Sun Jun 13, 2010 (3:10PM ET) by
poormanscommish in
nba
After Glen “Big Baby” Davis’s game-winning performance in Game 4 of the 2010 NBA FInals the other night, NBA writer Steve Aschburner caught up with Celtics assistant coach Clifford Ray for some reminiscing and penned a great read, especially for Golden State Warrior fans. Here are some excerpts…
Please note that [head coach Doc Rivers] does not allow his assistant coaches to do interviews, a quirk in the league’s most personable head coach owing to some sort of “one voice” strategy. But he lifted the embargo on Ray for this story, because this is a big, fat anniversary year of something special for the man, and a fellow who often got overlooked back then shouldn’t get overlooked again.
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“I defy anybody to find another team in any of the major sports that was such an underdog at the start of the season that wound up winning the championship,” Hall of Fame forward Rick Barry said. “We get to the Finals and we sweep the team that was supposed to sweep us? Please.”
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“[Clifford Ray] and Rick Barry ran the best pick and roll in the league. Up until that time, probably in the history of the league!” said Hubie Brown, longtime TV analyst who had begun his pro head coaching career that season with the ABA champion Kentucky Colonels. “Mainly because you had Barry, one of the great scorers in the league coming off the screen, and then when Clifford would roll, he had great hands and he could finish in the paint. Rick Barry never missed a free guy when a guy was cutting to the basket.”
Said Barry: “I told Clifford I thought we could do wonders with the pick and roll. We had used it with Nate Thurmond, and Clifford was willing to come out and work on it.
I almost throw up now when I hear broadcasters say, ‘Wow, what a great screen so-and-so set.’ Men, you don’t ’set’ screens. … It’s the big man’s responsibility to put himself in the right position, at the right angle, where his teammate can run his man into him. That’s what Clifford and I did.”
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[Al Attles], the Warriors coach, has a fondness for that group behind the hardware it won. “Every coach should have at least one team like that,” he said Friday in a phone interview. “They reminded people of a college team. We had that kind of camaraderie. Nobody was concerned about who did what. All they wanted was to win.”
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“Clifford knew that I had a great bark but not much of a bite,” Barry said. “I was very demanding about things because I wanted to win. I guess he recognized that some of the guys were getting on edge about me being on them.”
Said Attles: “Rick was one of those players with an unwavering need to succeed. What they do goes against the grain sometimes of people.”
Ray, relatively new to Barry but clicking with him off the court as well as on, asked Attles and assistant Joe Roberts if he could hold a meeting. “They all looked up to me for some reason and I was the new guy,” Ray said. “I figured I might as well speak my mind. So I asked each one of them, ‘Can anyone in this room average 30 to 40 points a night, other than this man right here?’ Of course nobody could raise their hand. ‘So if you come in here and he’s sitting up on the [trainer's table] reading the paper, maybe because he needed the rest, why would you think he thinks he’s better than you, when he’s doing for you every single night?’
Read the whole article: NBA.com: Clifford Ray: Big man 35 years ago, big man now
