Tag Archive for: Walter McCarty


By:  Michael D. McClellanThe modern day NBA is awash with versatile big men, the kind of players who can score both inside and out, the kind of players who can battle underneath on one possession, and who can step behind the three-point line and knock down a long-distance trey on the next. Dirk Nowitzki is the modern day prototype, but there would soon be others, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, and Kristaps Porzingis among them.

If Nowitzki is the prototype, Walter McCarty was the precursor; the 6’10” forward could run with the best of the NBA’s bigs, a player equally comfortable taking the ball to the rack or spotting up to drain a three in transition. A better-than-average ball handler on offense, and a capable defender on the other end, McCarty was as versatile as any on the floor  – a hoops Swiss Army Knife that is so coveted in today’s NBA.

Yes, it’s fair to say that McCarty was ahead of his time.

McCarty grew up in Evansville, where, by his senior year at Harrison High School, he’d become one of the most coveted recruits in the hoops-crazed State of Indiana.  The Hoosiers had already landed Calbert Cheaney, who was a few years older than McCarty, and who would go on to win the Wooden and Naismith awards as the National Player of the Year.  McCarty appeared ready to follow his famous friend to Bloomington, until the Kentucky Wildcats signed Rick Pitino as its head coach.  The change of heart wasn’t easy, but in retrospect made perfect sense:  McCarty had played AAU ball with the likes of Tony Delk and Jared Prickett, and Pitino’s up-tempo style perfectly suited his versatility.

The Wildcats reached the Final Four in Pitino’s first season as head coach, falling to a Michigan team headlined by the Fab Five.  Flash-forward to McCarty’s senior season, where he found himself playing on a UK team loaded with future NBA players such as Delk, Derek Anderson, Ron Mercer, Antoine Walker, Nazr Mohammed, Wayne Turner and Mark Pope. Kentucky finished the season 34-2, capping it all with a 76-67 win over Syracuse for the national championship.

McCarty soon found himself selected by the New York Knicks with the 19th selection in the 1996 NBA Draft. He would play in 35 games during his rookie season, with most of his minutes coming at garbage time. It was a sobering experience.  The Knicks would trade McCarty to Boston the following season, where he found himself reunited with former UK players Walker and Mercer. McCarty quickly carved out a niche as a productive big who could run the floor, and who was happy to do the dirty work. He would go on to play 7+ seasons in a Celtics uniform, becoming a fan favorite for his gutsy play and penchant for making the big shot, earning the love and respect of Celtics fans everywhere.

Celtic Nation is proud to bring you this interview.

You were born on February 1, 1974, in Evansville, Indiana.  Take me back to your childhood hoops.

Evansville was a great place to grow up.  I shot ball every now and then, but I didn’t play on a team or in a league until I was in the fifth grade.  I was always the tallest kid, but I didn’t know much about playing the game of basketball.  Most of my friends and classmates did – they were either coached by their parents, or playing in some kind of league, whether it was at the YMCA or in a church league, but that wasn’t me.  I was just tall and out there in the neighborhood playing with the other kids, which was easy to do when you grow up in Indiana.  It seems like every house has a basketball goal in the driveway.  So after school that was always the thing to do.  Always playing ball.

And when I did start playing ball in school, the biggest jump for me was from eight grade to my freshman year at Harrison High School.  That’s when I realized I could really become a good basketball player if I put in the work, and that motivated me to keep working and improving my game.  Before you know it, I was headed to Kentucky.

 

Evansville sits across the river from the Kentucky border.  You could have played with Calbert Cheaney at Indiana University.  What happened?

The University of Evansville was the first school that started recruiting me hard, but really didn’t have any interest in going to Evansville.  I pretty much knew I wanted to play for Kentucky, and there were a lot of reasons for that.  Where my mom worked, she was always around UK fans, and living on the border meant we got to see as many UK games on television as IU games.  IU recruited me, and I was friends with Calbert Cheaney even though he was three years older than myself, but I really had no interest in going to IU.  It really boiled down to the style of ball they played, which was that classic Big 10 style with the big men confined to the post, which didn’t really match up well with the way I wanted to play.  I was the kind of guy who was just as comfortable being out on the perimeter as I was being in the post.

Ironically, my second choice in schools was a Big 10 school – Purdue – but they had a couple of guys that played inside-out.  But UK had Rick Pitino and I knew that his offense was perfectly suited to my skills; I felt that his up-tempo system really fit with the way that I like to play.  And playing on those AAU teams, I got close with guys like Tony Delk and Jared Prickett, and that was a big factor in my decision.

