Collision Course

by William Cook

  BC athletic director Bill Flynn told the press, “Cousy’s departure would mark the end of the finest basketball era ever at the heights.”16

  In the last home game that Bob Cousy would coach, before a packed house of 4,500, Terry Driscoll scored 28 points and grabbed 17 rebounds as Boston College upset NCAA-bound and 9th ranked Duquesne, 93–72. It was BC’s 16th straight victory.

  Senior forward Terry Driscoll was having the best year in his Boston College career averaging 23.3 points per game and was the third leading rebounder in the nation.

  Boston College finished the regular season 21–3, ranked 16th in the final AP poll. Now Bob Cousy would close out his college coaching career in the NIT at Madison Square Garden in his hometown of New York.

  Boston College was a fine fast-break team and played reasonably well on defense, but the tallest player on the squad was 6′7″ Terry Driscoll. The three losses that BC had during the season where against St. Johns, Villanova, and Northwestern, all three which had very big, bruising players up front.

  In the first round of the NIT, Boston College faced Kansas. Going up against the Jayhawks, the Golden Eagles were at a distinct disadvantage in height. The Jayhawks’ front line consisted of 6′10″ center Roger Brown, 6′8″ forward Gregg Douglas, and 6′9″ forward Dave Robisch. In addition, they had 6′3″ guard JoJo White, who averaged 18.1 points per game.

  But the Golden Eagles were determined to give Bob Cousy a glorious send-off. BC quickly discovered that while Kansas was taller and stronger, they were slower. So Cousy used a fast-break offense to take a 58–44 lead with 12 minutes left in the game. But when Terry Driscoll fouled out, it left BC completely vulnerable underneath the basket, and Cousy pulled a page out of Ed Jucker’s playbook that he had used at Cincinnati to defeat Ohio State twice for the NCAA championship, telling his players to stall the ball and force the Jayhawks to come out and get it.

  But Kansas didn’t budge, and as BC guards Billy Evans and Jim O’Brien dribbled away minutes on the clock, the crowd at Madison Square Garden began to boo. With the clock running down, Kansas finally went after the ball and began to foul. It was too late, and Boston College won the game 78–62.

  Bob Cousy had been a fast-break player and coach during his entire basketball life and his use of the stall really annoyed some people, including the Jayhawks’ coach Ted Owens who immediately advocated a 30-second shot clock for college basketball.

  Next up for Boston College in the quarterfinals was Louisville who they had beat in a memorable triple-overtime game in the 1966 NIT. The game turned out to be a wild one with two ejections and a fight. The Gardens crowd of 12,605 screamed and yelled and loved every moment of it. The tempo of the game had been fast-paced and very determined by both teams.

  With 16 minutes left to go, the score was tied at 50–50 when two reserves, Ed Lionis of Louisville and Vince Costello of Boston College, started slugging it out under the basket after a fast-break play. Both players were ejected, and each team was awarded two technical free throws.

  With 22 seconds left, the winner was still in doubt with Boston College leading 83–79. But thanks to a great game by Terry Driscoll, who had 29 points and 22 rebounds, the Golden Eagles survived to defeat the Cardinals 88–83.

  The game had been such an emotional affair for Billy Evans, who had tied an NIT assists record with 13, that at the final buzzer he broke down in tears. It was the 18th straight victory for Boston College.

  Bob Cousy was very aware that both Kansas and Louisville, the two teams his Golden Eagles had just beaten, were superior to his team and the driving force behind the Boston College team’s hyper-motivation was, “let’s win for Cooz and send him out in a blaze of glory.” Cousy’s team wanted to do for him what St. Johns had done for legendary coach Joe Lapchick, giving him a going away present by defeating Villanova in the 1965 NIT.

  Boston College moved on to the semi-finals against Army, coached by future iconic Indiana coach Bobby Knight, who had defeated South Carolina 59–45.

