The Clyde Lovellette Interview
By: Michael D. McClellan | There is something sublimely unique about the old school athletes of yesteryear, the ones who captured the imaginations of young fans long before cloud-based streaming became all the rage. They played the game, or they ran the race, or they climbed into the ring without the viral love that comes from trending on social media. The money back then was good but not great, and the athletes of yesteryear usually worked other jobs just to pay the bills.
Clyde Lovellette is one such man from yesteryear. Few know him today, but, to hoop historians and basketball aficionados, Lovellette is hardly a forgotten man. The first player to win an NCAA championship, an Olympic gold medal, and an NBA title, Lovellette’s rare triple puts him first in an exclusive club that includes all-time greats Bill Russell, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Lovellette has led the nation in scoring. He has been honored as a Helms Foundation Player of the Year, an NBA All-Star, and a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. He has teamed with some of the greatest names in NBA history, counting George Mikan and Bill Russell among those with whom he’s shared the championship stage. Lovellette has been coached by legends, men simply known as “Phog” and “Red,” and he forever linked to the NBA’s first great dynasty.
Born on September 7th, 1929, Lovellette emerged from the Great Depression largely unscathed. He grew into a gangly teenager, head-and-shoulders above his classmates at Garfield High School in Terre Haute, Indiana. By his junior year Lovellette was 6’8″, earning All-State honors and attracting the attention of more than fifty major colleges in the process. It was generally assumed that Lovellette would stay close to home, but, like Larry Bird decades later, Lovellette would commit to Indiana University only to find the environment too large and too intimidating for his taste. He chose Kansas instead, thanks to the repeated overtures of head coach Forrest “Phog” Allen.
For Lovellette, Kansas turned out to be the absolute best place in the basketball universe. Lovellette finished his sophomore season fourth in the nation in scoring, with a 21.8 points-per-game average, was named All-Big Seven, and garnered the first of three All-America honors. He would lead the nation in scoring during a magical senior season (28.4 PPG), carrying the Jayhawks to the 1952 NCAA Championship.
“It seemed like from the first time we stepped on the court that year against Creighton, good things were going to happen,” Lovellette told the Kansas City Star in 1988. “We had been up and down in two years, but we all still liked each other and got along. Phog was still a ball of fire then. It just all came together. It was a great experience.”
Lovellette was then selected to represent the United States in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland.
“Going to the Olympics and representing the United States [had] to be the biggest thrill of my entire basketball career,” Lovellette said in 1979. “Winning the gold medal was icing on the cake.”
After a season playing AAU basketball for Phillips Petroleum, Lovellette signed a contract to play with the Minneapolis Lakers, teaming with George Mikan. Playing behind Mikan as a rookie, Lovellette won an NBA title – the Lakers’ fourth in five seasons – becoming the first player to achieve that rare college-Olympic-NBA championship trifecta. Had Mikan remained healthy, who knows. Perhaps the Lakers would have strung together a series of championships to rival Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics. Instead, Mikan retired.
Lovellette played four impressive seasons in Minneapolis, only to be dealt to the Rochester Royals. Asked to take a pay cut at season’s end, Lovellette instead requested a trade and ended up in St. Louis, where he registered two All-Star appearances over the next four seasons. Battling age and injury, and with Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics churning out titles on an annual basis, Lovellette began to think he might never win another NBA crown.
All of that changed when Red Auerbach picked up Lovellette for the 1962-63 season to provide experienced relief for Russell at center. A rejuvenated Lovellette played solid basketball for Auerbach over the next two seasons, winning two championships and securing his place as one of the best centers of his generation.
Lovellette retired after the 1964 NBA Finals, decades before social media transformed the game into the globally connected spectacle it’s become today. Clyde Lovellette is cool with that. He still respects the game, and he doesn’t begrudge the fortunes amassed by players like LeBron or KD. Lovellette is part of the lineage. He has that national championship at Kansas. He’s won Olympic gold. He’s won championships with Mikan and Russell. It doesn’t get much better than that.
