Thoughts and Observations About the 2018 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony
In my article Maurice Cheeks, Charlie Scott and Rod Thorn Are Among the Basketball Hall of Fame's Newest Members, I focused on three of the 13 members of the Basketball Hall of Fame's 2018 class. Last night, those men and their classmates were officially enshrined.
Grant Hill was enshrined first. He and 2018 Hall of Fame classmate Jason Kidd will forever be linked not only as co-Rookies of the Year in 1995 but also as unselfish, all-around players who focused first and foremost on team success. Hill alluded to his tendency to be verbose and joked that his wife had urged him to remember the "Five Bs: Be brief, brother, be brief." Turning serious, Hill said that he "fell in love with the game of basketball" by watching Patrick Ewing dominate in both college and the NBA. Hill called Ewing his "basketball hero." Ewing and Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski were Hill's two presenters. Hill thanked Coach Krzyzewski for providing the "blueprint" for success. Next, Hill mentioned Isiah Thomas. Hill seemed uncertain whether or not Thomas was in attendance (perhaps that is why he did not choose Thomas as a presenter as well) but as soon as Hill realized that Thomas was in the building he called him up to the stage and embraced Thomas, who he called a "hero, a friend and an advocate for me." Hill thanked Alonzo Mourning for providing the inspiration for how to come back from health problems/injuries. Hill became emotional when he thanked his parents for how they raised him and when he acknowledged his two daughters and his wife. Hill asked his wife if his speech had been short enough and he promised that the other enshrinees' speeches would be shorter.
Rod Thorn spoke next. He was presented by Jerry West. Thorn thanked the Hall of Fame and Jerry Colangelo in particular. Thorn singled out three Hall of Famers who had a special impact on him: Bob ("Slick") Leonard, Richie Guerin and Lenny Wilkens.
Younger fans may not remember or know that Thorn was a collegiate star at West Virginia who was selected by the Baltimore Bullets with the second overall pick in the 1963 NBA Draft. Thorn played eight seasons in the NBA before becoming a coach, general manager and league executive. After injuries forced him to retire from playing, Thorn considered going to law school before Kevin Loughery offered him a job as an assistant coach with the New York Nets in the ABA. Thorn recalled, "I knew in my heart I wasn't ready to let the game go."
Thorn said that since his career started as a player he wanted to mention three players "who all had a profound impact on my life": Julius Erving, Michael Jordan and Jason Kidd. Thorn said of Erving, "In 1974, my first season with the Nets, we won the league championship, sparked by the incomparable Julius Erving, who led the team in nearly every statistical category. Night after night, he would perform such incredible athletic feats that would have Kevin and I looking at each other and exclaiming, 'I cannot believe he just did that.' As great as Doc was as a player, he was equally good as a teammate. Thank you Doc for proving that superheroes can be humans, too."
These comments reinforce what Thorn told me over a decade ago about Erving: "I think that he was the best teammate of all the players I've been
involved with in 40-plus years of NBA basketball. He was our leading
scorer, our leading rebounder, our leading shot blocker, our leading
assist guy--you name it, he led our team in it, plus he was the leader of
our team. He guarded the best forward every night, whether it was a
small forward or a big forward. He took most of the big shots. Not only
was he a great player, but more importantly he was a great teammate. He had great lateral quickness and he was a tremendous jumper. He was a
tough guy--that is one thing that is not talked about that much when you
talk about Julius, because of his great athleticism, but he was a tough
guy. I mean he would physically get after guys and play hard. He took a
challenge. He played 43-44 minutes a game for us and guarded the best
guy on the other team every night and was our leading scorer, so the
energy that he expended during a game was much more than the average
player did. It was just phenomenal what he did."
As the Chicago Bulls' general manager, Thorn drafted Michael Jordan.
Thorn joked that without Jordan he would not have a Wikipedia page and
he would not have people sending him items to autograph asking for his
signature and "by the way" asking for Jordan's signature as well.
Thorn
won the 2002 NBA Executive of the Year Award after acquiring Kidd and
building the Nets into a championship contender. Thorn recalled that when he rejoined the Nets, "The team had challenges defending, rebounding and passing, which as you know are the ingredients of a 26 win season." After trading for Kidd, Thorn's Nets won 52 games, one of the best one season turnarounds in league history.
Maurice Cheeks followed Thorn. In the video tribute before Cheeks spoke, Erving said, "He had a very, very high basketball IQ. He was a champion, he was an All-Star and I loved playing with him." Erving and Billy Cunningham presented Cheeks. Cheeks is known as a quiet man of few words but he gave the most emotionally gripping speech of the evening. He opened by saying, "This is amazing and Grant, you're right, this will be short." Cheeks credited his experiences growing up on the South Side of Chicago for teaching him to look out for others as others had looked out for him. He said, "My life has been a string of small moments that led to amazing experiences." Cheeks mentioned his high school teammate William Dise, who was a highly recruited player who signed with West Texas State on condition that the school also sign Cheeks, a skinny and lightly recruited prospect. Cheeks said that his career would have gone much differently if not for Dise.
