Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  But when it came time to play the Bulls, Price had to sit out with that hamstring muscle. We started Ehlo and Harper, and we just weren’t the same team. Chicago upset us in the opener, 95-88. Price returned, but it was obvious that he wasn’t 100 percent. He just didn’t have that explosiveness when he tried to make his dribble moves to the basket. Nor did he have the lift on his jump shot. A pulled hamstring cuts the legs out from under a player. But we won two of the next three games, making the series 2-2.

  That set up the fifth and deciding game at the Coliseum. It remains one of the best games in NBA history, picked as one of the Top 50 ever by ESPN. What most people remember is the final six seconds. The Bulls had a 99-98 lead, and we had the ball. I called timeout and set up a play.

  This is the only time in my coaching career that I can say we ran an out-of-bounds play that worked too well, that was too good. Craig Ehlo passed the ball in and threw it to Nance. The plan was for Ehlo to cut to the basket, and if he was wide open, Nance should throw him the ball. I doubted that he’d be open, and we had other options. But no one even bothered to cover Ehlo. He passed the ball to Nance, broke to the basket, took a return pass from Nance and made a layup.

  Cavs 100, Bulls 99.

  The problem was there were still three seconds on the clock as the Bulls called timeout. Later, Ehlo would say, “I wish I was like Michael and I could have hung in the air for three seconds before I made that layup.”

  Ehlo played a lot of small forward for us that day, and he should have been the hero. He had one of the best games of his career, scoring 24 points.

  But there were still three seconds left, and the Bulls still had Michael Jordan. During the timeout, I had to decide how we should defend Jordan. You didn’t need to be Red Auerbach to know the ball was supposed to end up in his hands.

  I had a choice: defend Brad Sellers as he passed the ball in-bounds and guard Michael with one man; or put two men on Michael and let Sellers have an open look as he passed the ball in-bounds.

  I picked the second, because I didn’t want Michael to end up with the ball.

  This is one of the few times in my career where I’ve watched the video of a play over and over and over. I assigned Ehlo and Nance to stay with Michael. As the ball was handed to Sellers, Michael took a step as if he were going to set a pick to free Pippen. For a split second, Ehlo hesitated as if to follow Pippen, who was cutting across the floor. Then Michael slipped past Ehlo, shook Nance, caught the pass, drove to the top of the key—and swished a jumper as the horn blared.

  I’ve never heard 20,273 people so painfully silent. It was one of those times when you could hear a heart break. We were all just stunned, staring in disbelief as Michael and his teammates celebrated on our court. A lot of Cavs fans believe if we had won that game, we would have gone on to an NBA title. I doubt it, because Detroit was the champion that year, and the Pistons were in their prime with Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Vinny Johnson, and Bill Laimbeer, while we still had those injuries to Price and Nance. But over the next few years, we would be something very, very special. We were still a young team and we had time on our side.

  In November 1989, Ron Harper was twenty-five years old. He had played with the Cavs for three years, averaging 19 points, shooting 47 percent, and even soaring for 5 rebounds per game from his shooting guard spot. He was six-foot-six, two hundred pounds, and on the verge of becoming an All-Star. Ron was a special player to me because he came to the Cavs as a talented but free-spirited player; as a rookie, he came within 10 turnovers of a league record. But Ron wanted to become a great player, even if he wasn’t sure how to do it. More important, he was willing to listen, to watch film, to admit that he didn’t know everything. That’s the key to a young player growing into a guy who becomes a respected veteran, which is what Harper became by the end of his career. If we were ever going to beat Michael Jordan in a playoff series, we needed Harper’s athleticism. He was about the same size as Michael, nearly as quick, and jumped almost as high. He wasn’t Michael, but he was good.

  Which is why I never would have traded him—and why I was shattered when the Cavs did. Especially when we ended up with Danny Ferry, who wasn’t a shooting guard, in return. His best position was power forward, and that was the last thing we needed because we already had Larry Nance and John Williams.