 

What’s it like playing for the Kentucky Wildcats?

Kentucky fans are the greatest fans in the world.  It’s a high-pressure situation – they want to win, but we also want to win, and we expect the best out of ourselves.  Kentucky has a great tradition, and you want to live up to it.  You don’t want to be on that team that doesn’t make the tournament or doesn’t advance in the tournament.  So you always have that pressure of not just getting to the Final Four, but winning the Final Four.

It was a privilege to play there, and those were some of the best years of my life.  The support there is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  Other schools can say the same thing, but Kentucky fans are Kentucky fans, and they hate everybody else.

 

That ’96 team was loaded – it finished 34-2 and won the national championship.  What was that like for you?

The journey to the championship was incredible.  We knew we were talented and had the potential to be great, but what we had went much farther than just talent.  We were such a close team.  We really enjoyed each other’s company and hanging out with each other away from the basketball court.  We truly cared for each other, and those relationships stand to this day.  And we worked hard – losing left a bad taste in our mouths, and we were determined to finish that season as the last team standing.

 

That championship season wasn’t always easy despite the record.  How did you stay focused?

There’s always going to be bumps along the way, it doesn’t matter what team you play for, and it’s more about how you react to that adversity – how you handle it – that determines your outcome.  It’s the same thing when I went to the Celtics.  There were times when I played a lot of minutes, and times when I didn’t and someone else was out there on the court.  For me it’s all about the challenge, and being enthusiastic in taking on that challenge.  If I found myself not playing, I wanted to figure out what I needed to do to get those minutes back and to get back on the court.  You just have to be excited about the opportunity to get back on your feet and make the most of every situation.

 

You were selected by the New York Knicks with the 19th pick in the ’96 NBA Draft.  Tell me about that.

It was the greatest feeling ever – to be able to do things for your family that you never thought you’d be able to do, that’s just the greatest feeling in the world.  I’d always dreamed of buying my parents a new house, and giving them a new car, but you don’t think you’ll ever be in that position.  And then suddenly you’re able to help them and take some of that pressure off of them.

And I never took it for granted.  I knew that I had to prove myself, and that I had to go out there every day and show the coaches that I belonged in the NBA.  I also knew that I had to earn my salary, and fortunately I had the work ethic to go out there and do the things to perform in this league.  It was a challenge, no question about it, and in many ways it was about starting over again.  I had to go out there and earn my minutes and earn my respect, just like when I was a freshman at Kentucky.

 

The Knicks were pretty good back then – what was it like joining a veteran team?

It was great for me, even though I was on a veteran team and didn’t get a lot of minutes, because that first year I learned the most about being a professional basketball player.  People always ask me how I could learn so much when I didn’t play much, and I tell them all of those guys – Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, John Starks, Charles Oakley, Charlie Ward and Buck Williams – were such great mentors.  Collectively, they took me under their wing and showed me what it was to be a professional.  Things like staying prepared, taking care of my body, getting the proper amount of rest.  How to do the right things in practice.  How to watch film.  All of those things.

Jeff Van Gundy was a great coach for me – I remember that first day of training camp like it was yesterday.  There were three rookies on that team – John Wallace, Dontae Jones and myself.  And coach sits us down and tells us that we’re not going to play this season, no matter how good we were, and that the only minutes we’d get would be if someone got hurt, or if somebody ended up in foul trouble, or if he had to pull somebody out for some reason.  So we had to swallow our pride and check our egos right there.  He said the best thing we could do is be patient, work hard, and learn as much as possible.  And that’s what I tried to do.  I tried to pick up all the little things from all the veteran players.  Those guys were great veterans.  They really looked out for us and showed us how to be professionals.

 

Rick Pitino is hired by the Celtics, and he immediately starts to surround himself with Kentucky players.  Did Pitino really think he could duplicate the success he had at Kentucky on the NBA level?

I don’t think he or anyone else really knew whether it would work or not.  We were still trying to find ourselves as basketball players, so it wasn’t something we could plug into the NBA and guarantee success.  But Coach P believed in it.  He knew he needed guys who knew his system if he was going to pull it off, and what better group of guys than Antoine Walker, Ron Mercer and me?  We’d just previously played for him at the college level, and he knew that we would be in the kind of shape that he needed.  We knew his system and how to execute it.  So I think he felt a certain comfort level in bringing us together to start things off.

 

Walker and Mercer were drafted by the Celtics, but you arrived via trade.  Tell me about that.

