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The Don Nelson Interview

Written By:  Michael D. McClellan | Don Nelson is enshrined in the Hall of Fame as a coach, and rightly so; the winner of 1,335 NBA games sits alone atop the list of all-time great coaches, collecting more Ws than legends like Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, and Greg Popovich. He wins the NBA Coach of the Year Award three times, conjures the point forward into basketball lexicon, and introduces the world to “Nellieball,” an alien concept during the NBA’s center-centric ’80s but all the rage in the small-ball world we live in today. At Golden State, he mixes his small lineup with a run-and-gun attack, emerging from his laboratory with something the press dubs “Run TMC” and leading the Warriors to a 23-game turnaround from the previous season. Yes, Don Nelson—“Nellie” to the basketball world—should be in the Hall of Fame as a coach. But lost amid the coaching savant narrative is a baller who wins five NBA championships, three with Bill Russell and two with Dave Cowens, and whose leprechaun-aided jumper crushes the Lakers hopes and helps Russell walk away a champion.

Surprisingly, a young Don Nelson nearly bypasses a playing career altogether, setting his sights on coaching long before taking that first gig with the Milwaukee Bucks in ’76. Who knows how many wins he would have racked up had he decided not to play in the NBA. But then again, Nelson, who joins the Celtics in 1965, would have never played for (and learned from) one of the game’s greatest.

“Red wanted to speed up the pace and dictate how the game was going to be played,” Nellie says. “We spent countless hours practicing it in the gym. He would drill into our heads why the fast break was so important, reiterating the mechanics that made it successful . . . the rebound, the outlet pass, the finish. It was my first year on the team and Red’s last as coach. For me, it was a master class.”

Born in Muskegon, Michigan, Nelson gets his first taste of hoops on his family’s Illinois hog farm. Nelson’s family loses the farm when he’s in the sixth grade, and his father takes a shop job in the farm implement industry. They move to Rock Island, Illinois, and it’s here that Nelson begins spending time at the local YMCA, learning to play the game.

“I went out for my seventh-grade team and got hooked on basketball,” he says. “When I was a sophomore at Rock Island High School, the head coach thought that I was good enough for the varsity team. I sat on the end of the bench my first year. I started as a junior, and the next year I made All-State.”

His success gets him noticed. He ultimately signs with Iowa.

“Iowa’s head coach, Bucky O’Connor, recruited me. I signed a letter of intent, and then Bucky was killed later that summer in a tragic automobile accident. Sharm Sherman was appointed head coach. He came down to Rock Island and watched our games, so he knew what he was getting. It made for a natural transition.”

At Iowa, Nelson scores 1,522 points and averages 21.2 points-per-game from 1960–62, leading the team in scoring and rebounding all three seasons. He’s named first-team All-Big Ten and second-team All-American as a senior.

“Somebody at the University of Iowa knew somebody who worked for the Chicago Zephyrs, and they asked if I wanted to play pro ball,” Nellie says. “I was actually going to be Sharm’s assistant coach, but that conversation got me headed in another direction. I figured I could always fall back on coaching if a playing career didn’t work out. I was drafted in the third round that year.”

The Zephyrs begin NBA play in ’61 as the Chicago Packers, the nickname a nod to the city’s meatpacking industry. (Today the team is known as the Washington Wizards.) After one season in Chicago, Nelson is acquired by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1963, starting out on the other side of the NBA’s greatest rivalry.

“I only played one full season for the Lakers, before I was waived midway through the 1964–65 season. That’s how Boston picked me up. I was a backup that first year with the Lakers. We ended having a bunch of injuries—Elgin got hurt in the playoffs, and Jerry West averaged 44 points to get us to the Finals. Boston killed us. The next year I got waived because the Lakers had this hotshot draft pick named John Fairchild. I remember he had a really good exhibition game, and the next day they waived me and kept him. Ironically, Fairchild never made it in the NBA, and I went on to have a pretty good career.”

