Collision Course

by William Cook

  When Cousy got home to Worcester that evening he was so distraught that a doctor gave him a sedative.

  Meanwhile, at Boston College, Athletic Director Bill Flynn was standing behind his man. “We feel the same as we always have about Bob Cousy,” said Flynn. “This is a very unfortunate situation. I can’t speak for everyone at the college, but I believe in him.”11

  What was done was done. Cousy was still the Boston College coach and his reputation and his team’s reputation had to be kept squeaky clean, he had to operate in the game without a hint of corruption and there was no longer any room for mistakes that would impinge on his character.

  At that time, everything was on the up in Boston College basketball and would remain that way through Bob Cousy’s tenure as coach, however, just a little over a decade later, a point-shaving scandal would take place at BC.

  In Nicolas Pileggi’s book, Wise Guy, published in the mid-1980s, it was brought to light that Henry Hill, a Lucchese crime family associate, had bought Golden Eagles players to fix games in 1978–79. In 1990, the movie Goodfellas with Ray Liotta playing the part of Henry Hill, based on Pileggi’s book, was released and became one of the most popular mob pictures of all time.

  Regardless of the controversy that had surrounded Coach Cousy, the 1967–68 Boston College Golden Eagles finished with a record of 17–8. Although they failed to win 20 games for the first time in four years, the Golden Eagles ware still considered the best team in New England, and at one time during the season were ranked 6th in the nation in the AP poll. Terry Driscoll, now a junior, had another fine season, finishing with an average of 17.8 points per game. Boston College was invited to play in the 1968 NCAA Tournament but lost in the first round to St. Bonaventure, 102–93.

  On May 2, 1967, the Cincinnati Royals hired former University of Cincinnati head basketball coach Ed Jucker as their new coach at a salary of $22,000 a year, replacing Jack McMahon.

  Ed Jucker had served seven years as an assistant coach at the University of Cincinnati, his alma mater. He became head coach of the Bearcats beginning in 1960–61, a year after Oscar Robertson had graduated.

  Jucker abandoned the successful racehorse offense employed by his predecessor George Smith for an emphasis on defense. His first Bearcat team started with a 5–3 record. Then, they won 22 consecutive games, culminating with a 70–65 overtime victory over Ohio State and Jerry Lucas in the National Championship Final. The next season, UC extended its winning streak to 37 games and went on to defeat Ohio State again, 71–59, in the 1962 NCAA Tournament for their second consecutive national title.

  The following season, Cincinnati, ranked No. 1 in the nation in defense and the final AP poll, met Loyola of Chicago in the NCAA Final. The Bearcats led Loyola by 15 points with 14 minutes left in the game, only to lose in overtime, 60–58.

  After two more seasons, Ed Jucker resigned, saying the pressure of being the Bearcats head coach was affecting his health and his family.

  A lesser known fact about Ed Jucker’s tenure at the University of Cincinnati is that he was both Sandy Koufax’s college basketball coach and baseball coach. After graduating from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, Sandy Koufax came to the University of Cincinnati on a basketball scholarship in the fall of 1953. At the time, Ed Jucker was coach of the freshman basketball team at UC. So, Koufax played freshman basketball for him in the 1953–54 season.

  Jucker was also the head coach of the Cincinnati Bearcats baseball team and invited Koufax to try out for the squad. “I didn’t even know he could pitch,” said Jucker. “At the end of the basketball season, he told me to come over to the gym to take a look at him. I was amazed. It was almost like the wonder man. It struck me in such a fashion. The way he could throw—the speed and the curve—you just didn’t see that.”12

  Koufax threw so hard that only one teammate could catch him: Danny Gilbert. That spring, Koufax had a record of 3–1 and in a game against Louisville, he had 18 strikeouts. For the season, he had 51 strikeouts in 31 innings.

  While Koufax was having some trouble getting the ball over the plate, that did not preclude major league scouts from pursuing him. Ed Jucker recommended Koufax to the hometown Cincinnati Reds, but they turned him down. But scouts knew his potential with his 90 mph plus fastball, and the Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates wanted him. Bill Zinser, a Cincinnati native working for Brooklyn as a scout, signed Koufax to a $14,000 bonus contract with his hometown Dodgers.