You were born on September 7th, 1929, a month before the Black Monday stock market crash. How was your family impacted by the Great Depression?
Dad always had a job – he was an engineer who worked on the railroad – which was one thing that our family had to be thankful about as far as the Great Depression was concerned. We were fortunate in that we had everything that we needed. He had a good job, and he brought home a good paycheck. There were other families around our neighborhood and in other surrounding areas that weren’t as fortunate. I remember that Mom tried to help as many of them as possible by giving them the things we had in excess – produce, clothing, whatever the case may be. At that time there were a lot of homeless people – we called them hobos back then – and Mom would always give them a cold drink and a sandwich.
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You were a four-year letter winner at Garfield High School and led your team to the finals of the 1947 state tournament.
High school basketball back in those days was a lot different that it is today. You played the game and didn’t think about going on to play in college. Back then you thought about getting a job, usually following in your father’s footsteps – in my case, a railroad engineer – or some other occupation that didn’t require college. And you usually stayed close to the area or the town that you grew up in, because all of your friends, family and acquaintances were there. In my case, I could have gone on to work on the railroad – I could have started as a brakemen, or a fireman, and then moved on up become an engineer like my dad. But he never wanted me to work on the railroad. I think he saw my athletic potential, and thought that I could do something with it.
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You were recruited in-state, but ended up signing with Kansas. What was that like?
You have to remember that there wasn’t a lot of television back in ’47 and ’48, and whatever we had was all just regional coverage, in black-and-white, and on a 9-inch screen. You got very little news on basketball outside of Indiana. And with Indiana being the hotbed of basketball, you had coverage from Bloomington, where Branch McCracken was the coach at Indiana University, and you had coverage of Johnny Wooden’s team at Indiana State. Notre Dame had Moose Kraus. Purdue had Ward “Piggy” Lambert. Those were the big programs, so most of the talent coming out of high school went to one of those four schools, or to another school in Indiana – be it a Division I, II or III school – so that you could be close to home, and so that the family could come and see you play.
Indiana wanted you. Like Larry Bird, you changed your mind. What happened?
Back then you didn’t sign letters of intent, you gave a verbal commitment. I committed to IU during my senior year, without having visited the campus, mainly because that’s where all three of my high school coaches had graduated. Then I went down to Bloomington and visited the school, and that’s when I learned that IU had a huge campus with a very large student body population. Honestly, I was a little bit intimidated by it all.
When did Kansas enter the picture?
An assistant coach from Kansas had visited with me prior to my trip to Bloomington, so I knew that KU wanted me. I just thought that that was a far piece to travel at the time, and I didn’t really give it a lot of serious thought. I fully intended to honor my commitment to IU, but Kansas didn’t give up.
When did you meet Phog Allen?
Phog was going to make a speech in St. Louis, and I agreed to meet him there to discuss what his school had to offer. I chickened out, and sent my brother-in-law to meet with Phog and tell him that I was going to Indiana, and that there was no use in coming to Terra Haute to try and convince me to change my mind. Phog came anyway [laughs]. We had a long talk, and he made the one statement that no other coach had ever made – he said that if I came to KU and played the pivot, then the team would be good enough to win a national championship.
He also predicted that we would go to the Olympics together, and that we would win a gold medal in Helsinki, Finland. That had a huge impact on me. Being from Indiana, with very little television, you just didn’t get much in the way of Olympic coverage. You didn’t hear a lot about basketball and some of the other sports; what you heard about was track, because back then that was the big thing in the Olympics. That was what you saw on TV, or heard on the radio, or read about in the newspaper. Jesse Owens was a national sensation – his exploits made you dream about representing your country. So when Phog talked about the Olympics, that was the thing that made me the most excited. I changed my mind because of that talk, and I spent three years playing ball at KU – and we did the things that he said that we were going to do: We won the national championship, and we won the gold medal in Helsinki, Finland.
Your transition from high school to college was nothing short of incredible – you finished your first collegiate basketball season by leading the Big Seven in scoring, and by being honored as an All-American. Did you expect success to come so quickly?