  So why trade Harper?

  Late in the summer of 1989, I began hearing stories about Harper, that he was running around with some questionable characters in some places where he shouldn’t have been. The people telling me these things made it sound as if Ron was about to be handcuffed and led away at any moment.

  I remember talking about Harper to a guy who was working in private security.

  “Did you ever see him sell drugs?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Did you ever see him use drugs?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “So you saw him at this nightclub, but you saw some other athletes there, too, right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So we’re really talking about guilt by association,” I said. “Ron knows the guy who owns the club, and the guy is suspected of dealing drugs, or hanging out with drug dealers, right? It’s just guilt by association.”

  “It is,” he said. “But we have reason to believe…”

  But the guy could never give me any proof.

  Yet the stories continued to swirl. They reached Cavs owner Gordon Gund. This was at a time when the Cleveland Browns had a player who was arrested at a crack house. One of the TV news shows had the bust on tape, the guy led out of the house in handcuffs, the policeman grabbing the player by the back of the head and shoving him into the back of a squad car. It was a very embarrassing moment for the Browns as everyone saw it on the 11:00 P.M. news. The last thing the Cavs wanted was that kind of public-relations fiasco, which is why the rumors about Harper alarmed them.

  Ron played seven games for us at the start of the 1989-90 season. He was averaging 22 points, and I noticed no problems with him. He was always on time. His personality seemed the same. His eyes were clear, he was attentive. I’ve been around players with drug problems, and you can tell if a guy is a heavy user. His attention span is nil. He tends to be late. He lets little things slide. But Ron was exactly the same as he’d always been.

  Still, Gordon Gund was worried, and he called a meeting. I sat in a room with Gund, Embry, Cavs player personnel director Gary Fitzsimmons, and Dick Watson, the team lawyer. They would not allow me to bring my assistant coaches into the room.

  “This is about Harper,” said Gund. “We’ve got to get rid of him.”

  “I really don’t want to trade Ron,” I said, just repeating what I had already mentioned to them before when the rumors first arose.

  “I want the SOB out of here!” Gund screamed, and that shocked me. I had never heard Gordon yell like that. He also dropped an obscenity into the sentence, and I’d never heard him swear. I had never seen him so agitated.

  Even Gund seemed a bit stunned because he was quiet for a moment, the silence hanging over the room.

  “Listen,” he said, “if you guys don’t make the trade, I’ll make the trade.”

  Then he stared hard at me.

  Remember, Gund is blind. But he also makes a point of knowing where everyone sits in a room, so he can look right at them as he talks.

  “Gordon,” I said, “it’s your team. You can do what you want. But I’m the coach, and it’s my job to win games. Ron helps us—”

  “Can you guarantee that he’ll change?” Gund said, interrupting me.

  “First of all, I don’t understand all that,” I said. “Secondly, only God can change people, and I don’t know that Ron is that bad.”

  “Well, I’ll handle it,” he said.

  “It’s your team,” I said. “If you feel that’s what you have to do, then you have to do it.”

  That ended the conversation. A few days later, Harper was traded to the Los
Angeles Clippers along with two first-round picks for the rights to Danny Ferry and guard Reggie Williams.

  After the deal was made, Harper told the Akron Beacon Journal, “They traded me because they didn’t like my friends.”

  That was pretty much the truth. Ron had grown up in Dayton, in the inner city. Some of his friends had done time in prison. That’s true of many NBA players who come from that kind of environment. Ron also was still a young man, just twenty-five, and still maturing. I’m sure that at the age of thirty-five, he probably doesn’t go to the same places or see all the same people he did at twenty-five. But he never was in any trouble, never indicted or charged with anything, and was never a problem for any of his coaches.

  That’s why the trade hurt so much.

  And I also had this sinking sense that whatever chances we had of winning an NBA title left town with Ron Harper. Not because he was our best player, but Harper joined with Price, Daugherty, Nance, and Williams to give us a great team. With Ron gone, we had to start Craig Ehlo, who was a role player. I had been around the NBA long enough to know how rare it is to find a player with Harper’s talent, and I doubted we’d have another one in Cleveland in the near future.

