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By:\u00a0 Michael D. McClellan |<\/strong>\u00a0He was like any other Indiana schoolboy of the day, raised on stories of Bobby Plump, John Wooden, and Oscar Robertson, his free time spent with a basketball in his hands, dreaming of his own chance at basketball stardom.\u00a0 He was never big nor particularly fast, but he made up for any athletic deficiencies with heart, smarts, and moxie.\u00a0 How else does an average point guard go on to play major college basketball, and then parley that into a ten year career in the NBA?\u00a0 Sure, Jerry Sichting was average in many ways, but he was also something else: An overachiever cut from his first professional team; a fighter who refused to let a young Bobby Knight submarine his Big Ten aspirations; a producer of points and steals and assists, the things that scouts notice and NBA coaches keep on their rosters, regardless of size.<\/p>\n Born and raised in Martinsville, Indiana, it wasn\u2019t long before a young Jerry Sichting found himself gravitating to the local park, hoisting shots in all manner of weather.\u00a0 A four-year starter and star at Martinsville High School, Sichting also excelled\u00a0at quarterback on the football team, earning All-State honors and\u00a0generating cursory interest from Notre Dame and its outgoing head coach, Ara Parseghian.\u00a0 The allure of South Bend was tempting, but with Joe Montana on the roster and little hope of seeing the field, the undersized Sichting chose to pursue basketball instead.<\/p>\n Several\u00a0major colleges also expressed an interest in the tough-as-nails point guard with the sweet shooting stroke, including Indiana University and its brash head coach, Bobby Knight.\u00a0 Sichting appeared set to sign with the Hoosiers, until the school unexpectedly rescinded the scholarship offer, forcing him to look elsewhere.\u00a0 He signed with Purdue instead, following in Wooden’s footsteps and transforming himself into an All-Conference standout by the end of his senior season.<\/p>\n The NBA Draft was a completely different animal back then \u2013 more rounds, less fanfare \u2013 and Sichting\u2019s fourth round selection by Golden State was met with little celebrity outside of Martinsville.\u00a0 He held his own in training camp, but was cut when head coach Al Attles settled on a season-opening roster that included guards John Lucas, Phil Smith and former Celtic Jo Jo White.\u00a0 Set adrift, Sichting gave the Continental Basketball Association a try, which lasted a full two days, before returning to Indiana and taking a job in a sporting goods store.<\/p>\n The 1979-80 NBA season came and went without so much as a phone call, and by the following summer Sichting wondered whether he would ever get another shot.\u00a0 The Indiana Pacers, floundering at the time, held open tryouts.\u00a0 Sichting was hardly in playing shape, but he was impressive enough to earn a spot on the team\u2019s summer league roster \u2013 and, in the process, earn an invitation to veterans camp.\u00a0 Improbably, he made the team.<\/p>\n The Pacers were decent during the 1980-81 NBA regular season, going 44-38 with a roster that included an aging George McGinnis.\u00a0 The record was good enough to make the playoffs, where the team fell in the opening round to Dr. J and the Philadelphia 76ers.\u00a0 A year later the Pacers were 35-47, and out of the playoffs entirely.\u00a0 Indiana was positively dreadful during the 1982-83 season, going 20-62, but Sichting was solid as the team\u2019s starting point guard, averaging 9.6 points and 5.3 rebounds, and playing well enough to earn a starting nod on occasion.\u00a0 A 26-56 season followed in 1983-84, and a year later the team was 22-60.\u00a0 By then, Sichting had had enough.<\/p>\n \u201cI contacted the Celtics through Chris Ford,\u201d Sichting says. \u201cI was a free agent, and I had always wanted to play for the Boston Celtics. I didn\u2019t know whether the team would be interested, but I thought that it was worth a try. There seemed to be some interest on their part, but then they drafted Sam Vincent. I really didn\u2019t think I had a chance at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n Red Auerbach liked the way Sichting handled the ball, so much so that he traded veteran guard Quinn Buckner to the Pacers and signed Sichting to an offer sheet.\u00a0 Fifteen days later, he was officially a member of the Boston Celtics.\u00a0 With Bill Walton, Scott Wedman and Sichting providing punch off the bench, the Celtics rolled to a 67-15 record and the team’s sixteenth NBA championship.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an unbelievable feeling,\u201d Sichting says. \u201cFrom a basketball standpoint, I\u2019d never been that excited in my life. I hadn\u2019t been able to win a championship in high school, and I hadn\u2019t won one at Purdue. To be able to win a championship with guys like Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish – the greatest frontline in NBA history – that’s something that I\u2019ll take with me for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Take me back to your childhood in Martinsville.