You have to remember that the first year was my freshman year, and back then freshmen couldn’t play varsity sports. But that first year was really my springboard, because we played against other freshmen at the Big Seven schools, as well as against our own varsity on a nightly basis. It made us realize that we weren’t playing high school competition anymore, and that we were going to be playing against young men who were big, strong and athletic. We worked very hard during our freshman year, and then we stayed there during the summer and worked on various skills that would help us when we played varsity ball the following fall. So once we took to the court during our sophomore year, we felt that we were ready to play college basketball.
You earned All-Big Seven and All-America honors as a sophomore and a junior. What tactics did opposing coaches employ in an effort to slow you down?
There were a lot of double-teams, and a lot of sagging off. They also tried to push me out from my normal shooting range – keeping me away from the basket was a big strategy on both ends of the court, actually. Putting a guy in front of me, and a guy behind me, that was the most common defense that I had to deal with. But if you’ve got a good ball club, and they’re working with you, and I’m working with them, then it gets to the place where a defense can do that for a little bit – but pretty soon it’s going to break down and we’re going to run our offense. They can stymie you for awhile. But if you’ve good a good nucleus of players who can shoot from outside and drive to the basket –and good passers – then the cream will come to the top, and that’s what we had. We had a great bunch of guys that just loved to play basketball and loved to win. If we won, great, and if we lost, then we’d go back to the practice court, figure out what we’d done wrong and correct it for the next game.
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Everything came together for you as a senior – you led the nation in scoring, and you led the Jayhawks to the 1952 NCAA Championship. You were All-Big Seven, All-America, and the Helms Foundation NCAA Player of the Year. Take me back to that senior season.
Fortunately, we had a great nucleus of ball players. We had a range of guys that could play the game, and bring their own unique skills to the team – whether it was passing, rebounding, defense, or scoring. We started off winning , and kept winning until we hit a snag and lost two games in a row. Phog was upset. We worked very hard in practice after that second loss, because he knew – and we knew – that we couldn’t lose any more or we weren’t going to win the Big Seven and have a chance to win the national championship. Well, we didn’t lose any other games after that. Every game we played, we played the game hard and we played it to have fun…and we played it to the best of our ability – both individually, and as a team. I can’t speak for the other guys on the team – Glenn Hart, Robert Kenney, the Kelley brothers and the rest – but I think we had a mindset that we were going to go out and play hard every game, do the best that we could, and do what Phog wanted us to do. And, as it turned out, we won the Big Seven and went on to become national champions.
You scored 141 points on your way to earning tournament MVP honors. How were you able to dominate the best teams in the nation?
I don’t know if you can call it providence, but we were determined to fulfill the prophecy that Phog had given to us as freshmen. We came together, and the team as a whole was unstoppable. And I think I just came to the point in my career where I understood what was expected of me if we were going to win the national championship. I knew that I needed to raise the level of my game. It had to be better than what I’d produced during the regular season, although I had a great regular season my senior year. It had to be better because one loss in a tournament means that your season is over – and, in the case of the seniors, that meant the end of a college career.
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Were you the Big Man on Campus after winning that championship?
In high school I was 6′-8″ and head-and-shoulders above everybody else. It got to the point that I became very shy. I didn’t go out very much. I didn’t want to be looked at or stared at. But by my junior and senior years I had blossomed as an athlete, becoming an All-State basketball player and gaining recognition for what I could do on the court. I started dating, and I found a good core of friends to bum around with together – I was very careful in that regard, because sometimes I think my popularity as a basketball player made me popular with a lot of the guys and girls at school. I never let them get to the point to where they were using me. I kept my distance from the ones who wanted to be associated with me simply so that they could say ‘Look who I know’.
When I first got into college it was a completely different atmosphere. In college they don’t know who you are and they don’t really care. They’re interested in getting an education. But once I started playing basketball I found myself in the same situation, with people wanting to latch onto me because I was a high-profile athlete. They were more interested in who I was, and it made them look good to be seen with someone who was doing well in that regard. So even though I was more of an extrovert in college, I still chose my friends very carefully. I wanted people to associate themselves with me because of who I was, and not what I did as an athlete. And when we went out, we didn’t talk about basketball. We didn’t talk about the big game the team had just played, or the big game that was coming up. We talked about other things – what was going on in the State of Kansas, or what was going on in the world.
