The Henry Finkel Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Monday, March 20th,
2006
As
a senior, you were honored as a 3rd Team All-American. How did it feel to be
recognized as one of the best basketball players in the country?
I
never looked at it that way. I always got a lot of criticism because I couldn’t
jump. The only thing that I could do very well at that time was shoot. So I
never really looked at myself as one of the best players in the college
basketball. Besides, I never focused as much on individual feats and statistics
as much as I did playing well and the team winning. I had no interest in making
All-American. I wanted to win with the University of Dayton.
In 1974,
you were inducted into the University of Dayton Athletic Hall of Fame, along
with former teammate Don May. What does this honor mean to you?
Once
again, not being an individual and being a team guy, I guess it means that
the team did well. I think that’s why I was inducted into the UD Hall of
Fame. Having said that, having some statistics to accommodate the team
doing well probably enabled me to get in. For me, the Hall of Fame at UD
really doesn’t mean anything. What does mean something is the fact that I
went to the University of Dayton. I’ve said all along that if I didn’t have
the opportunity to turn pro, then I would have stayed in Dayton, Ohio. The
fans were wonderful. The people on the campus were supportive. The coach
was terrific – his name was Don Donoher. And everything about it at that
time would have encouraged me to stay in Dayton, Ohio.
Your
coach at Dayton was Don Donoher. In 1998, the Donoher Center opened as part
of University of Dayton Arena, and Coach Donoher had this to say at the
dedication: “In the mortar are the names you can't see, May, Hooper,
Finkel. It represents about 100 kids that represented the University of
Dayton in pretty good fashion. I like that part of it.” Please tell me a
little about your coach at the University of Dayton.
He
was like my brother. First of all he wasn’t much older that I was. He was
a young fella. He took over for a guy named Tom Blackburn. Blackburn was
the coach my sophomore year, and then he became sick and passed away from
cancer. He passed away at the end of my sophomore year. At the time,
Donoher was the assistant coach under Blackburn. Everybody liked Donoher,
so we all petitioned to help him get the job. As a result, he was a very
young head coach at the time. I think he was in his early thirties – he was
only ten years older than his players. The whole team with Donoher was more
like brothers than we were like coach and team. That may have been a big
reason why everybody got along so well. And we did very well on the court –
of course, it helped because we had a pretty good team.
You were
selected in the second round of the 1966 NBA draft by the Los Angeles
Lakers. What was it like to start your professional career on the other
side of that great Celtics-Lakers rivalry?
I
hear that a lot – about being drafted by the Lakers – but I was actually
picked by the Chicago team at the time. They either sold or traded me to
Los Angeles immediately after the selection, but I wasn’t drafted by the
Lakers. I think it was the Chicago Zephyrs.
Anyway, I got the single best piece of advice on being a pro from a pro – you may have heard of him…his name is Jerry West [laughs]. It came in that first training camp. In college I was predominantly a scorer, and I tried that in training camp against guys like Leroy Ellis and Darrall Imhoff. These guys were seven-feet tall like I was, and as a result they were knocking me off-balance, blocking my shot, and making it very difficult for me to score.
Freddie Schaus was the coach at the time, and during one of the scrimmages he calls timeout and tells everybody to take a rest. That’s when Jerry West came over. He said, ‘Finkel, you don’t have to shoot the ball every time you get it.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Go out and set some picks. Set a pick for me. If I have the shot then I’m going to take it. If I don’t have the shot, then roll to the basket and I’ll get you the ball.’ That turned out to be the single best piece of advice that I ever received. For the next ten years I made a living setting picks and blocking out, and all of the credit goes to Jerry West.
