The Larry Siegfried Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Tuesday, May 16th,
2006
You
were born on May 22nd, 1939, in Shelby, Ohio. Please tell me a little about
your childhood; your family, your friendships, and some of the things that led
you to the basketball court.
Well,
first of all, I was raised on a farm, so I spent most of my youth around the
farm on working on the farm. We also had a small house in Shelby, which is
where I was raised. I guess I started playing basketball because it was
something that I could do by myself. I came from a very modest family. My
father worked in a factory. I didn’t have all of the toys that everyone else
had, so I had to figure out something that I could do on my own. Basketball was
a cheap play and didn’t require anyone else to be there, so that’s kind of how I
got started. Dad bought me a basketball and put up a hoop. I remember playing
alone, for hours on end, out there by the garage.
You
played high school basketball at Shelby High School – please take me back to
this period in your life; what memories remain with you after all of these
years?
Being
a farm type of kid, I had a pretty good work ethic. Being competitive also
helped. My senior year was a wild experience, because we got beat in the
regional finals and I averaged over forty points per game. It was fun
because my versatility helped to carry us that far. As I look back, my high
school coach was smart enough to recognize that I could do a lot of things
real well. At that time I was 6’3” or 6’4”, and I played center, forward
and guard. And my coach always used to say that if I was going to make it
in college, then I was going to have to make it as a guard. So he
structured the offense in a way that allowed me to play outside as well as
inside. From that experience I was able to learn all of the positions of
the game of basketball. It helped the team because, at that time, a 6’4”
guard was unheard of at the high school level. Heck, even when I was at
Ohio State, there weren’t that many guards in the Big Ten that size. Oscar
[Robertson] played forward in college. He may have brought the ball up the
court because he had that ability, but he wasn’t what I’d call a legitimate
guard. I played guard.
On the one hand, being able to do a lot of things as a high school basketball player was a very positive experience. But as I progressed to the next level, I ran into more specialization. Specialization has its place, but it becomes a liability to a player who is capable of doing a variety of things on the court. That’s exactly what happened to me at Ohio State.
Let’s go
back to the month of January, 1957. On January 4th you scored 58 points
against Willard High School. Seven days later you scored 60 points against
Galion High, and on the 29th, you scored 58 against Crestline. How much
attention did this generate for you, and what was like to produce three huge
games like that in the same month?
As
I stated earlier, I had the ability to play inside as well as outside. The
offense was structured so that if you put a big man on me, I ended up on the
perimeter. If you put a little man on me, I ended up inside. If you played
a zone, it gave me plenty of opportunity to shoot the ball. As far as the
points themselves, a lot of them came from offensive rebounding, foul shots
and shots at the top of the key. It wasn’t like I was just someone just
standing outside and shooting three-pointers. It was a cumulative effect.
I was actively involved in all facets of the offensive attack – rebounding,
shooting free throws, driving to the basket, shooting from outside – it
wasn’t like having a big man who was camped out under the basket all the
time. I was fully engrossed in the entire game. So the points came as a
result of that. There were some nights when I would shoot twenty free
throws because I was getting the ball down low. To this day I always felt
that if I got the ball in the low post area, that I was going to either
score or get fouled against anybody in the game of basketball. And that’s
because I learned to play down low in high school.
With that said, I was able to score all of those points because the coach structured his offense to take advantage of my talent. You could not pigeonhole me in any one given spot. It’s like in football – you have this kid, Reggie Bush, who was just drafted by New Orleans after a spectacular collegiate career at USC. As a coach, you want to get him the ball in as many positions on the field as you possibly can…as a flanker, as a wide-out, as a tailback, as a slot-man. You do that so you can’t pigeonhole him. I was the same way in high school. Nobody could lock into where I was going to be. And I’m not talking about anything complicated. I had the ability to play inside. I could play a corner as a forward. I could play outside. If I played the wing and you put a guard on me, invariably he was going to get sucked down inside someplace where I would have the size advantage. Again, I give my high school coach all of the credit for utilizing me that way. At the time, I really didn’t understand what he was doing. I was just a hard-working kid who happened to be competitive and aggressive, and someone who just played hard all of the time. And the secret behind all of those points? The offensive structure, coupled with my natural athletic ability, allowed me to score all of those points.