I remember how the trade went down – I was getting ready to play in the last preseason game before the start of the 1997-‘98 NBA regular season; the Knicks were literally hours away from playing the Celtics in that game, and I get a call in my room, it was Jeff Van Gundy telling me that I’ve been traded to the Celtics.  So I knew that I wouldn’t be playing that night.  A Celtics coach picks me up, and I go to the game as a guest of the Celtics.

It was the highlight of my NBA career, being traded to the Celtics.  That team has so much history, and there have been so many great players to have played there.  And all of those championships…it was just a great place to play.

 

There were such high expectations when Pitino arrived.  He was hailed as the savior who would turn around a proud franchise.  What happened?

It was tough.  Coach P was able to turn Kentucky around, but the Celtics situation was a lot different.  You’re dealing with a salary cap, a longer schedule, the mindset of the professional athlete.  And then there was the style of ball that he wanted to play.  He wanted the up-tempo style, the high-pressure style, but I just don’t think that can work for an 82-game schedule.  There were a lot of games that it worked for us, and then certain times when it didn’t.  I think if he could have taken the reins off a little bit he could have been a helluva NBA coach.

At Kentucky he was adored, in the pros I think he found out that it was truly a business.  It’s a different type of pressure.  It was hard to find the guys who would buy into his system at that level, and it ultimately wore on him mentally.  I think that’s what led him to walk away in frustration.  I think he realized that he was best suited for the college game.

 

In ’98 the Celtics drafted Paul Pierce.  Take me back to Pierce in the early years.

Well, you could tell that Paul was going to be a great player, but there were definitely maturity issues with him.  At that age he was still going out to clubs and doing some of the things that maybe a leader shouldn’t have been doing.  And maybe at that time he didn’t view himself as a leader.  He wanted to play ball and he wanted to have fun, but he’s clearly matured over the years and left a lot of that stuff behind him.  He ended becoming a great leader, and the things that he’s done during his career in Boston definitely put him up there in the discussion with all of the Celtics greats.

 

Pitino ultimately resigned and headed back to the college game.  That’s when Jim O’Brien stepped in and helped the Celtics get back to the playoffs.  What was that like?

We were ready.  We just knew we were going to get after it defensively that season.  We took it upon ourselves to keep opponents from scoring on us – our goal was to contest every shot and force our opponents into low field goal percentages.  Tough shots.  We were one of the top three defensive teams in the league that season.  We really started to trust the system and to trust one another.  We trusted that if a guy got by one of us, that someone would be there to play help defense.  If someone got past me I knew that Eric Williams was going to be there.  If someone got by Eric, we knew that Tony Battie was going to be right there backing him up.  Once we got that down, everything started to flow.  It was a great experience for us, because we came within two games of reaching the NBA Finals.

 

You became close with many of the Celtic legends during your time in Boston.  Guys like Red Auerbach and Bill Russell.

I’ve been so lucky, privileged and blessed.  To get to know people like Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and Tom Heinsohn, I could never truly put into words what these people mean to me.  And as much as I love Tom Heinsohn – he’s a very special person in my life – his late wife Helen was one of the most special people I’ve ever known.  God bless her – she passed away from cancer, and it was one of the hardest things for me to deal with emotionally.  She was such a special lady, and meant so much to me and my family.  I love her dearly.

It was so special to feel like you’re a part of the family, part of one of the greatest organizations in sports.  You just don’t get that anywhere else.  For me as a kid, to think that I would get to sit down and talk to guys like that – guys like Red Auerbach, Satch Sanders, Hondo – the list goes on and on, it was just remarkable.  As a kid growing up in Evansville, I never could have imagined any of that to be possible.

Red was great to be around.  No matter where you were, you could always smell those cigars in the gym.  Bill Russell stayed close to the team while I was there.  And I always called him Captain.  Never Bill, never Mr. Russell.  Always Captain, because he was the captain of all those Celtics championship teams.

Funny story about Bill Russell:  At one point he came into the locker room, and at the time we were a pretty tough defensive team.  But offensively, everybody know that Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker was going to take 90% of the shots.  And I guess the papers were talking a lot about how much Antoine liked to shoot the ball, and how he never passed.  It was a pretty big deal in the media at the time.  Well, Bill came in, and he holds up a copy of that article, and he looks at everyone in the room but Antoine.  And he tells us that the secret’s out, that Antoine is going to be taking a ton of shots, and that if we wanted to get our shots we shouldn’t wait for him to pass – we should wait for him to miss.  And then he looks at Antoine, and he says, ‘From what I’ve seen out of your shot selection, there should be plenty of misses to go around.’  And then the whole room busts out laughing.