Cheeks thanked Coach Cunningham and said that he was the kind of coach that you never wanted to let down. Cheeks praised Erving for teaching him how to be a pro and Cheeks also thanked his veteran teammates Andrew Toney, Moses Malone, Bobby Jones, Caldwell Jones, and Henry Bibby. Cheeks said, "Over the years I have had many reasons to thank the Lord and two of them are my beautiful kids...I'm proud to be your dad and I love you both." Cheeks thanked his three brothers, one of whom was murdered in 1991. Cheeks started to get emotional at that point and mentioned that Charles Barkley told him not to cry but Cheeks broke down when he talked about "my very first coach, Mama Cheeks" and all that she did for him and their family--including calling out Maurice's name and his brothers' names so that they would come inside when it got dark. Mama Cheeks attended the ceremony and she looked very proud. As Cheeks wept, Erving walked over, gently grabbed his shoulders and said softly, "Come on Mo, you can do it," lending a helping hand much like Cheeks had lent a helping hand to National Anthem singer Natalie Gilbert years ago. I felt as a kid that the 76ers were a special team with special people and moments like this just confirm that. I am so blessed to have watched that team and then to have had the opportunity to interview Erving, Cunningham, Jones and Pat Williams. Cheeks concluded by thanking the Hall of Fame for "thinking enough of my contributions to the sport to select me for such an honor. I cannot think of a better way to celebrate my 40 years in the NBA and my 62nd birthday (on Saturday). Thank you and God bless."
Later in the program, Charlie Scott was presented by Jerry Colangelo, Dave Cowens, Julius Erving, Spencer Haywood and Roy Williams. During the video tribute to Scott, Erving noted, "He broke the color barrier very much like Jackie Robinson did (in baseball), except it was getting a basketball scholarship to the University of North Carolina and integrating the school. Charlie Scott was a monster on the basketball court. He could score inside, he could score outside."
Scott began by explaining how he selected his presenters. He said that they were each friends of his for over 40 years. Scott joked that his wife said if they have known him for 40 years and still speak to him then they all deserve to be on the stage with him. "This is an honor that I always dreamed of but could never imagine happening," Scott declared. He called Dean Smith "My mentor and the person who I admire the most in my life." Scott thanked his North Carolina teammates, including Larry Miller, for standing beside him during the sometimes difficult racial integration process. He individually thanked each of his presenters. Regarding Erving and Cowens, the never hesitant to shoot Scott quipped that he helped each of them become great rebounders.
Scott concluded by thanking his wife and children. He said that he once asked a friend to describe him honestly, good and bad. Scott asked his family to raise their hands if they disagreed with this characterization: "People sometimes might take your aloofness as arrogance. You can become very demanding in getting your way. You don't know when to let things go. You never give compliments. You think you're always right....The shocker was his next sentence: Let me tell you about your bad points!" Scott paused after each point and noted that no one in his family raised their hands. He laughed and said, "This was the individual you had to deal with. Your unconditional love and understanding have been my North Star."
In 2015, I wondered if Julius Erving had been a Hall of Fame presenter more than anyone else. At that time, Erving had been selected as a presenter nine times. Now, including last night, he has been a presenter 14 times (9/11/21 note: I just added Alex English to this list after confirming that Erving was English's presenter):
1995: Presented Cheryl Miller
1996: None
1997: Alex English
1998-2000: None
2001: Presented Moses Malone
2002-2003: None
2004: Presented Clyde Drexler
2005: None
2006: Presented Dominique Wilkins
2007-2010: None
2011: Presented Artis Gilmore
2012: Presented Katrina McClain, Ralph Sampson and the All-American Red Heads
2013-2014: None
2015: Presented John Calipari
2016: Presented Allen Iverson and Shaquille O'Neal
2017: None
2018: Presented Maurice Cheeks and Charlie Scott
That list of names spans multiple generations and includes teammates, opponents and players who grew up idolizing Erving. What a tribute to Erving's deep and continuing impact on the sport!
There is a lot of depth to Ray Allen beyond his basketball accomplishments. When you read his words or listen to him speak you understand that he is a remarkable person, not just a great basketball player. Allen spoke repeatedly of the dedication, discipline, perfectionism and sacrifice that it takes to become a great individual player and to become a two-time NBA champion. Those words resonate and are true but what resonated the most is when he talked about his children. Allen was the only enshrinee who talked to/about each of his children specifically and described why each child is so special to him. Allen emphatically declared, "All of you kids are my greatest legacy. I learned in life that our kids pay attention to everything we do, everything we say and everything we don't say and everything we don't do. So I have to be an example to these young people at all times and we got to make sure that we are an example to the kids in our lives at all times, because we do set the tone and the example in all of our communities."