The Lakers waive Nelson 39 games into the 1964–65 campaign. The reserve forward is averaging a paltry 2.4 points and 1.9 rebounds. He figures his NBA experiment is over.
“In those days I didn’t have an agent, and I didn’t know if any other teams even had my number,” Nellie says. “I was home for a couple of weeks when I got a call from Red, who was looking for a player. They’d drafted Ronnie Watts from Wake Forest, but he didn’t pan out the way that they’d hoped, so they were looking for a guy who could play. It was either going to be Jackie Moreland or me from the Detroit Pistons. They chose me, and to this day I don’t know why. It only cost the Celtics $1,000 bucks. I flew into Boston, but the season had already started, and the team was on a road trip. I signed my contract and then I went to my hotel room and waited for four days. I listened to them on the radio.”

Nelson averages 10.2 points and 5.4 rebounds while appearing in 75 games during the 1965–66 season, Auerbach’s last as head coach. In the 1966 NBA Finals, the Celtics beat the Lakers 4–3, sweet revenge for a player the Lakers deemed expendable.

“It was my first championship, so it was special,” he says coyly. “I’ll just leave it at that.”

Over the next several seasons, Nelson continues his role as valued bench contributor. “Red started the Sixth Man trend with Frank Ramsey. John Havlicek was the Sixth Man when I got there. A few years later they moved him into the starting lineup, and that’s when I became the Sixth Man. It’s a role I played for about six years, and then somebody else took my place.”

The Celtics’ streak of eight consecutive championships comes to an end in 1967, but the team rebounds to win again in ’68. A year later, an aging Bill Russell carries Boston back to the Finals, where they face Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, and the heavily favored Lakers. The series is deadlocked after six games, Game 7 in Los Angeles. Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke orders purple and gold balloons harnessed at the top of the Forum, to be set free as soon as the last second drain from the clock and an entire city exorcises the Ghosts of Celtics Past.

The shot that beats the Lakers that night leaves Nelson’s hands from the foul line, hits the back of the rim and bounces straight up, an impossibly high trajectory for a midrange jumper. It hangs in the air for what seems like days, before falling through the basket.

“A lot has been written about that game,” Nellie says. “I hit the lucky shot that probably won the championship—I shot it so poorly that it hit the back of the rim and it went way up in the air, and it came down and went straight through the basket. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, because Havlicek was dribbling the ball and had it poked out of his hands. It came straight to me. We were up a point when that shot dropped, so that basket definitely helped us hang on to win that game. The Lakers didn’t release those balloons. They’re probably still up there today [laughs].”

Bill Russell and Sam Jones walk away after that championship, and Auerbach hires Tom Heinsohn to lead the rebuilding process. Jo Jo White arrives via the 1969 NBA Draft, and a year later Dave Cowens is selected out of Florida State.

“Red Auerbach drafted a great player that year in Dave Cowens, but at the time we really didn’t know what we had,” Nellie says. “I met Dave early that summer after he’d been drafted. He came to Boston to get comfortable with the city . . . We’d go to the YMCA every day and work out. I could tell how good he was going to be, but at that time he was a rookie and didn’t know a lot. We played one-on-one all the time, and he couldn’t beat me, no matter how hard he tried. Two months later I couldn’t beat him.”

With a nucleus of Cowens, White, and Havlicek, and with Nelson providing valuable minutes off the bench, the Celtics return to win the 1974 NBA Championship, beating the Milwaukee Bucks in seven games.

“Tommy Heinsohn made a key strategic decision at the beginning of that series,” Nellie says. “Tommy wanted to use Oscar’s age to our advantage. He decided that we were going to press Oscar full court and try to wear him out over the course of the series. The press would make it harder for him to bring the ball up the court, and the Bucks would have to start their offense deeper in the shot clock—which meant they couldn’t get the ball into Kareem’s hands as easily. We picked him up full court using Don Chaney or anybody else we had. We ended up beating them in Milwaukee, which was my first title without Bill Russell. It was a pretty special moment for me because I was part of a completely new group of champions.”

