The Greg Kite Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
There is an old saying in basketball, its originator lost to the ages, but one suspects it came moments after the legendary Wilt Chamberlain first walked on a basketball floor for Overbrook High in Philadelphia as a 7-foot freshman.
“You can’t coach size,” the saying goes, and it has yet to be disproved.
Coaches can teach you how to shoot, how to play defense, how to dribble and how to pass. They can teach you the zone defense and the dribble-drive offense.
They can’t teach you to be 6-feet, 11-inches tall and, and they can't teach you to possess the raw-boned strength that makes in nearly impossible to back down such a force of nature in the low post. Such is the case with Greg Kite, a 6'-11”, 250 pound backup center for the Boston Celtics during the NBA's Golden Age of the 1980s.
Kite, born and raised in Houston, was seemingly destined for the NBA from a young age. Always taller than most kids in his class, Kite had grown to be 6'-10” by the time he was 15, at which point he gave up other sports to focus exclusively on basketball. By his senior year at Madison High School, Kite was being recruited by many of the premiere hoops programs in the country. Duke wanted him. Kentucky. UCLA. Family connections to BYU led him to Provo, where he joined a program on the rise and led by hotshot junior guard Danny Ainge. As fate would have it, Kite would later join Ainge in Boston, a late first round draft selection by legendary patriarch Red Auerbach. The year was 1983, and the Celtics were loaded with All-Stars in search of their second NBA championship in the '80s. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish were all in their primes, and their focus was on beating the best teams in the East before the inevitable collision with the vaunted Lakers in the NBA Finals. They knew it wouldn't be easy; Milwaukee was loaded with talent, and the Philadelphia 76ers were the reigning world champions.
Into this environment stepped Kite, the raw-boned rookie from Brigham Young. During his summers he'd played against some of the best college talent in the country, not to mention some of the bigger names in the NBA. So while the sight of the Big Three was certainly impressive, Kite was not star-struck. He arrived at that first training camp determined to earn a spot on the team, and to do whatever he could to help the Celtics achieve their goal.
Kite's role was limited that first season, and his contributions often went unseen and unrecognized by the public. His size and strength were felt by the starters during competitive scrimmages, internal wars that only increased in intensity when Bill Walton joined the team two seasons later. And Kite also kept himself ready to play when called upon – no easy feat when your minutes are limited and sporadic at best, and you're not a part of the normal eight-man rotation.
The Celtics clicked on all cylinders during Kite's rookie year. The team had added Dennis Johnson via trade during the off-season, with the Phoenix Suns' asking price coming in the form of center Rick Robey. For the Celtics, the addition of DJ proved to be brilliant. Johnson brought lock-down defense and clutch shooting to the back-court, something that had been missing the previous two seasons. It also created an opening for a big man, and Auerbach didn't hesitate to select Kite late in the first round of the draft.