Allen also said, "I don't believe in talent. I'm here because I worked hard my whole life. Without that work, no one in this room would know who I am except my family. So to all the kids around the world watching, paying attention and aspiring to be like us or even on this stage, put the work in and watch the magical ride you go on."
Labels: Basketball Hall of Fame, Charlie Scott, Grant Hill, Isiah Thomas, Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Mike Krzyzewski, Patrick Ewing, Ray Allen, Rod Thorn
posted by David Friedman @ 10:15 PM
Maurice Cheeks, Charlie Scott and Rod Thorn Are Among the Basketball Hall of Fame's Newest Members
In September, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will welcome 13 new members: Ray Allen, Maurice Cheeks, Lefty Driesell, Grant Hill, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Dino Radja, Charlie Scott, Katie Smith, Tina Thompson, Rod Thorn, Ora Mae Washington and Rick Welts. Many media reports state that this class is "headlined" by Allen, Hill, Kidd and Nash--but this article will focus on Cheeks, Scott and Thorn, three individuals who have been eligible for induction for many years but have been overlooked by the Hall until now.
Maurice Cheeks was the starting point guard for the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers, who set a record by going 12-1 in the playoffs en route to sweeping the defending champion L.A. Lakers in the NBA Finals. Cheeks also started for the 1980 and 1982 Philadelphia teams that lost to the powerful Lakers in the NBA Finals. He made the All-Star team four times and earned five All-Defensive Team selections (including four First Team honors).
Cheeks never led the league in a statistical category but he was a consistently excellent performer who ranked first in career regular season steals and fifth in career regular season assists when he retired; he now ranks fifth and 13th respectively in those categories, ahead of many players who were inducted in the Hall of Fame before him. Cheeks posted an outstanding .523 career regular season field goal percentage, a testament not only to his shooting ability but also to his judicious shot selection. Cheeks understood when to shoot and when to deliver the ball to fellow Hall of Fame teammates such as Julius Erving, Moses Malone and Charles Barkley.
Cheeks had a Hall of Fame moment as a person during his tenure as Portland's head coach. Prior to a 2003 playoff game, 13 year old Natalie Gilbert froze as she was singing the National Anthem.
Cheeks walked over, put his arm around her and helped her finish singing. "It was like a guardian angel had come and put his arm around my
shoulder and helped me get through one of the most difficult experiences
I've ever had," said Gilbert.
Kidd, arguably the greatest point guard of his era, summed it perfectly upon learning that Cheeks will be joining him in the 2018 Hall of Fame class: "Mo Cheeks is who we all wanted to be."
Charlie Scott was the University of North Carolina's first black scholarship athlete. Scott made the All-America Team twice and he twice led the Tar Heels to the Final Four. He won Olympic gold with Team USA in 1968. Scott was drafted by the NBA's Boston Celtics but he signed with the ABA's Virginia Squires, winning the 1971 Rookie of the Year award after averaging 27.1 ppg. Scott also finished third in MVP balloting behind Hall of Famers Mel Daniels and Zelmo Beaty. The next season, rookie Julius Erving joined the Squires and Scott led the ABA in scoring (34.6 ppg) before leaving the Squires to jump to the NBA just before the playoffs. Scott joined the Phoenix Suns and the Suns sent Paul Silas to the Celtics as compensation since the Celtics owned Scott's NBA rights.
Scott spent three seasons with the Suns before being traded to the Boston Celtics for Paul Westphal in 1975. Scott played a key role for Boston's 1976 NBA championship team. His Hall of Fame selection is well deserved based on his outstanding amateur career in college/the Olympics, plus his high performance level as a pro in the ABA and NBA.
Rod Thorn was selected to the Hall of Fame as a Contributor after a long and successful basketball career during which he filled many roles, including player, coach, executive and league administrator. Thorn was an All-America performer at West Virginia before being selected second overall by the Baltimore Bullets in the 1963 NBA draft. He had a solid NBA playing career before becoming an assistant coach on Kevin Loughery's staff with the ABA's New York Nets, who won the 1974 ABA title largely thanks to Erving's spectacular all-around play. Thorn later became the Chicago Bulls' General Manager. He drafted Michael Jordan in 1984. From 1986-2000, Thorn served as the NBA's Executive Vice President of Operations. Thorn rejoined the Nets in 2000 and was selected as the NBA's Executive of the Year in 2002 after building the team into a championship contender.