It was like that in other parts of the country as well – pretty much wherever we played. There were always people – hangers-on, I called them – who loved to come around the locker room, get an autograph and hang out with you for a little bit. And then other people would see them hanging around the athletes, and it would give them a bloated ego. So we as players just had to be careful about who we associated with.
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Following college, the Olympics beckoned. Where does this rank in terms of your athletic achievements?
I think the Olympics ranks at the top, because it was so much bigger than anything else I’d ever accomplished as an athlete. I think that that’s only natural, because if you win an award for Kansas, playing Kansas basketball, you win it for two groups of people other than yourself – you win it for Kansas University, and you win it for the State of Kansas. So when I was named All-American, the award meant something to me, Phog, KU and the people in Kansas who I represented. But when I won a gold medal, it was much higher honor because I was representing the United States in the Olympics. No longer was I representing a single state. I was representing millions of Americans with my behavior, my ability, and my performance on the basketball court. That meant a whole lot to me. Much more than just representing the state and the university. There were only five-hundred athletes in the world who were selected to compete in the Olympics. So that in itself was a great honor. And to be able to win a gold medal is almost beyond words, because I won it first for the American people, then the State of Kansas, then Kansas University, then Phog, and finally myself. That’s the order in which it mattered to me. If you watch the Olympics today, most of the athletes are concerned only with themselves – not all of them, of course, but the vast majority. And with basketball you have pro players on the roster. When I played it was all amateur athletes, and I think that it meant more because of that. So you find that most of the athletes today just go to the Games with the USA logo on their back. They don’t place representing their country at the top of their priority list.
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After the Olympics, you spent a year playing amateur basketball, winning the National AAU title with Phillips Petroleum (1953). Please take me back to this period on your life.
After graduation, a lot of ballplayers went on to play in the Industrial League, which was comprised of approximately twenty-eight teams located all over the country. And the teams represented big corporations in various industries such as banking and petroleum. There were teams sponsored by Phillips, Goodyear, Caterpillar, and so forth. Players would graduate from college and go to work for these companies – and by work, I mean taking real, nine-to-five jobs that paid a salary and included benefits such as vacation and sick leave – and, in the process, get a jump on a business career.
When I went to interview with Phillips, I learned that eighty percent of the ballplayers were still on the payroll – and this was from the inception of the Industrial League. So I was impressed by that, and I decided to go to work for Phillips. I was in chemical sales. I was behind a desk, which I didn’t like much, but every once in awhile I would get out. But during basketball season I’d get to practice every day, and then I’d get to travel with the team to the games. Phillips had a private plane for the team, and we traveled first class; in many respects, I think it was much better than when I started playing in the pros. In the pros we had eight teams, four in the East and four in the West, and the travel and accommodations weren’t as good as what we had with Phillips.
I remember making a remark that I was happy to be playing with Phillips in the amateurs, and that I never really considered going pro. Shortly after that, I read a comment by “Easy” Ed Macauley, which quoted him as saying that the amateurs was the best place for me. He told the reporter that he didn’t think that I could make it in the NBA. He later said that he didn’t make the comment, and that it was written out of context, but I used that as a source of tremendous motivation. I took that as a challenge. I played one year with Phillips and then told the company president that I wanted to try the NBA. He said that he was sorry to see me go, but he understood and wished me luck. The next year I was playing center with the Minneapolis Lakers, behind the great George Mikan.
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Please tell me a little about Mr. Mikan, and also about the experience of winning the NBA championship as a rookie with Lakers.