\u00a0 What led you to the basketball court?<\/strong><\/p>\n The main thing that drew me to basketball was, number one, growing up in Indiana.\u00a0 Number two, my family moved when I\u00a0was about three years old.\u00a0 The property that the house was on was connected to a park, and the basketball court was about twenty feet from my backyard.\u00a0 I grew up on the basketball court, playing outside whenever the weather permitted, and whenever the weather didn\u2019t permit [laughs].\u00a0 Being in a small town in Indiana, back in those days basketball was a major source of entertainment.\u00a0 Everybody looked up to whoever played on the high school team, and your goal as a kid in grade school and junior high was to make the varsity basketball team.\u00a0 And as you got closer to achieving that goal, then you maybe thought about making the Indiana All-Star Team, which was a huge deal in those days.\u00a0 So that\u2019s how I really go interested in basketball.\u00a0 The guys that played on the varsity team would be over in that park a lot in the summer, and I would just try to do what they did.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You played for the legendary Sam Alford at Martinsville High School.\u00a0 Please tell me about your high school basketball career.<\/strong><\/p>\n Coach Alford arrived as I was coming in as a freshman.\u00a0 He really rebuilt the program.\u00a0 There had been some years when Martinsville had had good teams, but it had been fairly inconsistent.\u00a0 In his first couple of years as head coach \u2013 especially my freshman year \u2013 we struggled a little bit.\u00a0 He decided to play a lot of freshmen and sophomores.\u00a0 We took our lumps because we played one of the most difficult schedules in the state.\u00a0 I think we only won five or six games my freshman year, but\u00a0my last couple of years we were consistently ranked in the state.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Was your high school like the Indiana school portrayed in Hoosiers<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n We played in this old gym that was almost a high school version of the Boston Garden.\u00a0 It was a big brick building called Glenn Curtis Gymnasium, and it sat separate from the rest of the school.\u00a0 It was the same gym that Johnny Wooden played in.\u00a0 It was an incredible atmosphere.\u00a0 The tournament was still like\u00a0Hoosiers<\/em>, a single classification for all schools.\u00a0 We didn’t win it all like in the movie, but it was a great experience nonetheless.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You were an All-State quarterback at Martinsville.<\/strong><\/p>\n I liked football, but Martinsville had never had a winning football team.\u00a0 Bill Siderewicz came in as the new coach, and the team went 9-1 during my freshman year.\u00a0 It really got the whole town in a frenzy – it was as if the town had discovered football for the first time.\u00a0 Coach Siderewicz talked me into going out for the team during my sophomore year, and we finished with another 9-1 season.\u00a0 We were undefeated during my senior year, which was the first of five undefeated teams that Siderewicz would coach in his career.\u00a0 He’s an Indiana football legend, and he’s enshrined in the Indiana Football Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From what I hear, Notre Dame showed interest in you.<\/strong><\/p>\n Notre Dame never actually offered me a scholarship, but I could have gone to Purdue or Indiana and played football.\u00a0 Besides, Notre Dame had a pretty good quarterback on the roster by the name of Joe Montana [laughs].\u00a0 I really never gave college football serious consideration.\u00a0 I just played in high school because I liked it, and because we had some really good players on the team.\u00a0 Going undefeated was one of the greatest experiences ever.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How close were you to playing basketball for Bobby Knight at Indiana?<\/strong><\/p>\n My high school basketball coach was Sam Alford, who is another coaching legend.\u00a0 Sam is enshrined in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, and his son Steve was a great player who made it to the NBA.\u00a0 He really wanted me to go to Indiana University.\u00a0 I was being recruited by Coach Knight and I was giving it serious consideration, but Indiana gave the scholarship to another player before I could make up my mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Were you disappointed you didn’t play for the Hoosiers?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a great source of motivation.\u00a0 To me, it was Coach Knight’s way of saying that I couldn’t play in the Big Ten.\u00a0 I wanted to prove him wrong, and prove that I was tough enough to hang with the best programs and best players in the conference.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How did you end up choosing Purdue?<\/strong><\/p>\n It came down to three schools:\u00a0 Cincinnati, Louisville, and Purdue.\u00a0 I had grown up being a huge fan of both Purdue Indiana.\u00a0 There were only four channels to choose from back then, but all of the Indiana and Purdue games were televised.