Labels: Basketball Hall of Fame, Charlie Scott, Dino Radja, Gran Hill, Jason Kidd, Katie Smith, Lefty Driesell, Maurice Cheeks, Ora Mae Washington, Ray Allen, Rick Welts, Rod Thorn, Steve Nash, Tina Thompson
posted by David Friedman @ 1:24 PM
Tommy Heinsohn Explains the "Secret Weapon" That Helped the Celtics Win so Many Championships
Tommy Heinsohn won eight championships as a player for the Boston Celtics before leading the franchise to two titles as head coach. He is one of just four people--John Wooden, Bill Sharman and Lenny Wilkens are the others--enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. During his September 2015 speech after being enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach, Heinsohn provided some insights about why the Boston Celtics were so successful for so long. It all started with Red Auerbach, who built the Celtics into a powerhouse in the 1950s and 1960s.
Heinsohn declares, "Red’s style of play: the philosophy was to destroy the will
of the other team to beat you and his strategy was to put you to the supreme
mental and physical test. We had this uptempo game called the fast break. This
put you, including the big guys, to the ultimate physical test of sprinting on
every possession. He also implemented an aggressive defense and we had the
ultimate stopper in Bill Russell."
So much is made now of "analytics" and the value of pushing the pace and spreading the court but Auerbach figured all of this out decades ago without using a spreadsheet. Heinsohn states simply, "The secret weapon of the Boston Celtics for over 30 years"
was "the pace of the game." This made the other team pay a physical price by forcing the
other team to play faster than they were comfortable playing and making them "think
fast while running backwards." Heinsohn compares this to racing against the world's best marathoner by using a relay team.
Heinsohn has worked as a broadcaster for decades now and he says that when he meets with coaches before games they will often say that they want to push the pace but Heinsohn believes that most coaches do not understand what that means. Heinsohn is appalled when he sees a big guy retrieve the ball after a made basket and walk out of bounds to pass the ball into play; he trained all of his players--even his big guys--to be able to bring the ball up the court and initiate the offense. The point was to get the ball in play and up the court as fast as possible before the defense can get set.
Heinsohn admits that when he became a coach he did not see a reason to deviate much from Auerbach's approach. The Boston teams that Heinsohn coached were small but they were tough, they rebounded ferociously and they ran the court relentlessly. His 1972-73 team went 68-14 in the regular season featuring a lineup of 6-9 center
Dave Cowens, 6-7 power forward Paul Silas, 6-5 small forward
John Havlicek, 6-5 shooting guard Don Chaney and 6-3 point guard Jo Jo White. The undersized Celtics led the league in rebounding and might have won the championship if Havlicek had not injured his shoulder during the playoffs. In 1973-74, that same group posted a 56-26 record (second best in the NBA), led the league in rebounding and beat the 59-23 Milwaukee Bucks in seven games to win the Celtics' first championship of the post-Bill Russell era. The 1974-75 Celtics tied with the Washington Bullets for the best record in the NBA (60-22), finished second in the league in rebounding and lost to the Bullets in the Eastern Conference Finals. In 1975-76, the Celtics replaced Chaney with Charlie Scott, a 6-5 shooting guard who won the 1972 ABA scoring championship (34.6 ppg) before making the All-Star team three years in a row as a Phoenix Sun. The Celtics went 54-28--the second best record in the NBA behind only the defending champion Golden State Warriors--and led the league in rebounding en route to claiming their second title in three years.
The Golden State Warriors who won last year's NBA title and who are running roughshod over the league so far this season are not doing much that is new and they certainly are not in any way vindicating either "analytics" (an example of the result of blindly following "analytics" can be found in Philadelphia) or Mike D'Antoni (whose teams did not focus enough on defense and rebounding). It does not take fancy calculations and an M.B.A. to figure out how to build a winning basketball team. Red Auerbach proved that more than 50 years ago, Tommy Heinsohn reaffirmed this in the 1970s and Heinsohn's Hall of Fame speech is a nice, brief tutorial for anyone who did not know or who needed a refresher course.
Labels: Boston Celtics, Charlie Scott, Dave Cowens, Don Chaney, Jo Jo White, John Havlicek, Paul Silas, Tommy Heinsohn
posted by David Friedman @ 4:09 PM
Paul Westphal: Celtic Sub Shined Brightly as a Sun
Paul Westphal spent three seasons as a reserve for the Boston Celtics before they traded him to Phoenix for All-Star Charlie Scott in 1975. Westphal quickly emerged as one of the NBA's top guards, making the All-Star team for five straight seasons and earning a spot on the All-NBA team four times. That deal helped both teams make it to the 1976 NBA Finals, where the Celtics triumphed in six games to capture their second title of the post-Bill Russell era. Westphal's quick thinking almost helped the Suns to win the pivotal game five; the Suns seemed to be in a hopeless situation near the end of the second overtime, down one point with one second left and no timeouts but Westphal suggested to Coach John MacLeod that they call a timeout anyway. Under the rules at that time, the Celtics would be awarded one technical free throw but the Suns could then advance the ball to midcourt, giving them a better chance to hit a shot--which is exactly what happened. That story has been recounted many times, including in my
profile of MacLeod, but I always wondered how Westphal had the poise and awareness to think of that tactic during such a pressure-packed situation. I asked him that exact question and you can learn the answer--and the complete story of his great career--by reading my article about him (10/4/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below, along with some bonus material that did not appear in the original article):
Paul Westphal averaged 16.3 ppg in 1970-71 for a USC team that finished 24-2. "I remember the first game that we played against UCLA that year," Westphal says. "We were 16-0 and they had just lost at Notre Dame and
Austin Carr (who scored 48 points for the Fighting Irish in an 89-82 victory). That was their only loss of the season. It was No. 1 versus No. 2 not only in L.A. but in the country, on national TV. Unfortunately for us, they won that game and then beat us again later in the year. We felt that we had--we couldn't say that we had the best team in the country because we lost to them twice-- clearly the second best team but we were all dressed up with nowhere to go. We knew the rules going in and if we wanted to play in the NCAA Tournament we should have won one more game."