You don’t have enough time for me to tell you about Mikan [laughs]. I didn’t follow the pros at that time – I didn’t know too many players in the pros, so when I signed the contract to go to Minneapolis and they told me about George Mikan…well, I had to read about George Mikan to find out what everyone was talking about. He was the biggest guy in the NBA, an All-Star, the leading scorer and rebounder…everything that I read about him seemed larger than life. And then meeting him at that first practice was an awesome sight, because George was a full inch taller than me and outweighed me by at least twenty-five pounds. He had square shoulders, and he was very powerful – he was all man.
I was twenty-one at the time, and George was in his thirties – he had already been in the league a number of years, because he retired the year after I got there. He was a truly dominating player. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but George was also a mean, aggressive ballplayer. When he got the ball he wanted to put the ball in the hole, and you’d better be out of the way – if not, he’d want to take you, the ball and everything else and try very hard to put it all in the basket [laughs]. I learned from George very early on that if I was going to stay in the league any length of time – and I planned on staying in the pros a number of years, and not getting booted out as a rookie and having nothing to do – then playing the physical part of the game was a must. George also taught me that if I was going to be squeamish, then I wasn’t going to make it in the league. I learned very quickly that I had to take it, that I had to dish it out, and that I had to be prepared to take it again, because they were going to come right back at me and try to do the very same thing. So I learned a lot from George that first year. I played behind him. I played some when he was injured. We got in together in a dual post attack. And we had a great supporting cast – we had Vern Mikkelson on one side, we had Jim Pollard on the other. We had Slater Martin and Whitey Skoog, and George in the middle. We had All-Americans sitting on the bench. It was just a great, great experience to be a part of that, and to win an NBA title that first year.
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You finished in the NBA’s top 10 in scoring, rebounding, and field-goal percentage in your first season as a starter. A year later you ranked fourth in the NBA in scoring (22.1 PPG), third in rebounds (14.0 RPG), and sixth in field-goal percentage (434 percent). Were you surprised at how quickly you became one of the leagues’ most dominant players?
Yeah, because when I first came into the league George was the biggest player in the NBA. But by my second season they started getting bigger players in the league – there was suddenly a bunch of guys 6’10” and 6’11”, so I had to adapt to playing inside and outside. I had to learn more about team play, because I had to really work the ball to score. I had to be patient, and trust that I’d get the ball back if I gave it up. And I worked hard in the off-season to get better. Coming out of college, I thought that everything was going to be as easy as it was for me at Kansas. I found out very quickly that that wasn’t the case. Every NBA roster was stocked with guys who had been All-Conference, or All-American. They were the top players at their schools. They might not have been the leading scorers in the nation, but they were pretty close. So I had to adjust. I learned that you just can’t put your sneakers out on the court and not be able to fill them. I had to be ready to play.
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The Minneapolis Lakers and the Boston Celtics conducted annual preseason barnstorming tours throughout New England, often playing up to 17 games in twenty-one days. What memories to you have of these exhibitions, and what was your first impression of the Celtics’ brash young coach, Arnold “Red” Auerbach?
When you play that many games on that many nights, and you ride the bus with the other team…well, the first night and the first game is pretty nice. Everybody got along and everyone sat with one another and talked about a lot of things. And no one was really interested in whether you won or lost. But all of that changed after the second or third game that you played. Tempers got raw. Sometimes you wouldn’t be sitting with a Boston Celtic. You’d be sitting with a Minneapolis Laker. Or you’d be sitting on one side of the bus and they’d be sitting on the other. And sometimes it got kind of hairy [laughs]. But overall, it was a good experience. You got your training, you got your workout, you got in shape…all of those things…but sometimes it got a little tight with the players you were competing against. It might be someone you had just finished hitting in a game, or someone you might have outscored, or someone that you fouled hard – and then you had to get on the bus and sit near him…or even right beside him. Of course they don’t do that now, but it was an experience that every ballplayer should go through once.
After the 1957 NBA Playoffs, you were dealt to the Rochester. Please tell me about your time with the Royals.
