The Kevin Gamble Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Monday, May 9th, 2005
You
transferred from Lincoln to Iowa for your junior season, but didn't play much
under head coach George Raveling. That all changed under Tom Davis – you led
the Hawkeyes to a 30-5 record and the NCAA tournament regional finals. Please
take me back to your two seasons at Iowa. What was this experience like for
you?
It
was a great experience to be a part of a great university like Iowa. That first
year was fun away from the court, but on the court it was very disappointing.
Not that we didn’t get along, but Coach Raveling and I didn’t always see
eye-to-eye. He didn’t see me as the player that Coach Pickering saw me as, or
that my high school coaches saw me as. I was primarily a guard/forward in high
school. I played guard at Lincoln College. But once I got to Iowa, Coach
Raveling saw fit to play me at power forward, with guys like Eddie Horton, Brad
Lohaus, and Al Lorenzen. Lohaus was a seven-footer. Eddie Horton was 6’8”, and
probably weighed 260 pounds at the time. Al Lorenzen was 6’8”, 250. And I was
playing the same position at 6’6”, 205. So it was very disappointing. I wish I
could have red-shirted that year. I think I averaged a total of six minutes
per-game that year, so it was very disappointing in terms of athletics.
When Coach Davis came in, he met with us and said that we were starting with a brand new slate. He said that nobody had positions, and that you had to go out and earn your playing time. I ended up winning two positions on our ball club – the two guard spot, and the small forward position. I primarily played the two – shooting guard – for Coach Davis, and he’s probably the main reason I had a chance to make it to the NBA. I did have a pretty good senior season and a pretty good tournament, and because of that I ended up being drafted by Portland in the third round of the 1987 NBA Draft.
Perfect
lead-in to my next question. You were drafted by Portland in the third
round, but waived after only nine games. That set into motion stops in
Detroit with the Pistons, the CBA, and even the Philippines. Please tell me
about this period in your life.
Early
on I was just trying to define myself , to see where I fit in. My stint
with the Portland Trailblazers was a good one – I could tell that I could
fit, that I could play in the NBA. I gained a lot of confidence playing
with Terry Porter, Clyde Drexler, Jerome Kersey, Kevin Duckworth and guys
like that. Being a rookie, I basically held my own. They had a couple of
guys injured to start the season. John Paxson was out, and so was their
first round pick, Ronnie Murphy. So I made it through training camp and
made the ball club. I think the team knew that I was good enough to play
NBA ball, but unfortunately for me, it turned out to be a numbers game.
They weren’t going to cut their first rounder, and they weren’t going to cut
a veteran like John to keep a rookie like myself. So it boiled down to a
numbers game there in Portland. Coach Adelman was there as an assistant to
Mike Schuler, and those guys told me that I was good enough to play in the
NBA. They told me to not give up, to hang in there, and that sooner or
later I would get my chance to show that I could play pro ball. So even
though I was released, it was a very good time for me.
From there, I ended going to Detroit that next summer. They had drafted Fennis Dembo from Wyoming in the first round of the 1988 NBA Draft, and they had also brought in a couple of free agents. I played well in that camp also, but again, they already had their players picked out. They had Bill Laimbeer, Dennis Rodman, Isiah Thomas, Adrian Dantley, Vinnie Johnson, Joe Dumars, Rick Mahorn and John Sally. So I knew that it was going to be hard to make that ball club. That same summer I went to the Milwaukee Bucks’ mini-camp. I thought played well there, but for whatever reason I didn’t catch on.
It was
disappointing not being able to stick in the NBA, but I just kept busy
playing basketball. I played a full season in the CBA after being cut by
Portland – I think I averaged 20 points and 8 rebounds-per-game – and had a
successful season. Everyone that I talked to said the same thing: In order
to play NBA basketball, I had to learn to play great defense. So that’s
what I worked on while playing in the CBA. I expected to get a mid-season
call from an NBA team, but it didn’t work out that way. That’s how I ended
up in the Bucks’ camp in ’88. Back then they had a small camp in Milwaukee,
and then a bigger camp in Los Angeles if you made it through that one. I
wasn’t one of the guys selected to go out to L.A., so that’s when I went over
to the Philippines. I was there for a month. It was a good experience – I
was able to see a different part of the world – but it just wasn’t my cup of
tea, so to speak. I came back home, and that’s when I rejoined Quad Cities
of the CBA. I think I played twelve games for them, and I averaged close to
30 points-per-game during that stretch. And that’s when I got the call from
the Boston Celtics.
On
December 15th, 1988, you were signed to a contract by the Boston Celtics.
Ironically, it was an injury to Larry Bird that led to you joining the
team. How did you find out the Celtics were interested, and what was it
like joining the team for the first time?
Ron
Grinker – my agent out of Cincinnati, Ohio, who is no longer with us –
called me up, and said that I had two teams that were interested in me. One
was the Portland Trailblazers, who wanted me back, and the other was the
Boston Celtics. At the time I knew that I was going to be called up, but at
the time the Celtics were the last team that I thought would ever call me.
There was no particular reason for that feeling, but with all the history
and championships, and with the roster that they had at the time, I just
didn’t think that they would want me. Ron said that those were the two
teams that wanted me, so we sat down and talked about it. I finally decided
against Portland because of the way things went there the first time
around. I just made up my mind and said, ‘Let’s go to Boston.’
I immediately got on a flight and went to Boston. The first day of practice I walk out there, and the guys are already on the court. I’m shaking in my boots a little bit, but it’s easy to understand why: You look at the other end of the court, and you see Kevin McHale. You see Larry Bird. You see Dennis Johnson. It’s like, ‘Wow.’ It didn’t feel like I had arrived; it was more a need to show these guys that I could play. Practice proceeded, and those guys welcomed me with open arms. I introduced myself. Of course, you probably know some of the stories about McHale and Danny Ainge – the two jokesters on the team – and I think it was Danny who pointed out that the Celtics suddenly had two Kevins on the roster. And when I told them that my last was Gamble, Danny’s eyes lit up. Danny had played professional baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays, and one of his teammates had been a guy named Oscar Gamble, who had also played briefly for the New York Yankees. So Danny started calling me Oscar. The nickname stuck with me for the rest of my career with the Celtics.