\u00a0 I remember Rick Mount and those Purdue teams of the late Sixties and early Seventies.\u00a0 Indiana had the Arsdale twins, Tom and Dick, playing around the same time.\u00a0 So Indiana made a hard decision easy for me, and I decided to go to Purdue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You were a First Team All-Big Ten during your senior season at Purdue.\u00a0 Did you think you could play NBA basketball?<\/strong><\/p>\n I thought the NBA was an outside shot at best, because I saw myself as a fringe player who needed the perfect situation to get there.\u00a0 But I had confidence in my ability.\u00a0 Playing in the Big Ten definitely helped, because the Big Ten was the best conference in the country in those days, hands down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hands down?<\/strong><\/p>\n Almost every team had an NBA point guard, with the possible exception of Illinois.\u00a0 Quinn Buckner was at Indiana.\u00a0 Kelvin Ransey was at Ohio State.\u00a0 Rickey Green was at Michigan.\u00a0 Magic Johnson was at Michigan State.\u00a0 Wes Matthews was at Wisconsin.\u00a0 Minnesota had Ray Williams and Osborn Lockhart, who played for the Globetrotters.\u00a0 Billy McKinney was at Northwestern.\u00a0 So all of those guys matriculated into the NBA, and those were just the guards.\u00a0 There were a lot of forwards and centers who made it to the NBA as well \u2013 Mychal Thompson, Kent Benson, Joe Barry Carroll\u2026all of those guys were in the Big Ten.\u00a0 That\u2019s what really prepared me, and what gave me the confidence that I could play NBA basketball.\u00a0 I knew that I\u2019d be a bubble-type of player coming out of college, but I knew I had a shot if I got with the right team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You were selected in the fourth round of the 1979 NBA Draft, by the Golden State Warriors.\u00a0 What was that like?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was an eye-opener.\u00a0 Like any rookie coming into the league, I didn\u2019t know quite what to expect.\u00a0 It\u2019s a huge jump up in talent.\u00a0 Golden State had some older guards that were on guaranteed contracts, which was the case with Jo Jo White.\u00a0 John Lucas was there.\u00a0 Phil Smith was one of the team\u2019s mainstays from that 1975 NBA championship team.\u00a0 I thought I had a good camp, but I didn’t get a lot of opportunities to play in the exhibition games, so I was a little bit frustrated with that.\u00a0 But being on the other end, several years later as a coach, I know how difficult it is when you have to make those last cuts.\u00a0 You know a guy can probably play in the league, but you just don\u2019t have a spot for him.\u00a0 It was a numbers game, and it just didn\u2019t work out in the end.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What did you do after the Warriors cut you?<\/strong><\/p>\n I gave the CBA a shot.\u00a0 I went out to Maine for a couple of days, but I didn’t like the CBA lifestyle \u2013 getting in a van, driving up-and-down the East Coast to play games, things like that.\u00a0 So I resigned myself to the fact that I’d enjoyed a good college career and had taken a shot at the NBA and come up short.\u00a0 I ended up getting a regular job back in Indianapolis.\u00a0 It was a sporting good company.\u00a0 I worked there for a year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Suddenly, you’re on the outside looking in.\u00a0 How does a gym rat like Jerry Sichting get his basketball fix?<\/strong><\/p>\n I played in some industrial leagues and AAU tournaments.\u00a0 I stayed somewhat in shape.\u00a0 The guys that I worked with were gym rats themselves.\u00a0 We played several times a week, and competed in a couple of different leagues.\u00a0 It was fun, but I wasn\u2019t in NBA shape.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A year later you end up getting your big break with the Indiana Pacers.\u00a0 How it that play out?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Pacers had just undergone a big shakeup in their front office.\u00a0 Jack McKinney had been the Lakers’ head coach until he suffered a terrible head injury in a bicycle accident the year before.\u00a0 The Lakers ended up winning the championship under Paul Westhead, so Jack lost his job and the Pacers hired him.\u00a0 One of the first things Jack did was conduct something called a “Walter Mitty Camp,” which was basically open auditions.\u00a0I think it was a way for the Pacers to test Jack’s mental faculties following that accident, but it also turned\u00a0out to be the break I needed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What were the Walter Mitty tryouts like?<\/strong><\/p>\n We had our tryout at Hinkle Fieldhouse on the Butler University campus.\u00a0 It was nearly a hundred degrees outside, the humidity was really high, and there was no air conditioning inside.\u00a0 It was supposed to be a two-day tryout.\u00a0 I lied to Jack and told him that I was in good shape, but\u00a0I really didn\u2019t know if I was going to be able to come back the second day.\u00a0\u00a0Thankfully, they cut the tryouts to one day.