USC was not eligible for the NCAA Tournament because each conference could only send one team (after a great Maryland team was similarly excluded in 1974 this rule was finally changed).
The Boston Celtics selected Westphal with the 10th overall pick in the 1972 draft. He joined a powerful team that would go on to win 68 games that season and may very well have won the championship if not for a shoulder injury suffered by John Havlicek during the playoffs. Jo Jo White and Don Chaney received most of the backcourt minutes, which did not leave much time for Westphal, who averaged 4.1 ppg in 8.0 mpg.
In 1973-74, the Celtics enjoyed less regular season success--winning 56 games--but won their first championship of the post-Bill Russell era. Westphal scored 7.2 ppg in 14.2 mpg. He was one of just seven Celtics who played in all 18 of the team's playoff games but he logged the fewest minutes by far of those players.
Westphal increased his regular season averages to 9.8 ppg in 19.3 mpg in 1974-75 as the Celtics won 60 games before losing to the Washington Bullets in the Eastern Conference finals. Perhaps he would have eventually become an All-Star in Boston but fate intervened when the Celtics sent Westphal (and a couple draft picks) to the Suns in exchange for All-Star Charlie Scott, a proven veteran who won the 1972 ABA scoring title before jumping to the NBA.
Scott averaged 17.6 ppg for the Celtics, who won 54 games in 1975-76 and made it to the NBA Finals for the second time in three years--but Phoenix also profited from the deal because Westphal averaged a team-high 20.5 ppg as The Little Team That Could (to borrow the title of Joe Gilmartin's book about the 1976 Suns) went 42-40 but made an improbable run to the Finals, defeating the 1975 champion Golden State Warriors along the way--a story that I previously told in
The Man Behind the Suns' Rise. "It was really special to go back into the Boston Garden and play against my old teammates," Westphal says. "It was something that I will never forget...I probably was not as intimidated as I would have been going into the Boston Garden in the playoffs for the first time (as an opponent); having been there on the other side I knew a little bit more what to expect."
The veteran Celtics eventually prevailed in six games. The lasting memory from that series is the epic Game Five, a 128-126 triple overtime victory for Boston. Westphal famously helped Phoenix extend the game by taking advantage of a loophole in the rules. In the second overtime, Phoenix trailed 111-110 with just one second left and no timeouts. Westphal suggested to coach John MacLeod that the Suns call a timeout anyway; the Celtics would be awarded one technical foul free throw but Phoenix could advance the ball to midcourt instead of inbounding from the far baseline. White sank the free throw but Gar Heard made a jumper at the buzzer to send the game into a third extra session. "Really, I just stole that from John McKay and USC football," Westphal explains. "They used to call timeouts when they didn't have any because it was only a five yard penalty and they could stop the clock when they were trying to come back at the end of games. To me, it was just something that translated to another sport. It was what people did when the situation was desperate."
Anyone who watched Game Five will never forget Westphal's unique 360 degree layup, a move that he executed successfully more than once in crucial situations. The 6-4 Westphal had an uncanny ability to improvise ways to get off a shot in a crowd. "I just played around with all kinds of trick shots in my backyard." Westphal says. "It wasn't something that I ever planned on using but if that was the only way to get the shot off and the clock was running down then I would pull something out from deep in my past. It wasn't really something that was planned. I think that experimentation is probably good. You never plan on going in and doing something like a 360 but the more body control you can have, if it comes out at the right time it might bail you out sometime. Dirk Nowitzki does that all the time; he practices wrong-footed shots and off balance shots. Pete Maravich used the same principle with all his ballhandling drills--all kinds of things that you would never do in a game but they do give you more confidence and can pull you out of a jam once in a while."