  The unfortunate aspect of this situation is that while the sporting world would find out how great a pitcher Sandy Koufax was, winning three Cy Young Awards and throwing four no-hitters on his way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, we will never know how good a basketball player he may have become.

  In the coming 1967–68 season, the NBA was about to be confronted with some serious competition from a start-up rival, the newly formed American Basketball Association (ABA). The league consisted of ten teams in two divisions. In the East were the Pittsburgh Pipers, Minnesota Muskies, Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels, and New Jersey Americans. The West Division consisted of the New Orleans Buccaneers, Dallas Chaparrals, Houston Mavericks, Anaheim Amigos, and Oakland Oaks.

  The new league had tried to lure away many of the NBA’s biggest stars. In fact, the Indiana Pacers, who were going to be coached by former Cincinnati Royals and Villa Madonna College (Thomas Moore) player Larry Staverman, attempted to sign Oscar Robertson. Nonetheless, the Royals number one draft pick, Mel Daniels, was signed by the Minnesota Muskies.

  The NBA would counter the ABA by adding two new expansion teams for 1967–68, the San Diego Rockets and the Seattle Supersonics.

  The only coaching Ed Jucker had done since resigning at the University of Cincinnati in 1965 had been during the previous summer when he coached the Spanish national team. But he had been offered the head coaching job of both the Oakland Oaks and Indiana Pacers in the ABA.

  During his time at Cincinnati, Jucker had developed his style of play to compliment the skills of his players, deliberately slowing the pace of the game down, and it worked. But the NBA game was fast-paced and everyone felt it was going to be interesting to see how Jucker would adapt to coaching in the pros.

  As it turned out, the Royals under Ed Jucker were a running team averaging 116.6 points per game. The Royals scored over 130 points in 13 games. On November 28, the Royals defeated the Seattle Supersonics, 153–133.

  Oscar Robertson led the NBA in scoring with an average of 29.2 points per game and assists with 9.7 per game, despite the fact he had missed part of training camp due to a contract dispute, then pulled a hamstring the first week of the season that continued to flare up all season long, taking him in and out of the lineup.

  Jerry Lucas had a fine season, too, averaging 21.5 points and 19 rebounds per game.

  But the Royals were not a winning team, finishing in fifth place in the Eastern Division with a record of 39–43, not good enough for a playoff berth.

  Missing the playoffs bothered the players and they were not satisfied with Ed Jucker as coach.

  According to Jerry Lucas, “Ed Jucker was out of his element.”13

  Oscar Robertson had a broader view of Jucker. “Ed Jucker was a college coach at heart, but that rah-rah stuff doesn’t work in the pros. He used to tell us to go out and make things hurt a little bit,” said Robertson. “He regularly forgot names in the huddle. He once forgot Wilt Chamberlain’s name, instead telling us to stop the big kid.”14

  After a one-year absence, the 1967–68 NBA championship returned Boston after the Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 4 games to 2 in the finals. Bill Russell became the first black head coach to lead a major professional sports team to a title.

  Cincinnati Royals owner Louie Jacobs was a workaholic. He never took vacations. He often told people the same sun that shines in Rome shines in Buffalo. Louie had told Cincinnati Reds owner Bill DeWitt, Sr. that he intended to die at his desk. At 10 a.m. one day in early 1968, that is exactly what happened.<
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  With Louie’s demise, the torch of the Emprise holdings was passed to his two sons. Jeremy, 28 years old, became president of Emprise and his son Max, 31 years old, became executive vice-president and chairman of the board of the Cincinnati Royals.

  Prior to 1968–69, the NBA again added two more expansion teams, the Milwaukee Bucks in the East and the Phoenix Suns in the West, and the league now consisted of 14 teams.

  On July 9, the Philadelphia Warriors traded Wilt Chamberlain to the Los Angeles Lakers for Darrall Imhoff, Jerry Chambers, and Archie Clark.