  I don’t fault Embry for this. Wayne was put in a tough spot. When word came out that we were interested in trading Harper, it was a red flag to every team in the NBA. They couldn’t figure out why we’d trade such a great young talent; then the rumors surfaced, and the trade offers dried up. Embry always liked Ferry, a six-foot-ten forward from Duke who had refused to sign with the Clippers, instead taking a $2 million deal to play in Italy. Embry was still looking for a small forward, and he hoped Ferry could fill the spot. I saw Danny in college and I thought he was a good shooter, but not a great one. My real concern was his quickness. He was six-foot-ten, and how was he supposed to defend small forwards? And I knew he wasn’t good enough to start at power forward for us because he lacked the strength and the rebounding skills.

  But the front office fell in love with Ferry. They saw him as the next Larry Bird. Publicly, they didn’t say that, but I heard conversations to that effect. In the press release announcing the trade, the Cavs said they had to wait a season for Ferry to finish his contractual obligations playing in Italy. The press release also said, “Boston waited a year for Larry Bird. San Antonio waited a year for David Robinson. We think Danny Ferry will be worth the wait.”

  Then they gave Ferry a whopping ten-year, $33 million contract, which made him the highest-paid player on the team. I could never figure out why they paid Ferry so much. Yes, he was in Italy, and he could play another year in Europe, but everyone knew Ferry wanted to return to the United States; the only reason he went to Italy was that he didn’t want to play for the Clippers, which was the worst franchise in the NBA. Yet the front office acted as if it was negotiating against someone who was going to take Ferry away, and they emptied the vault. I’ll never understand that. As a coach, I’m not consulted on contract matters for players—which is fine with me. That’s the domain of ownership and the general manager. But a coach has to deal with the consequences of a contract, especially a monster one given to a rookie who I wasn’t sure really fit on our team. To the credit of our players, they didn’t hold the money against Danny. We had an exceptional group in that regard, just wonderful people. The front office also reworked the contracts of some of our key players, trying to placate everyone. But none of them had a contract that was as rich or as long as Ferry’s, and that was a fact. In a situation like that, the coach is supposed to play the guy as much as possible so the team can have a return on its investment.

  The first alarm bells went off the summer before Danny joined the team. I was invited to lunch with this coach from Italy, and I brought my assistants—Dick Helm and Brian Winters—along. As we were talking, the Italian coach said, “Danny Ferry can’t make your team.”

  I about fell out of my chair.

  “I’ve watched him play all the time in Italy,” said the coach. “I know your team, too. I’ve seen them on TV. Ferry can’t beat out Nance. He can’t beat out Hot Rod Williams. He’s not a small forward. I don’t see where he can play for you.”

  My assistants and I just sat there, staring at him, our lunches growing cold in front of us. I was in a state of utter disbelief. I wasn’t sure how good Ferry was, but I thought he’d help us.

  “Well, it’s too late now,” I said. “The deal is done.”

  But the coach turned out to be exactly right.

  The front office wanted me to play Danny at small forward. But he came to camp with a knee problem left over from Italy. He played, but he couldn’t move and it became very obvious that he would not be able to defend against the six-foot-seven pure athletes who usually play small forward. I had him on the floor about twenty minutes a game during the exhibition season, but his defensive problems were glaring. He was in constant foul trouble. While he made some shots, he didn’t seem to be an outstanding shooter. And he was saddled with that incredible contract and the tag of being “The Next Larry Bird,” which just made the situation worse.

