The Arnie Risen Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Wednesday, December 13th,
2006
Fans today watch NBA games in state-of-the-art stadiums. Back then, the
Royals played in the Edgerton Park Sports Arena. What was it like playing
your games there, and how did it compare to other stadiums in the league at
the time?
Edgerton
Park Sports Arena was a wood-framed building that held 4,200 people. It
was typical of the facilities in the old National Basketball League. Most
of the gyms were small, cramped, and outdated – even by the standards of the
day. The fans were right on top of the action, which could be a big
advantage for the home team. It’s hard to image the conditions we played in
when you watch an NBA game today. Now every team plays in a multimillion
dollar stadium.
The city owned Edgerton Park Sports Arena, and let its firemen use it to
house equipment and carry out exercises. There were bleacher seats going
all the way up on each side. There was nothing at the ends of the arena but
a row of chairs underneath the baskets. There was an entrance lobby that
opened into the place. On one end, there was just a row of chairs, and
there was a double-door with a panic bar on it. I remember one night in the
dead of winter we were playing a game, and Bobby Davies went under the
basket, shot a lay-up, hit the door and ran right out into the snow.
When I started playing for Rochester , the rival league to the NBL was the
Basketball Association of America. Our league had the best players and the
bigger stars, like George Mikan of the Minneapolis Lakers, but the BAA had
the better venues – the Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, Madison Square
Garden. The owners were mostly hockey men who wanted a revenue stream for
their buildings on off nights. Before you knew it, three of the NBL
franchises defected – Minneapolis, Rochester, and Fort Wayne. That was
really the start of the NBA.
The Royals’ main rival in those early years was the Minneapolis Lakers.
Please tell me a little about the Lakers’ Big Three of George Mikan, Vern
Mikkelsen, and Jim Pollard. Please tell me a little about each of these
men.
Stepping
back even further, the Royals’ first big rival was the Fort Wayne Zollner
Pistons. The team owner was Fred Zollner, who also owned a foundry that
manufactured pistons for various types of engines. The Pistons and the
Royals just didn’t like each other, and there were some dandy games played.
There were always lots of fouls, and usually a fight or two [laughs].
Pollard was a star at Stanford and played pro ball first, followed by Mikan
and then Mikkelsen. All three in the Hall of Fame. Pollard wasn’t that
tall – I think he was around 6’5” – but he could really jump. He was
nicknamed ‘The Kangaroo Kid’ because he could jump so high. He also had a
great shot from the corner. World War II interrupted his college career,
which was the case for a lot of players back then. The war cut into the
career of a lot of fine players. But he ended up playing for the Lakers and
helping them win several championships.
Mikan was voted the game’s ‘Greatest Player in the First Half-Century’.
That should tell you a little about how good he was, and how he was able to
dominate the league. He was big and strong, but he was also a very good
offensive player. He played for DePaul in college, and he blocked so many
shots that the NCAA introduced the goaltending rule. Before Mikan, such a
rule never existed, but he was so big that he could get to almost any shot.
The NBA doubled the width of the free throw lane because of him. In the
mid-fifties, the league came up with the 24-second shot clock because teams
were slowing down the games to try and beat the Lakers. These are just some
of the things that made him the most recognized player in pro basketball.
He caused problems for the Royals every time we played them. He was such a
competitor, and he could be a bull or a gazelle, depending on the
situation. If he needed to knock someone on their ass, he could do that; if
he needed to work someone over with a hook shot or a quick move to the
basket, he could do that, too. I remember the Celtics always had their
hands full with Mikan, because Ed Macauley was several inches shorter, and
he was also rail thin. But then, every team in that era had trouble
handling Mikan. He beat us up all the time – Rochester only advanced to the
championship once when I played there, and that was when Mikan was injured.
Vern Mikkelsen has been called the game’s first great power forward. He was
the other piece of that Laker frontcourt, and he was a big, rough customer.
He battled hard, and he never let up. He was as intense as Mikan, but
didn’t have Mikan’s size or scoring touch. I think he was 6’7”. He was big
and strong, and he didn’t back down from anybody.
Those three big men were the key to the Lakers’ success, but people tend to
forget that Minneapolis also had some great guards. Slater Martin was
small, but he was the player who ran that offense to perfection. Bob
Harrison was another good one.
The
Royals defeated the Lakers in the 1951 Western Finals, your third season on
the team. Next up was the New York Knicks in the 1951 NBA Finals, which was
perhaps your finest hour. And the Finals were perhaps your finest hour.
You scored 19 points in Game 2, and you had 27 in Game 3. What memories
stand out most about that thrilling seven game championship series?
We
were the big favorites heading into the NBA Finals. In those days, there
was a six year stretch where that Western Finals felt more like playing for
the league championship – and, unfortunately for us, it was usually the
Minneapolis Lakers who came out on top. They were just a bigger team. They
were more dominant on the inside, and we couldn’t really match up against
them underneath the basket. My first year with the Royals was 1948-49, and
Mikan and the Lakers won their first title. They also won the championship
the next season, and eventually five in six years. But we were always
competitive against them. It was just that we weren’t as big and as
strong. We had myself, Arnie Johnson, and Jack Coleman playing down low,
and I was the tallest player at 6’9”. It was always a struggle because of
their size advantage, but in the 1951 playoffs we were able to turn the
tables. It hurt the Lakers when Mikan was slowed by a broken ankle in that
series. We were able to beat them 3-1 and reach the NBA Finals.