Two years later the Celtics win it all again, defeating Phoenix to claim the team’s 13th banner. The series will forever be remembered for Game 5 in Boston Garden, a triple-overtime affair that ranks as one of the best games ever played.

“That game had everything. The Boston Garden was so hot that Tommy Heinsohn had an episode with his blood pressure. We jumped to an early 20 point lead, but the Suns came back and forced overtime. That’s when Paul Silas called a timeout that we didn’t have. Referee Richie Powers was supposed to call a technical foul on that play. If that technical had been called, Phoenix would’ve had a foul shot to win the game. Everybody on the Suns’ sideline was pissed!

“We had a three-point lead with 15 seconds left in the second overtime, but Dick Van Arsdale scored a bucket, then Paul Westphal made a steal, and Curtis Perry followed his own miss to score a basket and put Phoenix up by one point. With four seconds left, Havlicek dribbled down the left sideline, made his cut, and hit a 15-foot bank shot.

Everyone thought the game was over because the shot was at the buzzer. Hundreds of people stormed the court to celebrate. The referees ruled that one second remained on the clock. Eventually, the court was cleared, and that’s when Westphal called the timeout that the Suns didn’t have. We were up by a point, and while the foul shot gave us a two-point lead, it also allowed the Suns to inbound the basketball at half court. That’s when they designed a last-second play for Garfield Heard, who made a jump shot over me at the top of the key. It was a little out of his range, but he made it anyway and put us into triple overtime.

“Glenn McDonald rarely played for us that season, but because of all of the foul trouble he had to play big minutes in the third overtime. He responded by scoring six points to help us secure the win. It was without a doubt the craziest game that I ever played in.”

Nelson retires following that ’76 championship, his fifth with the team, and dives headlong into coaching.

“I learned everything that I knew about coaching from Red Auerbach,” Nellie says. “Not only did I play for him, we struck up a friendship, and he became a close personal friend. Before every home game I would have my pregame meal in downtown Boston, and then I would show up at the Garden early and talk basketball with Red for an hour. I learned so much just listening to him—how he handled the players, his coaching philosophy, things like that—and I basically adopted most of what he imparted. Over time I added a few my own wrinkles, and I ended up becoming a pretty decent coach.”

While Nelson’s genius is unquestioned, he’s quick to remind us that it’s Auerbach who was ahead of his time.

“People call me a genius and I cringe,” he says. “Red used to play the smalls against the bigs in practice to get everyone fired up. When we played full court games, the bigs never won. They were ineffective because they couldn’t handle the basketball, and that gave the smalls an advantage. When we played half court, it worked out the other way. The smalls couldn’t stop the bigs. I think I get more credit than I deserve about a lot of things. I don’t think of myself as a coaching genius. All I did was use a small lineup with a team that didn’t have very good big men, and I was very successful with it.”

Although he doesn’t win an NBA crown as a head coach, Nelson strikes gold at the 1994 FIBA World Championships.

“That was the hardest thing I ever did as a coach because the Dream Team had just won the gold medal in the 1992 Olympics. I was coaching Dream Team 2. The criticism came if we didn’t win by 20 points every time out, so it wasn’t just about winning the gold medal. It’s a good experience to look back on, but it was a tough one to go through.”

Nelson retires in 2010, his coaching career capped by those 1,335 wins and three Coach of the Year trophies. His résumé might not include an NBA championship, but he could care less. His only regret is not pursuing the Celtics head coaching job when Bill Fitch is fired, which ends up going to K. C. Jones instead.

“I felt a loyalty to the Milwaukee Bucks because they had been so good to me,” Nellie says. “Looking back, who knows, maybe I should have been more willing to make that break and pursue the Celtics job. But I have no complaints with the way things worked out. If you write my epitaph, I would be very happy if you just said that Don Nelson was a good guy and a pretty good coach.”

Michael McClellan
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