I don’t have grandchildren yet, but one of these days I’ll probably be setting down with them and telling them the stories about legends like Bill Russell, and what a privilege it was to even be associated with people like that.

 

You mentioned Tommy Heinsohn.  Pretty special guy, huh?

I think Tommy appreciated what I brought to the table, maybe more than anyone.  My role on that team wasn’t to be the leading scorer.  It was to play great defense, shut down the other team’s best scorer, run the floor, knock down shots in the flow of the offense, and hustle all over the court.  I was the guy who scrapped for the rebound, who dived on the floor for loose balls – you know, the type of player who did a lot of the dirty work that maybe other players didn’t like to do.

So I think I was a throwback player in a certain aspect, and I think Tommy saw that in my game and identified with it.  I think he really respected what I did out there, and he wasn’t shy about broadcasting it during games or otherwise.  He kept a tally of ‘Tommy Points’ for guys who did things that didn’t show up in the stat sheet, and that was really borne out of him watching me play.  He knew that everybody focused on the guy scoring 35 points, or the guy grabbing 20 rebounds, but he changed the way that people look at basketball by pointing out the little things that make a big difference in wins and losses.  So I’m very thankful for him, because he made everybody aware of role players and what role players do – sacrificing their bodies, taking charges, going to the floor for balls.

 

NBA players seem to be hung up on making their mark, leaving their legacy.  And that usually goes hand-in-hand with winning the NBA Championship.

To be honest, I’m very content.  And I hear that talk all the time.  Everyone likes to point out that I didn’t win an NBA title, but I’ve always loved the game of basketball.  I would have loved to have won a ring, but maybe that wasn’t for me.  I had a great time and really enjoyed it, and I’m content to have walked away from the game like I did without winning it.

 

Seriously?  You don’t have any regrets about not winning a championship with the Celtics?

Absolutely not.  Would it have been special?  There’s no question, I would have loved to have won an NBA Championship.  That’s what we all dream about as players.  But I was fortunate to win an NCAA championship at Kentucky, and I was able to play 10 years in the NBA, many of those with the greatest franchise in professional basketball.  I feel like I’m part of a special family in that regard.  And I’m not someone who is defined strictly by what he did on the basketball court.  I have other interests, like my music and my family, and I’m content with how my life has played out to this point.  It’s been great, and I’m looking forward to the future.

 

You were traded 44 games for the Celtics during the 2004-‘05 season, but you still consider yourself a Celtic For Life.

Boston is the place that I call home.  The fans are the best in the world.  They know their basketball and they appreciate blue collar players who play hard and know their role.  That was me.  I tried to do my best to help the team win – if that meant diving for loose balls or running to my spot and shooting a three, I could tell that the fans really appreciated the things that I did while wearing a Boston Celtics uniform.

 

Let’s talk soul, man.  You’ve always been into music.  Tell me about your passion.

When I was four or five, I was singing with my family in the church.  My aunt got me started – myself, my brother, my two sisters, my cousin…we’d sign in the afternoon services.  So I grew up singing, and from a very early age it was always a passion of mine.  And as I got older, I started singing in middle school choir, then high school and church choir, and on the street corners with my friends.  When I went to Kentucky, I selected the School of Fine Arts.

I’ve always loved music.  In 2003 I released my first CD, Moment for Love, but I really didn’t have the time I needed to promote it due to playing basketball.  I have a recording studio in my home, and about a year ago I had the urge to express myself musically, so I started writing again and decided it was time to put out another CD.

For me, my time was consumed with basketball, but after I retired I took about a year off and just recharged my batteries.  I just completely relaxed, and spent time with my family.  It was important, because basketball had been my whole existence from the time I was about eleven or twelve years old.  And when I finally felt refreshed, I decided that it was time to follow my passion and do what I love.  That’s when I went into the studio again and was able to produce Emotionally.  My friends dog me and give me a hard time because I’m always singing, but I love it.  It’s the thing I like to do most – that’s just me, I love music, and I really enjoy being able to express myself musically.

 

Final Question – If you could pass on one piece of advice on life, what would that be?

Do your best in everything you do.  And I’ve always leaned on the bible, and I always include the following passage from Proverbs 3:5-6 in all my emails:  Trust the Lord with all Thy heart, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.  And there is something else to live by:  Give without remembering, and take without forgetting.