The scheduling of those playoff games was another thing that really hurt us
when we played the Lakers. Back then a seven game series, if it went the
distance, would often be played over a ten day period. If it went the
distance, that meant we would play back-to-back games twice during the
series. That really hurt us against the Lakers, because we wouldn’t have
time to recover from the physical beating that our bodies would take. They
would pound us, and rough us up, and we would eventually wear down. Today,
a seven game series is played out over two weeks or more. There is more
rest involved. And teams today have their own private planes. When I
played, we would travel by bus or train. I think that if we had more time
to rest and recover, then there may have been a different outcome in some of
those playoff battles. But as I said, the Lakers won five titles in six
seasons – with the exception of 1951, when we were able to knock them off.
We were confident heading into that championship series. The New York
Knicks were a good team, but most everyone felt that we were much better
than them, and that we would win the series handily. The Knicks had some
nice players, such as Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, Max Zaslofsky, Harry
Gallatin, Ernie Vandeweghe, and Dick McGuire. So they weren’t pushovers by
any stretch. But we were confident, because we had just beaten the best
team in the league.
I remember that there was a lot of hype about the upstate team meeting the
team from the city. But they were no match for us on paper. Everyone who
followed basketball thought that we would win it all, because we had finally
gotten past the Lakers. We felt the same way – we felt that this was our
year.
We won the first three games of the series, which was practically an
insurmountable lead, but we nearly gave the series away. New York won the
next three. To his credit, New York coach Joe Lapchick made a few roster
changes, and they paid off. But it was really more about what we failed to
do. We became a team of individuals – I think we started to believe our
press clippings, and everyone was out there trying to be the hero. Some of
our guys began playing for individual glory, instead of playing for a team
goal.
I will never forget Game 7. It was played back in Rochester. We broke out
of the gate fast, trying to regain the momentum of the series – but by the
third quarter, the Knicks had caught up with us. The game became very
tight. One of the keys was that we kept taking the game to them – we
remained very aggressive – and the Knicks ended up in foul trouble. A
couple of players fouled out. Gallatin was the only starting forward left
in the game, and I was able to take advantage and complete a three-point
play. I think that put us up 75-74. The Knicks tied the score, but then
Davies drew a foul and made both free throws. That was the ballgame,
because, according to the rules at the time, the teams faced a jump ball
after foul shots in the final two minutes. Since they only had Gallatin
left – he was 6’6” – we knew we were going to win the tap. It went to
Holzman, who ran the clock down. At the end, Coleman made a basket to put
the final nail in the coffin, and that was it; we won the game 79-75, and we
were finally the champions.
Like the
Royals, the Boston Celtics of the early 1950s were an undersized team that
featured future hall-of-fame players Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and “Easy” Ed
Macauley. What was it like to play against these great men, and what was it
like to later join them in pursuit of a championship?
In
my opinion, Bob Cousy became a much better shooter after I arrived in Boston
and began playing for the Celtics. Everyone who followed the NBA knew that
he could drive to the basket and pass the ball. He was a terrific ball
handler, probably the best in the business, but in the early days he really
struggled with his shot from the outside. I think that changed because of
some of the players on the team. My first year with the Celtics was during
the 1955-56 season, and a player named Ernie Barrett was also on the roster
at that time. Ernie had played with Boston for a stretch once before – I
think it was a couple of years before I signed – and then Red asked him to
come back and give it another chance. Ernie was just a tremendous outside
shooter. He had a quick release, and great touch. He had played college
basketball at Kansas State, where he was famous for his jump shot, and he
spent some time with Cousy during my first season with the Celtics. You
could really tell the difference in Cousy’s confidence from the outside
after that, because he just shot the ball so much better that season.
When I played for Rochester, we actually got the best of Cousy and the
Celtics. Our teams matched up well against them, and part of that was
because we had some pretty good guards of our own. We had Bob Davies, who
was known as the Harrisburg Houdini because he was born in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. He was an All-American at Seton Hall, and he was a tremendous
ball handler. He could make extraordinary passes look simple and routine,
so he was a lot like Cousy in that regard. Red Holzman was also on those
Rochester teams. He was also an All-American in college, and he was one of
a select few to win championships as a player and a coach. He won a pair of
titles with the Royals, one in the NBL and one in the NBA, and he later
coached the New York Knicks to a championship. Both of those men are in the
Hall of Fame.
Ed Macauley played center for the Celtics during those years before Bill
Russell arrived. He was a very good player, but he was also very thin. He
really preferred to play forward position, where he could take advantage of
his speed – and where he wasn’t always overmatched against the bigger,
stronger centers in the league. Unfortunately for Macauley, the Celtics
didn’t have a lot of size in those days. Red would run a very fast-paced
offense, and the Celtics were always pushing the ball up the court, and that
helped to take advantage of Macauley’s strengths as a player. But he got
banged around quite a bit on the defensive end of the court. He just didn’t
have the size to keep those big centers off of the boards.
Bill Sharman as a tremendous, all-around athlete, and he was also a great
basketball player. He could shoot the ball from the field, and he was even
better from the free throw line. I can’t remember how many times he led the
league in free throw percentage. All three of those players were also fine
gentlemen.