  The ABA wouldn’t go away, and prior the 1968–69 season, the Anaheim Amigos moved to Los Angeles and changed their name to the Stars. When the Stars learned that Wilt Chamberlain was coming back to the west coast, they attempted to sign him, but when he asked for a contract calling for a million dollars, they declined. Chamberlain signed a four-year contract with the Lakers calling for $250,000 a year.

  So, with Chamberlain back in the Western Division, conceivably the Royals had one less obstacle in their way in making the playoffs in the Eastern Division in 1968–69.

  Once again Oscar Robertson had a fine season. He finished fifth in the league in scoring with an average of 24.7 points per game and once again led the league in assists with 9.8 per game.

  On the evening of February 17, at Cincinnati Gardens a sparse crowd of 3,922 fans saw The Big O break Bob Cousy’s career assists record in a 125–113 loss to the Phoenix Suns. Robertson had 8 assists in the game which pushed his career total for nine seasons to 6,955. Bob Cousy had 6,949 assists for thirteen seasons with the Boston Celtics.

  Jerry Lucas had another stellar season, finishing fourth in rebounds with 18.4 per game and averaged 18.3 points per game.

  But for the second straight year, the Cincinnati Royals missed the playoffs and once again finished fifth in the Eastern Division with a record of 41–41.

  While the Royals’ points per game were slightly down from the previous season (116.6 to 114.5), there was a pretty good cast of players supporting Robertson and Lucas. Tom Van Arsdale averaged 19.4 points per game and aging center Connie Dierking contributed 16.2. Overall, the Royals had seven players that finished in double digits in points per game and Adrian Smith missed finishing in double digits by a fraction of a percentage point.

  The Royals had only won half of their games and it seemed to most observers that with two future Hall of Fame players, The Big O and Jerry Lucas, playing great ball, the two could have won that many games surrounded by a roster made up of a bunch of college benchwarmers. So what went wrong?

  The fact was that the NBA Eastern Division was getting stronger. The Boston Celtics had basically the same team they won the championship with the year before but finished in fourth place in 1968–69.

  The Baltimore Bullets, led by NBA MVP Wes Unseld, Earl Monroe, Bob Quick, and Gus Johnson, won the Eastern Division. The Philadelphia 76ers, without Wilt Chamberlain, finished second. The New York Knicks, who were steadily building a formidable roster player by player in the late 1960s with Willis Reed, Dave Debusschere, Phil Jackson, Cazzie Russell, Walt Frazier, and Bill Bradley, finished in third place.

  But the Boston Celtics surprised everyone when they eliminated the Knicks 4 games to 2 in the Division Semi-Finals, then downed the 76ers 4 games to 1 in the Division Finals.

  Boston then met the Los Angeles Lakers in the championship series. The series was hard fought and went to a seventh game in Los Angeles. Then, the Celtics got a little extra motivation from Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke who was so sure of winning the championship that he had balloons suspended from the ceiling of the Forum. Then he issued a memo detailing a victory celebration that would follow Game 7. When Bill Russell and John Havlicek got hold of a copy of the memo, they used it to rally the Celtics.

  The Celtics defeated the Lakers 108–106 in Game 7 and the balloons were confined to the rafters of the Forum as Boston won the 1969 NBA championship 4 games to 3.

  While Jerry West scored 42 points, had 13 rebounds, and 12 assists in Game 7, the Lakers beat themselves hitting only 28 of 47 free throws. Wilt Chamberlain, who had a huge reputation for being a poor free throw shooter, hit only 4 of 13 shots from the charity stripe.

  Jerry West was named the series MVP, the first and only time a player on the championship finals losing team has been honored as such. But the balloon folly upset Jerry West greatly and damaged the relationship between Cooke and himself. A couple of years later, Jerry West’s relationship with the Lakers’ owner would deteriorate further when he discovered that Cooke had lied to him when he said that he and Wilt Chamberlain were making the same salary—$250,000. The fact was that there was a side agreement between Cooke and Chamberlain where he was getting his money tax free.

  For the Boston Celtics, it was their eleventh NBA championship in thirteen years. Bill Russell, with more championship rings than fingers, retired and like Bob Cousy went out on top.