Westphal emerged not only as an All-Star but also as a First Team All-NBA player in 1976-77, averaging 21.3 ppg (17th in the NBA) and 5.7 apg (ninth in the NBA). He made the All-Star team each of the next four seasons and earned three more All-NBA selections (Second Team in 1977-78, First Team in 1978-79 and 1979-80). The one-time seventh man of the Celtics was now one of the very best players in the entire league. He and 1978 Rookie of the Year Walter Davis formed one of the top duos in the NBA in the late 1970s. "Walter Davis was one of the greatest shooters of all-time," Westphal says. "His shot was perfect. Whenever Walter hit the rim or missed, usually Coach MacLeod would take him out because he figured he must be tired."
In 1978, Westphal ranked sixth in the NBA in scoring (25.2 ppg) and tenth in assists (5.5 apg), while Davis finished ninth in scoring (24.2 ppg). They were the second highest scoring tandem in the league, finishing just behind Pete Maravich (27.0 ppg) and his New Orleans Jazz teammate Truck Robinson (22.7 ppg)--but what Westphal and Davis accomplished is more impressive when you consider three things: they played in 80 and 81 games respectively (Maravich missed 32 games due to injury, which provided more scoring opportunities for Robinson), they shot .516 and .526 from the field respectively (Maravich and Robinson each shot .444 from the field) and they only averaged about 31 mpg each while Maravich and Robinson each averaged more than 40 mpg. On a per minute basis, Westphal outscored George Gervin, who won the first of his four scoring titles.
Westphal does not lament the lost opportunity to possibly duel Gervin for the scoring crown. "I could do the math and realize that it was pretty unusual to score that many points in so few minutes," Westphal says. "My whole career I was never motivated by trying to see how many points I could score. The whole thing was to try to do whatever you could to help your team win. A record that is achieved for the sake of setting a record doesn't mean that much anyway. So to just rack up points or play in the last minutes when the game is decided doesn’t have that much meaning, really. I certainly wouldn't have minded playing more and I think that Walter felt the same way but the coach decided that he was going to parcel out the minutes that way, to have the bench play a third of the game and the starters play two thirds of the game."
The Suns were a perennial contender during those years but they never made it back to the NBA Finals. "One reason would be Bill Walton and another reason would be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/Magic Johnson," Westphal says. "The other teams got better. I think that the present is always where it's at in the NBA. We had a good young team and we were knocking on the door those other years but sometimes it's an injury, sometimes another team gets loaded up, sometimes you just don't perform as well. Whatever it is, you can never take success for granted."
In 1979 and 1980 the Suns lost in the playoffs to the eventual NBA champions.
After the 1979-80 season, the Suns traded Westphal to Seattle for Dennis Johnson, the 1979 Finals MVP and one of the top defensive guards in the NBA. Westphal got off to a good start in Seattle, earning his fifth (and final) All-Star selection before a broken foot ended his season. In 1982, he signed with the New York Knicks as a veteran free agent. Westphal won the Comeback Player of the Year award after the 1982-83 season, but he never completely regained his old form. Westphal spent the final season of his career, 1983-84, as a reserve for the Suns. While his glory days as a Phoenix player were long gone, he would again become the toast of the town just a few years later. "I always wanted to coach," Westphal says. "I went to college and figured that after I graduated I'd be a high school coach someplace. Since I was able to keep playing, I just postponed that but I always wanted to coach."
John MacLeod set a good example for Westphal to follow. "I think that John Macleod was an excellent NBA coach," Westphal says. "He had longevity in Phoenix especially and he coached a few other stops as well, mainly because of his professionalism. He loved the game and he loved to see the game played right. I think that more than anything John's consistency and his professionalism are things that anybody should try to emulate."
Westphal spent three seasons as an assistant coach at the collegiate level and four seasons as a Suns' assistant before being hired as the team’s head coach prior to the 1992-93 season. That was the year that the Suns acquired Charles Barkley in a blockbuster trade with Philadelphia. Barkley stormed to the 1993 MVP while leading the Suns to the best record in the league, 62-20. The Suns made it to the Finals for the first time since Westphal and company lost to the Celtics in 1976 but they fell in six games to the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen Chicago Bulls. Westphal guided the Suns to the conference semifinals in 1994 and 1995 but was replaced in 1996 after the Suns dropped to fifth place in the Pacific Division.
Westphal later became the coach of another of his former teams, Seattle. He led the Sonics to a 25-25 record in the lockout-shortened 1999 season and to a playoff appearance in 2000 before being replaced early in the 2000-01 season. After that, he spent four seasons as the head coach at Pepperdine, compiling a 69-52 record. Prior to this season, Westphal joined Avery Johnson's Dallas Mavericks coaching staff.
********************************
Here are a couple bonus quotes from the Suns' All-NBA guard:
***"My favorite player was Elgin Baylor. A lot of people thought that it was Jerry West because I grew up in L.A. watching those guys. I loved Jerry West, too, and I look more like Jerry West but I tried to play like Elgin Baylor. I wish they had better film that they could show from back then. He had amazing body control. He really learned the art of what Chick Hearn called 'hanging in the air.' He could go up and contort his body and change the arc of his shot, change the release point, and really make some spectacular plays."