Rochester at one time was a great franchise. When they moved to Cincinnati, I guess [Royals owner] Les Harrison got some tax breaks or something, or maybe a break on the rent. I’m not really sure why Harrison decided to move, but I thought he was a nice guy, and we had some good talent the year that I was there. Jack Twyman was there, and Maurice Stokes. Stokes got sick the year that I got there. He would have been a superstar in the NBA. We had George King and myself. We had some good ballplayers, but I wasn’t happy in Cincinnati. So it was sort of a stop-off place. I wanted to go straight from Minneapolis to St. Louis, because Ben Kerner had drafted me to come to Milwaukee and I then didn’t go there. I think he’d been a little bit disappointed that I didn’t end up with him in the first place, because I would have played in Milwaukee and probably would have been part of the move to St. Louis.
It was contract time, and Harrison met with me and said that he was going to cut salaries. I said ‘No thanks’, and asked to be traded. I had no idea where I was going, but I was happy to end up in St. Louis. Bob Pettit was there, and Cliff Hagan. Slater Martin came out of Minneapolis and he was there. Jack Mcmahon. Sihugo Green. So there was a good nucleus of ballplayers, and they had just won the championship the year before. I thought I could fit right in. Charlie Share was the center. I had to beat him out – we split time the first half of my first season in St. Louis, and then he was traded to Minneapolis.
But back to your question – Cincinnati was just a blur. If I’d have stayed there long enough I would have gotten to play with Oscar Robertson. Who knows, maybe we would have won a championship.
In St. Louis, you played with former Celtic great “Easy” Ed Macauley.
“Easy” was a very good ballplayer when he played for the Boston Celtics. I ran into him a lot of times when I was with Minneapolis and Cincinnati. We had great battles. Then he went to St. Louis, where he played and became the team’s head coach. But you have to remember that when I got to St. Louis, “Easy” was in the twilight of his career. He was a fine man.
The two players that I like to talk about the most are Pettit and Hagan. When I played with Cliff and Bob, it was like a trio made in heaven. I don’t know what it was. The three of us just jelled together, we had our own roles to play, and we knew how to move in each other’s space on the court. I could be inside, I could go outside. I developed the one-handed outside shot – it would be a three-pointer today. Cliff could move inside. We could switch the defense – if we had a big guy on me, like Wilt Chamberlain, I could move him out and then Pettit and Hagan could have free reign inside. For the four years that I played as a starter for St. Louis, we were the top scoring frontline in the NBA. So we had a really good nucleus until I got hurt. I tore my Achilles tendon, and that’s when Boston picked me up for the final two years.
The Hawks reached the NBA Finals a year later, falling to the Boston Celtics in an exciting seven game series. What was it like to compete against Bill Russell?
I’ve always said that if I were going to start an NBA franchise, I’d want to have a Bill Russell. Then I would fill in around him. I played against Russell for many years when I was with Minneapolis and St. Louis. He was by far the most difficult player I’d ever played against, because he was so quick. Defensively, he was the best player in NBA history. Offensively, he wasn’t the most overpowering. He could score, but his main prowess was rebounding, kicking the ball out, and running the court. To me, Russell is the greatest ever. They talk about Chamberlain, and they talk about Russell, and I really believe that Russell had the heart to be a champion. Not to disparage Chamberlain, but he just didn’t have the same kind of heart. You could see the spurt every once in awhile. He would have that determination and killer instinct, but he just didn’t have it consistently. He could always score, but guys could score on him as well. The Celtics were the Celtics, but they became champions when they got Russell.
Just how good were the Celtics in this series?
People talk about the coaching ability of Red Auerbach, but I think Red Auerbach was a great psychologist because he kept the egos on that team to where he could manage them, and to where the players could play to the best of their ability. To me, the Celtics weren’t a group of individuals. They were a collection of individual stars that could play together for a common goal – winning championships. You had All-Stars in five areas – Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Tom Heinsohn, and either of the Jones Boys [Sam or KC]. So when the team took the court you could have five All-Stars playing at the same time; and yet, when they played together they weren’t playing as five individual All-Stars. They worked together as a unit, and nobody on that team cared about getting the most points, or the most assists, or whatever the case may have been. If a Sam Jones stepped up and had a big night, the other four players were happy to do the other things to help the team win. There wasn’t a jealous bone on the floor. They were truly a family, a group of guys that really enjoyed one another.
