The Gene Conley Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Tuesday, May 30th,
2006
You
are also the only person who can call Bill Russell and Hank Aaron teammates.
Please tell me about each of these great men.
They
were just plain people. When I broke into the big leagues with Hank Aaron in
1954, we were both just a couple of wide-eyed rookies trying to make a living
doing something that we loved. He used to come over to the house – we were both
making just $6,000 a year – and I could tell that he was going to be a great
hitter. I don’t know if he hit a lot of home runs that first season, but I told
my wife that he was going to be a great hitter. But the fact that we knew each
other was nothing special. Nobody looked up to anybody. We were just teammates
trying to make the big leagues and win games. We knew who Warren Spahn was, of
course. But even he was just plain and down-to-earth, like anybody else.
And Bill Russell – back in those days, we’d go out on the court before the game to warm up. There would be ten guys and five balls, and Russell and I would share a ball and warm up together. He wasn’t much of a shooter [laughs], but boy, once the game started he was a different type of person. I got along really, really well with Russell. As a matter of fact, I was with him just the other night. We hug each other when we see each other, and always share a good laugh.
I was with the New York Knicks a couple of years after I left the Celtics, and I came back to Boston to play against him. Of course I still lived in Boston and had a lot of friends nearby, so a lot of them came to the game to watch me play. I started for the Knicks that night. I shook hands with him and I said, ‘Bill, I’m not in real good shape, so you’re not going to do anything to me tonight, are you?’ Bill looked at me and grinned, and said, ‘I got to do it to you.’ I said to myself, ‘Oh no, I’m in trouble!’ [Laughs]. Well, the game started and I ran down the court and got into the center position. Richie Guerin and Gene Shue were our guards. One of them threw the ball to me, and the first shot I took was blocked by Russell. And I thought, ‘Oh, he’s serious. He really is going to take it to me tonight.’ So the next time up he altered my shot, and I got the rebound and went to the left side. He altered that one, too. So I thought, ‘The heck with this.’ So I went outside, and I was out about as far as Larry Bird when he used to shoot those real long ones. And I threw one in there – it got nothing but net – and I run back down on defense, and here comes Russell. He’s grinning from ear-to-ear. He looks at me and says, ‘You gotta be shittin’ me!’ I just looked at him and said, ‘Bill, I got to do it to you!’ Whenever we’re together we still have a lot of fun with that story [laughs]. That’s the kind of guy he is. He’s just a sweetheart – truly one of a kind.
Final
Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. You are universally
respected and admired by many people, both inside and outside of the NBA.
If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that
be?
Be
friends with everybody. Don’t be prejudiced. Look at the good side in just
about everybody that you come into contact with – be realistic, but try to
look at the positive qualities in people. I’ll be honest with you, when I
played sports I also did a lot of drinking. I don’t know how I kept up. I
was negative and rough, but it was me. It wasn’t the other guy that was
bad. It was me. I woke up in my late thirties and realized that I wanted
to experience a different side of life. Even though I’d played ball and
received all of those accolades, it doesn’t even come close to how I feel
today.