***"I think that John Havlicek probably was the best two way player that I recall from my era. I played against Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain at the end of their careers and I played against Michael Jordan (in a scrimmage between NBA stars and the 1984 Olympic team) at the beginning of his career--and I played against Oscar Robertson--but the guy who was in his prime who I thought was the best all around player was John Havlicek. I thought that Norm Van Lier was the toughest guy who ever guarded me. There were a lot of players who were tough for me to guard but I think that because of his quickness I had the least chance to have any success at all against Nate Archibald."
Labels: Boston Celtics, Charlie Scott, Dallas Mavericks, Dennis Johnson, John MacLeod, New York Knicks, Paul Westphal, Phoenix Suns, Walter Davis
posted by David Friedman @ 2:37 PM
Ollie Taylor Battled All the Giants at Just 6-2
Ollie Taylor rode the bench in high school before jumping center against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in college and playing against Julius Erving and Rick Barry in the ABA. Along the way, he set numerous National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) records while leading San Jacinto to the 1968 national title. Taylor followed that up by lifting Houston to a Sweet 16 appearance in 1970. Owner of a 46 inch vertical leap, Taylor dazzled fans from Rucker Park to the ABA with his spectacular dunks. You can read all about Taylor's career in my HoopsHype.com article about him (10/12/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
Anyone who saw Ollie Taylor play swears that he could fly but when he talks about himself he is, pardon the pun, very down to earth. "I didn't start and I only scored six points in my entire career," Taylor says of his high school basketball days in New York. "I came out of DeWitt Clinton High School. We had seven guys off of that high school team who were drafted."
One of those seven, Nate Archibald, is a Hall of Famer and one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history.
Taylor did not resent that his playing time was limited. "We had a great high school team," he says simply. "I have no problem with my school. I went to an all-boys high school. We had 10,000 boys in that high school, so you (the basketball coaches) could pretty much pick and choose."
DeWitt Clinton once scrimmaged against Ben Franklin High School, which played in a different division. Ben Franklin's star player was none other than Earl Manigault, the streetball legend who was famously profiled by Pete Axthelm in the book
The City Game.
Asked what he recalls about playing against "The Goat," Taylor candidly replies: "It was a short experience. Like I said, at that time I was not playing that much. I didn't really get to play against him but I saw him play. They had a talented team and we had a talented team. Some of his exploits that people talk about I never got to see him do. I remember more about stories. I never got to see any of the stories (in person)."
"He was not a devastating shooter; he was not someone who you had to go guard (on the perimeter)," Taylor adds. "His damage was done around the basket, dunking."
Are the stories about Manigault jumping up and taking a quarter off the top of the backboard really true? "Well, there are stories about me taking quarters off the top of the backboard," Taylor answers.
The next question is obvious: "Are those true stories?"
"No," Taylor responds without hesitation. "You might make them think so, if you jump high enough."
He says that the closest he ever got to touching the top of the backboard was about eight inches. Taylor played a lot at Rucker Park but he never saw anyone touch the top of the backboard (Wilt Chamberlain and Jackie Jackson are two other players who have been rumored to have done this) and he doubts that anyone ever has. He believes that such stories get started because "guys can get close enough. If you can get eight or 10 inches from there then people think that maybe you can."
Taylor used his vertical leap, which he says "was in the 46-inch range," not just to dunk on people but also to grab rebounds. "The thing that made me different from a lot of other guys who could jump was that I was physically strong," Taylor explains. "When you rebound, you have to be strong...you have to be able to jump in a crowd. If you can't move people off of you it doesn't matter how high you can jump. You have to be able to elevate with a body on you. I loved to rebound."
When Taylor was young, he modeled his game after Elgin Baylor. "Elgin was fluid," Taylor says. "Elgin was in the army (during the 1961-62 season). I saw him play when he got out on weekends and I saw him play when he got a special pass to play in the Finals and things like that. I said, 'Man!' I wore #22, like he did. I wore #22 all through my career to emulate Elgin. He was a little bigger than I am but I did a lot of things that he could do--hanging in the air and floating and stuff like that. What became even more amazing to me is that he played several years without kneecaps. I followed all of that. He was the man who I emulated."
Although Taylor mainly sat on the bench during the high school basketball season, when spring rolled around he excelled as a shortstop. "I was actually better at baseball than anything else," Taylor says.
He never stopped working on his basketball game, though. "I wore a weighted vest and ankle weights," Taylor remembers. "Whether that contributed to my ability to jump or not, I can't really say. I know that it did contribute to my physical strength. I jumped center every year that I was in college. I jumped center against Jabbar and had jump balls against Artis Gilmore. I probably won about 95 percent of my jump balls."
