." The financial instability of the league--resulting in constantly shifting rosters, a parade of coaches and uncertainty about getting paid—is a major reason that Miller retired at 28.
Miller missed graduating with his class by one course (he was in L.A. signing his first pro contract during the final exam) but he went back to North Carolina at 38 and got a B.S. in Business Administration. He describes his post-basketball life simply: "I was in the real estate business in North Carolina and Virginia for the past 30 years. Right now I’m just enjoying myself."
Miller recently conducted an online auction of his Catasauqua (Pennsylvania) High School, North Carolina and ABA memorabilia. He says, "I don't think I walked away with a trophy when I left North Carolina. I didn't have anything. They just started sending me things from Carolina, trophies and stuff. I just figured that they didn’t want them…it all ended up in my parents' house." After both of his parents passed away, Miller did not want to keep storing the items and thought that an auction would be a great way to raise money for the Catasauqua Library and for Catasauqua High School.
Miller did not go to any North Carolina games during last year's title run, but hastens to mention, "I was at the '82 one and the '93 one and the '81 one when they lost to Indiana. I didn't go to this one, but my heart was with them, absolutely." He adds, "I've got blue blood…I keep in touch with everybody, all the players and coaches. I'm in contact but I'm just not in the reunion business and I mean that sincerely…I've done my thing and it's over with. It's nothing personal against anybody."
Labels: Carolina Cougars, Larry Miller
posted by David Friedman @ 1:13 AM