When I joined the team, I had to be invited into the family. I wasn’t brought in immediately. They had to find out what kind of individual that I was, and how I could get along with the other players on the team – or couldn’t get along, if that happened to be the case. They knew that I’d been an All-Star prior to coming to Boston, but that really didn’t matter to them. They were looking for how well I fit into the family framework that was in place. They didn’t want anybody in there that was going to stir the pot, so to speak.
Just when it looked like your career might be over, Red Auerbach and the Boston Celtics came calling. What made Auerbach such a great coach, and how did he compare to Phog Allen?
Like Red, Phog was a great psychologist. He had a great assistant coach in Dick Harp, who helped take care of the X’s and O’s. But Phog kept us all in line. If you got out of line, or got to thinking that you were bigger than you really were, then Phog would bring you back down. Red was the same way. Now as far as X’s and O’s, I think Red had a group of guys who wanted to play and wanted to win, and he gave them the tools as far as plays, to accomplish that feat. And then he let the guys go out and play. Red let Cousy and Bill go out and play ball – he knew what they could do. He just got his point across in practices, pointing out mechanics and technique, and come game time he trusted that his players would execute on both ends of the court. And then he kept them together psychologically. I think that Phog was the same way – in many respects they were very similar in their approach to the game…of course, Phog didn’t smoke cigars – but Red sure did [laughs].
You began your NBA career by winning a championship as a backup to the great George Mikan, and finished it by winning two as a backup to the incomparable Bill Russell. What was it like to play with Russell, and what was it like to win those titles in Boston?
Well, it was definitely better playing with him than against him [laughs]. Once you got to know him, Bill was a great guy. Just to sit on the bench and watch him play, it didn’t seem as though he ever got older. It seemed like he could go on and on forever, even though age catches up with everybody. But there were nights when he’d play the whole game – forty-eight minutes – and you could only sit back and marvel and how he could do that after playing in the league for ten-plus years. Of course, it was my job to be his backup, so there were nights when I didn’t step foot on the floor.
Every once in awhile I’d get to go in and play. I remember one time, Bill got poked in the eye and had to come out. I went in against Walt Bellamy and had one heck of a night. I scored over twenty points that night. So every once in a while I could still have spurts [laughs]. But I was there in the twilight of my career, enjoying playing when I did, and enjoying watching guys like John Havlicek play ball. He was rookie during my first year with the team. He was really something special. And, as you’ve mentioned, I was able to win a couple of championships before I retired from basketball. It was really special to be a part of the Boston Celtics.
On May 3, 1988 you received basketball’s highest honor – enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Please take me back to that special day.
Anytime you get honored by your peers, it has to be considered a great honor. You have to be voted in – I think there are eighteen people on the panel who have to endorse you, so it’s very special to be selected. You look at the players in there – guys like George Mikan, and even guys farther back than that…guys like Bob Kurland, who I’d heard about but had never seen play – and you realize how great a thrill it is to be selected. It’s something that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
You were the first player to play on an NCAA, Olympic and NBA championship team – a feat that has been duplicated only three times since. What does this mean to you?
Either I was awfully lucky, or the teams that I played on – and I give credit to my teammates for this distinction – were awfully talented. Because without the other players you can’t win. The kids that I played with at Kansas and in the pros, and in the Olympics…they were the reason that I won at those levels. I just wish that I could have won the state championship in 1947, because then I would have had a title at all levels. We came ten points shy [laughs].
Final Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?
In 1980, I was fifty years old. I’d played a lot of ball, and I’d won a lot of awards, and I was generally looked upon as a great success in the world of athletics, but I wasn’t fulfilled. Everything changed that year, because I gave my life to Jesus Christ. Athletes today need to realize that all the money that they make, all the accolades that they receive…those things will fade. Their popularity will fade. My advice is to look for something permanent, and for something that is going to be eternal. Jesus Christ is the answer.
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