\u00a0 From there I was invited to rookie camp, was then selected to play in the LA summer league, and then invited to the Pacers’ veterans camp.\u00a0 \u00a0After jumping through those four hoops, I was selected to make the team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You played your first five seasons with the Pacers.\u00a0 What was it like to play against those great Celtic teams, and did you ever think that you would one day help lead them to an NBA Championship?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Celtics were very good.\u00a0 I remember those games well \u2013 we actually beat them a couple of times at home, but it almost felt like playing an away game because it was Larry Bird, and there were so many Celtics fans in Indiana.\u00a0 We were a young team, and we really struggled, so going up against the Celtics was a playoff game atmosphere for us.\u00a0 Beating the Celtics was definitely the highlight of our season.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n George McGinnis was your teammate those first two seasons in Indy.\u00a0 What was he like?<\/strong><\/p>\n George is an Indiana legend.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a guy to compare him to when he was in high school \u2013 I guess it would be somebody like a LeBron James.\u00a0 He was a man among boys.\u00a0 He was just so big and physically mature, and so quick at the same time.\u00a0 Nobody could handle him when he was in his prime.\u00a0 He only played a couple of years of college ball at Indiana, and then he went hardship and went to the ABA in the early 70s.\u00a0 He was a legend at such a young age, because of what he did in high school and later at Indiana.\u00a0 It was quite an experience to play with George.\u00a0 I\u2019m the only person to play on the same team with both George McGinnis and Larry Bird, which is pretty special for me because they are two of the best players to ever come out of Indiana \u2013 with the possible exception of Oscar Robertson.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hear you were\u00a0 a Celtics fan back in the day.<\/strong><\/p>\n Growing up, my two favorite teams were the\u00a0Pacers and the Celtics.\u00a0 The Pacers were in the ABA in those days, that the Celtics were the greatest team in NBA history.\u00a0 I followed them in the late 60s, and then on into the 70s when John Havlicek and Dave Cowens were running the show.\u00a0 I just always liked the style of play \u2013 I felt that they played basketball the right way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You became a free agent during the summer of \u201985.\u00a0 How did you end up signing with the Celtics?<\/strong><\/p>\n I actually made a phone call to the Celtics, because I wanted to see if there was any interest.\u00a0 They had just lost to the Lakers in \u201985 Finals, and my wife encouraged me to reach out.\u00a0 She felt that Boston would be looking for outside shooting,\u00a0so I called and spoke with Chris Ford.\u00a0 [Celtics GM] Jan Volk called me not long after that, and he said that Boston was definitely interested.\u00a0 He ask me to call him back after the draft, but then they selected Sam Vincent out of Michigan State in the first round, so I decided not to call back.\u00a0 A day or two later, Jan calls me and says, \u2018I thought you were going to call.’\u00a0 I said, \u2018Well, I thought you got your point guard in Sam Vincent.’\u00a0 He says, \u2018Well, we like Sam, but you\u2019re more of a proven commodity right now.\u00a0 We\u2019re still very interested in you.’\u00a0 That kind of got the ball rolling.\u00a0 I was coming off a stress fracture in \u201985, so I went to Boston and had the doctors look at me.\u00a0 I had a couple of interviews while I was there, and I went to KC Jones\u2019 basketball camp that summer.\u00a0 Not long after that I signed the contract.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your arrival in Boston coincided with that of the great Bill Walton.<\/strong><\/p>\n Bill was the NBA Sixth Man of the Year that year, and he provided a lot of stuff for that team.\u00a0 He was a great passer, a great rebounder, and so intelligent.\u00a0 He was on a mission that year.\u00a0 He was probably the most focused guy from the first day of camp until the end of the season, because he had gone through so much adversity with his health.\u00a0 I think he knew that this was probably his swan song.\u00a0 He had a couple of years left in him, possibly, and he was finally in a position to be on another great team.\u00a0 I think everybody would tell you that he was just a fantastic teammate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Larry Bird was at the height of his powers during that 1985-86 season.\u00a0 What was it like playing with the Hick From French Lick?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes he was.\u00a0 Larry was a great player, obviously, and he was the leader of the team.\u00a0 He definitely was all about winning.\u00a0 The hard work that he put in carried over to everyone else on the team.\u00a0 He could do some amazing things on the basketball floor.