Considering the limited run that he received in high school, it is not surprising that Taylor did not get any scholarship offers to play basketball. He began his college career at San Jacinto Junior College, where he set National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) records for points in a season (1409 in 1967-68; 30.7 ppg) and a career (2456; 26.2 ppg). He led San Jacinto to a 44-2 record and a national title in 1967-68, setting the school's single game scoring record that season with a 53 point outburst. Taylor was inducted in the NJCAA Hall of Fame in 1994 (other members include Bob McAdoo, Spencer Haywood, Artis Gilmore, Larry Johnson and Shawn Marion).
Taylor spent the last two seasons of his college career at the University of Houston. In 1969-70, his senior season, Taylor averaged 24.4 ppg and 11.5 ppg as the Cougars went 25-5 and made it to the Sweet 16. He was selected as a Helms Foundation All-American. Overall, Taylor averaged 22.0 ppg and 10.3 rpg in 56 games at Houston.
Coach Guy Lewis later told the
Sporting News, "Ollie Taylor out-jumped Alcindor (UCLA's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) at the start of the game. He was 6-2 and played the post for me. One of the best post players I ever had."
That is high praise when one considers that Lewis coached Hall of Famers Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler (a college forward who shifted to guard in the NBA).
Taylor was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers but elected to sign with his hometown New York Nets of the ABA.
Taylor averaged 8.7 ppg and 3.8 rpg as a rookie in 1970-71. He posted similar numbers in his second season (8.6 ppg, 4.0 rpg) and increased his production in that year's playoffs (11.1 ppg, 5.3 rpg) as the Nets made it all the way to the ABA Finals before losing to the Indiana Pacers in six games.
Taylor was traded to the San Diego Conquistadors and he had the best season of his ABA career in 1972-73, averaging 13.7 ppg, 5.3 rpg and 4.0 apg. It seemed like his career was on the upswing but the next season turned out to be his last as he was only able to play in 31 games for two different teams; the downside of constantly battling in the paint against bigger players is the toll that this exacts on one's body.
Taylor is proud of the time that he spent in the ABA; the memories of his experiences will last a lifetime. "The biggest thing for me is that I played against so many guys who became megastars," he says. "I played with some of them--I played with Rick Barry, I played with Billy Cunningham, I played with Julius (Erving)--so those are the memories I have. I played with and against them, so I saw both sides of the fence. That was a major thing for me personally. Rick was a terrific shooter. Billy Cunningham was probably a little past his prime when I played with him but he was a complete player. Of course, Julius had all of those qualities. He played above the rim, which was something that the NBA did not have at that time. He was one of the guys who initiated that. I played with him and against him, so it became a real point of pride for me to say that I did that."
In addition to starring in college and playing several years of pro ball, Taylor also played in the Rucker League in its heyday, when NBA and ABA All-Stars came to Rucker Park in the summer to compete with and against top streetball players.
One year, Taylor was on a team with fellow pros Julius Erving, Bob Love, Charlie Scott, Billy Paultz, Manny Leaks, and Joe DePre. They beat a team led by Nate Archibald to win the championship but along the way they faced a team that had streetball legends Joe Hammond and Pee Wee Kirkland.
"What I remember most about it was the matchup of Charlie Scott and Pee Wee Kirkland, who I think at that time was the second leading scorer at an NCAA (lower division) school," Taylor says. "He (Kirkland) had quite a reputation. He was only about 6-feet tall and Charlie was about 6-6. They got into it and they started playing one on one in a full court game. We kind of stood to the side and let them go one on one. Charlie was as quick as any six footer, so it wasn't much fun for Pee Wee. It was kind of funny."
Of course, those great Rucker League showdowns only exist now in the memories of those who played in or witnessed them. Sadly, much of the ABA's history also lacks video documentation but Taylor believes that it is important for people to understand how much the upstart league shaped basketball history.
"The real history of the ABA starts with Spencer Haywood," Taylor declares. "The ABA existed before Spencer Haywood, but the storyline really begins with him because he was the first one to challenge the undergraduate rule, paving the way for all these guys who are high school players or undergraduates to come into the NBA and make the kind of money that they are making. Spencer went through a lot of stuff that people don't realize--being escorted off of the court, being locked out of the arenas and stuff like that (while his case was making its way through the courts and various injunctions restricted him from playing). Spencer was only 19-20 years old and going through a real trauma in his life and questioning whether or not he should continue to battle. He's not a guy who's going to toot his own horn but, when you see the story of 'Glory Road,' that's one story but there is another story and it is a very important story because eventually the ABA became the cornerstone for the NBA. The dominant players after the merger were ABA players--George Gervin, Dr. J, Artis Gilmore, Moses Malone. Those guys became the cornerstone of the NBA. There is a real, untold story there and I don't think that many people realize that."
Labels: Billy Cunningham, Charlie Scott, Earl Manigault, Elgin Baylor, Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Ollie Taylor, Pee Wee Kirkland, Rick Barry, Spencer Haywood
posted by David Friedman @ 5:11 PM