  Another odd twist of fate in the final game of the 1969 championship series was that it would result in a split in the long-standing friendship between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Most persons familiar with the circumstances surrounding the split blame it on Russell.

  Often when the Celtics would play Wilt’s team, whether it be the Warriors, 76ers, or Lakers, Russell would have dinner with Chamberlain prior to the game. He did the same with Oscar Robertson. In fact, when the Celtics were in Cincinnati, often The Big O’s wife, Yvonne, would cook dinner for them. Then, Russell and Chamberlain or Russell and Robertson would take the court and try to exhaust each other. Bill Russell never liked the term rival, preferring instead to refer to opposing players as competitors. What Russell liked about Wilt Chamberlain was that he pushed him to the hilt when he played against him.

  Russell became upset with Chamberlain when he sat out the final five minutes of game seven of the 1969 NBA Finals—his last game in the NBA. Albeit no one knew that this was Bill Russell’s last game; he hadn’t even told Red Auerbach. What happened was that Chamberlain had mentioned to Lakers coach Butch van Breda Kolff that he had sustained an injury. While Chamberlain wanted to go back in the game, van Breda Kolff was totally against it and as competitive or masochistic as it may appear, Bill Russell never forgave Wilt Chamberlain for not taking it to him on the court until the end.

  For the record, when Chamberlain left the game, he had 27 rebounds. Bill Russell played five minutes longer in the game than Chamberlain and finished with 21 rebounds.

  In Cincinnati, Ed Jucker was feeling the heat from the press, fans, and front office for the Royals’ dismal season—so on May 9, he resigned as head coach.

  Ed Jucker would eventually return to the college ranks in 1972, becoming head coach at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. In Jucker’s second year, the Rollins College Tars finished 18–9 and received their first-ever berth in the NCAA Tournament.

  Before the 1968–69 college season began, Bob Cousy quietly informed Boston College Athletic Director Bill Flynn that this would be his last season. On the record, Cousy was stating that he had enjoyed his time at Boston College, but he had other options and had begun to consider them.

  But off the record, Cousy felt that at some point in time coaching had become a dehumanizing process. Like Ed Jucker, Cousy was starting to feel the pressure of college coaching and the need to win every game. Cousy had lost a recruit because the player had attended his basketball camp between his junior and senior years in high school which, in the wisdom of the NCAA, constituted a violation because it gave Boston College an unfair advantage in signing him. Cousy was frustrated with the NCAA that enforced minuscule regulations while turning a blind eye to academic standards. He was proud that every player he had recruited for BC had earned their degree, and that after they left school, he maintained relationships with them. On the other hand, it bothered him that a lot of players at other schools finished their eligibility and were immediately forgotten by those that had recruited them.

  It was also ve
ry apparent that the LIFE magazine article accusing Cousy of associating with Mafia members and point-spreads in basketball had greatly influenced his decision to quit.

  Cousy’s resignation was kept under wraps until January 20, 1969. At the time, the Golden Eagles were 10–3 and going forward they didn’t lose another game in the regular season. At that point, Cousy’s record at BC for 5½ years was 101–37, and the Golden Eagles had participated in four post-season tournaments.

  In his official announcement, Bob Cousy said he was leaving Boston College to devote his time primarily to his boys’ basketball camp and the public relations work he had been doing for three companies, including the one that manufactured his basketball shoes. He was also modeling sports clothes.

  But Cousy also approached the press with some bitterness about leaving coaching. “You get a kid to come to your school nowadays by licking his boots,” said Cousy. “It’s an unhealthy situation. Once you have committed yourself to begging him to come, there can never be a player-coach relationship. The kid is the boss.”15 He added that fortunately for him, coaching at Boston College had been a part-time job. He didn’t need the money to support his family.

  Still, Cousy kept the door slightly ajar, indicating that he expected to be back in basketball in some capacity. While only a few years ago he had turned down the Boston Celtics head coaching job, he suggested he would reconsider a professional coaching job if the offer was substantial, but not at the expense of displacing an existing coach.