\u00a0 He had a sixth sense for what was going to happen next \u2013 his anticipation and recognition of what was going to happen in the next second or two was really unparalleled.\u00a0 It enabled him to do some things that other people with the same athletic ability couldn\u2019t come close to doing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Celtics were practically unbeatable at home that season.\u00a0 What was it like to play in the Boston Garden?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Garden was a place like no other, especially in terms of the fans.\u00a0 We thought we would never lose playing at home.\u00a0 There were several games that year when we were down late, but I don\u2019t think anybody – us on the bench, anybody who was on the court, or anybody in the stands – doubted that were going to come back and win.\u00a0 It was only a matter of time, and it was only a matter of what the eventual winning margin was going to be.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Did the team click on immediately, or where there adjustments that had to be made?<\/strong><\/p>\n It took us a little while to really jell that year because Walton and myself were new to the team.\u00a0 Because of that, there were a few tweaks in the lineup, as well as some rotation changes from the year before.\u00a0 We started rolling in early January.\u00a0 There was a three week stretch where we were beating teams by an average of over twenty points.\u00a0 We just got to clicking and everybody kind of fell into their roles and knew what everybody else on the team was going to do, night in and night out.\u00a0 We were pretty much untouchable for a while.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What was it like meeting Red Auerbach for the first time?<\/strong><\/p>\n Red was famous for negotiating directly with his players, but too be honest, I did most of my contract negotiations with Jan\u00a0Volk.\u00a0 Red was kind of standoffish at first.\u00a0 Looking back, you almost had to win a championship to be accepted.\u00a0 He wanted to wait, I think, to see how I did in the playoffs, and see exactly what this team was going to do.\u00a0 After that, I remember getting a cigar from him when we won the championship.\u00a0 The next year, we had some injuries and some problems, and there was one time when he came into the locker room.\u00a0 He rarely spoke to the team as a group, but he came in once \u2013 we were struggling, and had lost several road games in a row \u2013 and he came in the locker room, and basically read everybody the riot act, and said that we weren\u2019t playing like the Celtics.\u00a0 It was late \u201986, early \u201987.\u00a0 He told us that we were retaliating instead of instigating, which was one of his favorite sayings, and he said that nobody really wanted to go out there and fight, except for D.J [Dennis Johnson] and Little Jerry [laughs].\u00a0 That\u2019s what it called me from then on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let’s talk ’86 Playoffs.\u00a0 Against Michael Jordan and the Bulls, you hit a huge shot in the second overtime of that game, breaking a tie at 131 and practically ending the Bulls\u2019 season.\u00a0 What did it mean to you to have the trust of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish to take a big shot like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s why I wanted to come to Boston.\u00a0 I had kind of established myself in the league, but I was on a Pacers team that was a few years away from making the playoffs at that point.\u00a0 I knew if I went to a team like Boston I wasn\u2019t going to start, but I\u2019d have a chance to play and perform, and to be on a team that had a chance to do something special.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what attracted me to Boston to begin with.\u00a0 I knew I’d have an opportunity to step up and take a shot like that in the playoffs against a team like the Bulls, and I knew I could put the ball in the basket.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a great scorer by any stretch of the imagination, but I was a real good shooter.\u00a0 So you just want to put yourself in those situations and see how you respond.\u00a0 And to have guys like that who trust you to make a pressure shot like that is special.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Did it bother you coming off the bench?<\/strong><\/p>\n Not at all.\u00a0\u00a0I didn\u2019t want to go there and just sit on the bench and not get any playing time at all, but I understood that Dennis and Danny [Ainge] were going to get the majority of the minutes.\u00a0 In that type of role you just have to be ready \u2013 somebody is going to get hurt, or somebody is going to foul out, which is what happened to Dennis in that double overtime game against the Bulls.\u00a0 You just have to go out and pick up where they left off.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The 1986 NBA Finals will forever be remembered for the Game 5 fight between you and Ralph Sampson.<\/strong><\/p>\n The fans were merciless when we came back to Boston for Game 6.\u00a0 I never saw Ralph play really well after that, especially in the Boston Garden.\u00a0\u00a0He was an All-Star player at that point in his career, but I think that altercation took its toll on him.