The John Havlicek Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Thursday, October 18th,
2007
You played your collegiate basketball at Ohio State, winning a national
championship while playing alongside four other starters who would play in the
NBA: Jerry Lucas, Larry Siegfried, Joe Roberts and Mel Nowell. How
were you able to put individual agendas aside and win it all?
We
had a great head coach in Fred Taylor, and we
played for a program that was known for its winning tradition. Our team
chemistry really fed off of those two things. Red was able to accomplish
this in Boston, while Fred created that same time of atmosphere at Ohio State.
Red had a theory that it's not what statistics you have that measures your value
to the team. Everyone wants to score 25 or 30 points a game and grab 15 or
20 rebounds. But you have to work together to be successful. You
have to make sacrifices in your game in order to make the team stronger.
That's the same type of philosophy that Fred adhered to at Ohio State.
Sacrifice for the good of the team. Put egos and agendas aside and do
what's necessary to be successful as a team. And with a strong leader like
Fred, it was easy for us to play as a cohesive unit. So really, all of the
credit goes to Fred for getting us to buy into that philosophy.
Looking back now, what do you remember most about winning the national
championship against California?
Two
days before the championship game I injured myself in the bathroom at Ohio
State. I cut myself on a paper towel dispenser, and I ended up with 10
stitches on the ends of my fingers on my shooting hands. I remember
being concerned about the injury and how it would affect my play in the
game. The other thing I remember was how good we shot the ball in the
first half - I believe we only missed four shots and were up big at
halftime. We played extremely well in that game. We were a
sophomore dominated group, and many people didn't think we would go very far
that season, let alone reach the title game and then win big.
That 1960 championship team was also known for its academics.
The
unusual thing about our team was that we were true student-athletes.
Everyone graduated. We had seven guys get masters degrees. Two
received Ph. Ds and two received MDs. There was one quarter during the
school year that our team GPA was a 3.4. That's really hard to believe, but
true, and I’ll bet that’s an NCAA record. We considered ourselves
students first and foremost, and we took a lot of pride in our
accomplishments in the classroom. And to a large degree, Fred [Taylor]
was the architect of our academic success. Fred told me when he was
recruiting me that I was here for an education, and that was going to be
number one on my list of priorities. Number two was basketball.
Number three was a social life. And after the first two, we all knew
that there was not going to be much of a social life [laughs].
Please tell me a little about your coach at Ohio State, the legendary Fred
Taylor.
Well,
I don't think I would have gotten anywhere without his tutelage. He shaped me
tremendously, and I feel that he was the person most responsible for
preparing me to play professional basketball. He stressed the
fundamentals, and he stressed defense. Those were the things helped
get me into the NBA, and those were the things that kept me there for all of
those years. The foundation of my professional basketball career was
truly based on what I learned from Fred Taylor.
Coaching great Bob Knight was a teammate on that national championship team.
What kind of player was Coach Knight?
Let's
just say that Bobby
wasn't the quickest man on foot [laughs], but defensively he played hard.
When you got fouled by Bobby, you knew you had been fouled.
He definitely got his money's worth [laughs].
Bobby played a reserve role and came off the bench quite a bit. He was
a shooter, but his calling card was defense. If he'd been allowed to
play more minutes he would have just fouled out, he was that aggressive
[laughs].
Let's talk Olympic basketball. Until the original Dream Team in 1992,
that 1960 Olympic basketball team was considered one of the greatest
collections of players ever. However, you didn't make the squad.
What happened?
That
was probably the biggest disappointment of my athletic career. I
thought I played extremely well during the Olympic trials, and I felt that I
deserved to be selected to play on that team. The same argument could
be made for my teammate, Larry Siegfried. In my mind, he played well
enough to be chosen for that team. The system was a lot different back
then. The AAU and NCAA were feuding at the time, and it really became
a big political thing after the first team was selected.