  In retrospect, Ferry came to the worst possible team for him. His best spot was power forward, where we were already strong. He was under the spotlight because of the magnitude of the trade and the contract he signed. Then, we were playing Ehlo at Harper’s old spot—and it was clear we missed Harper terribly. Harper was scoring 20 points a game for the Clippers, although he did suffer a major knee injury. Nonetheless, he came back to remain a very potent scorer, and we never did replace him at shooting guard in my time with the Cavs—at least, not with a player of his talent. And some of that blame fell on Ferry, because he was sitting on our bench while Harper was putting up big numbers in Los Angeles. The front office wanted me to find time on the court for Ferry, but I wouldn’t bench guys who were better than Danny just to make the front office happy: If a coach does that, he loses credibility in the dressing room with the players. I will give Gordon Gund and Wayne Embry credit for this; they allowed me to use Danny as I saw fit. Yes, they wanted him to play, but they never demanded that I play him. They respected me enough to let me use the players the way I thought best for the team, and that had to be hard for them because they were taking so much heat from the media and fans over the trade.

  Danny Ferry is an excellent person, a dedicated worker and a useful NBA player coming off the bench. That’s why he lasted all ten years of his contract with the Cavs. Yes, the contract made him hard to trade, but in the final few years with the Cavs, Danny had learned how to help a team by making some outside shots, passing the ball, and playing solid team defense. He never pouted. He never just sat on his money. He had one year where he averaged 14 points for the Cavs, and another season he was at 10 per game. That was in the late 1990s, after Nance and Williams had left the team. But he’s just a player of average ability who averaged 8 points, 3 rebounds and shot 44 percent for his career. His outstanding character did enable him to handle all the pressure he was under with grace.

  Despite the Harper trade, we had some terrific years in Cleveland. The best was 1991-92, when we won 57 games in the regular season, then beat New Jersey and Boston in the playoffs to reach the Eastern Conference Finals. We lost to the Bulls in six games, and there was no dishonor in that. Some people talk about my time with the Cavs and say, “You couldn’t get by the Bulls.” No kidding. Who did get past Michael Jordan? In the last six full seasons that he played, Michael’s teams won NBA titles.

  I’m proud of the teams we had in Cleveland. Daugherty developed into an All-Star center. Nance was an All-Star power forward, Price an All-Star point guard. Our teams played so smoothly, so unselfishly, I felt privileged to coach them. We were entertaining, from Price’s long-range shooting to Nance and Williams blocking shots. Purists loved the way Daugherty passed the ball from the high post, or moved down to the low post and dropped in old-fashioned hook shots. They always talk about John Stockton and Karl Malone as being the epitome of how two guys sho
uld run the pick-and-roll play, and they are great—but in their prime, Price and Daugherty could match them. Their two-man games were a thing of beauty.

  Our players lived year-round in the community and were seen in local churches and shopping malls. The fans embraced us because they liked the fact that we not only won games, but had good people and we never embarrassed them or the franchise. As time has passed, those teams in the late 1980s and early 1990s have become even more appreciated by Cavs fans because the team has tailed off since, as those players retired or were traded. In 1988-89 and 1991-92 we won 57 games, the most in franchise history. In 1992-93, my final season with the Cavs, the team won 54 games, which is the next-best record in franchise history.

  Some fans and writers complained that we were a “soft” team, a finesse team. This was in the era of the Bad Boys, the Detroit Pistons who threw elbows and body checks as much as they did passes. The Pistons were the team that caused the NBA to bring in many of the strict rules the league now has against fighting, because they tried not only to beat you, but beat you up. And it was true, we weren’t a physical team like Detroit. But how soft can a team be when it wins 57 games, or goes to the Eastern Conference Finals? I get tired of good people and good players like David Robinson or Brad Daugherty being labeled “soft.” It’s just not in their nature to knock a guy down and step on him. But a lot of so-called physical players develop that style because they don’t have the skills of Robinson or Daugherty. Four times in my seven years in Cleveland, our teams were in the top six in NBA defense, so we must have been doing something right. I remember some guys writing and saying the reason we didn’t win some titles was we didn’t have a Rick Mahorn-type player.

  I think the real reason was that we just happened to come along at the same time as Michael Jordan.