\u00a0 As for the fight itself, it was one of those things that happens in the heat of the battle.\u00a0 He kind of lost control, and before you know it you\u2019ve got a bunch of guys out there on the floor and it was really a dangerous scene.\u00a0 You had a few policemen out there trying to break it up, which isn\u2019t good, either.\u00a0 At times it\u2019s best to let the players break it up.<\/p>\n The thing I regret about the whole thing is that it turned the game around.\u00a0 We were actually in the lead when it happened, and had a chance to close them out, 4-1.\u00a0 And then the crowd went absolutely berserk.\u00a0 The Rockets gained the momentum after that fight, so that\u2019s the only thing I really regret about it.\u00a0 Once we got back to Boston we had a very chippy practice session, which only lasted about a half hour.\u00a0 We were supposed to go through things at three-quarter speed, but everybody was so ticked off that there were fights ready to break out.\u00a0 That\u2019s one of the most intense practices that I\u2019ve every been a part of as a player.\u00a0 KC knew that we were ready to play, so he just cancelled practice at that point.\u00a0 We came back an blew them out in Game 6.<\/p>\n \n What do you remember most about Game 6?<\/strong><\/p>\n Everybody was sky-high to finish it out.\u00a0 It was tight into the second quarter, but then the starters blew the Rockets right off the floor in the third quarter.\u00a0 It was a blowout in the fourth, so KC just kind of bypassed Walton and myself and let some of the other bench players get some time on the court.\u00a0 That was the right thing to do, but, as a competitor, you want to be out there on the court.\u00a0 I wish I could have played a few more minutes in that game.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After working so hard to climb the mountain, what was it like to finally be a world champion?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a dream come true.\u00a0 Once I joined the Celtics, winning an NBA Championship was our goal from the first day of training camp.\u00a0 Anything less that a championship that year was going to be a failure.\u00a0 To finally get it done, that was the great part.\u00a0 We had a championship parade through downtown Boston, and close to two million people attended.\u00a0 It was just incredible.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The sky seemed the limit in the moments after that Game 6, but everything would change just a few short weeks later.\u00a0 Where were you when you heard that Len Bias had died?<\/strong><\/p>\n I was back in Indiana at that point.\u00a0 I was at my in-laws house.\u00a0 I remember my wife waking me up pretty early in the morning \u2013 there was a phone call from Boston.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even remember who exactly it was that called, but I just couldn\u2019t believe the news.\u00a0 It just seemed like a bad dream.\u00a0 I started calling other people within the organization, and all of a sudden it\u2019s on the TV and on the radio.\u00a0 That\u2019s when it finally hit me that it was true.\u00a0 Len Bias was going to be a great, great player.\u00a0 The next great Celtic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2002, you were inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.\u00a0 What does this honor mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s a great honor.\u00a0 Indiana has long been known for its high school basketball, and it’s truly like no other place in that respect.\u00a0 Back when I played high school ball, it was really the tail end of an era.\u00a0 There was no cable TV, no computers, and no video games.\u00a0 There was just so much more focus on high school basketball.\u00a0 It\u2019s really not the same today, so I\u2019m glad that I grew up playing in that era.\u00a0 Being inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside guys like Larry Bird and Oscar Robertson, is as good as it gets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Final Question:\u00a0 If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?<\/strong><\/p>\n Have a dream, have a goal, and work hard to achieve it.\u00a0 Most people that end up at top are usually blessed with special gifts, whether it is in sports, music, or whatever the occupation might be.\u00a0 For the rest of us, there is no substitute for hard work and dedication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By:\u00a0 Michael D. McClellan |\u00a0He was like any other Indiana schoolboy of the day, raised on stories of Bobby Plump, John Wooden, and Oscar Robertson, his free time spent with a basketball in his hands, dreaming of his own chance at basketball stardom.\u00a0 He was never big nor particularly fast, but he made up for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[773,776],"tags":[376],"class_list":["post-8028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-interview","category-bird-era","tag-jerry-sichting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.celtic-nation.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/basketball-300x50.png\")
<\/p>\n