  Cousy decided to scrap his man-to-man defense and use a zone defense and, in effect, play Army’s game. After leading at halftime, 42–40, Boston College shot an incredible 80% in the second half, led by Ray LaGace, who came off the BC bench and scored four crucial shots to defeat Army 73–61. Once again, Terry Driscoll led the Golden Eagles in scoring with 28 points, and he now had a three-game total in the tournament of 78.

  In the other semi-final, Temple, coached the last 17 years by silvered-haired Harry Litwack, overcame a five-point deficit with six minutes left to defeat Tennessee 63–58 to set up the first all-Eastern NIT Final in four years.

  A huge crowd of 17,437 was present for the NIT Final and to give Bob Cousy his send-off, and millions of others watched on TV. But it was Temple that played like their coach Harry Litwack was retiring as the Owls spoiled the Garden party for Cousy, defeating Boston College 89–76 and ending their 19-game winning streak while forcing 13 BC turnovers.

  It was 6′5″ senior John Baum, who had been recruited by Harry Litwack after he saw him play for a business college in Philadelphia, that led the way for Temple, scoring 30 points as the Owls dominated the Golden Eagles under the basket.

  Terry Driscoll scored 18 points and had 16 rebounds for Boston College. Driscoll had scored 96 points in the tournament and was named MVP. Following the game, Driscoll sat in the Boston College dressing room with a towel over his head with tears in his eyes.

  Terry Driscoll would be taken in the first round of the 1969 NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons and subsequently play seven years in the league with Detroit, Baltimore, and Milwaukee, then play one year in the ABA with St. Louis and close out his career by playing one year in Italy.

  At the final buzzer, there were tears everywhere in Madison Square Garden, tears for the Temple Owls and Harry Litwack, tears for Boston College, and tears for Bob Cousy. When Cousy was called out to center court to accept the NIT second place award, the crowd gave him one last huge roar and Cousy began to weep. Even BC cheerleading captain Jane Egan was crying. “We wanted so much to win for Cooz,” she said.17

  In the middle of the postgame awards ceremony, the entire Temple Owls team walked over to the Boston College bench and shook hands with Bob Cousy.

  Then, Cousy walked to the Boston College dressing room and stood outside the entrance addressing reporters. He praised his team and commented on Terry Driscoll’s future in pro basketball. When asked if he might coach a professional team next season, he stated that he doubted it. But he added, “I have two NBA appointments and one with Arthur Brown who owns the New York Nets in the other league. I’ll have lunch with all of them and there will probably be luncheon dates with plenty more people in pro basketball. I never turn down a free lunch.”18

  Bob Cousy was followed by Chuck Daly as coach at Boston College, but immediately the program began to experience a downturn in winning. After two unsuccessful seasons, Daly left to accept the head coaching position at the University of Pennsylvania.

  11

  No Room in Cincy for Cooz and The Big O

  After starting 20–9, the 1968–69 Cincinnati Royals finished with a record of 41–41. Ed Jucker had used a laissez-faire approach to coaching the Royals. Players had a lot of freedom to do want they wanted. They voted on what time practice would start and, on the road, moved from city to city separately or in small groups. Often, players cut by Jucker were informed by the team trainer. There were cliques among the players, and around the league, the Royals’ scouting and draft procedures were considered laughable.

  In Buffalo, Max Jacobs was getting antsy. Unlike his late father Louis, Max Jacobs was just as interested in winning as he was in selling hotdogs in Cincinnati Gardens. With more money coming in from the deal the NBA had signed with ABC in 1964, player’s salaries were increasing and so was fan interest, and the value of NBA franchises was on the rise. Jacobs was keenly aware of the fact that in 1965 Bob Short had sold the Los Angeles Lakers to Jack Kent Cooke for $5,175,
000, and more recently, Marjorie Brown and minority owner Lou Pieri had sold the Boston Celtics for $3,000,000.

  In 1968–69, the Royals had drawn an average of 4,065 fans per home game. Max Jacobs was confronted with a team that was underachieving with fan interest slipping year-by-year in the Queen City and facing a challenge from the ABA that was not to be taken lightly. The ABA Indiana Pacers, located 100 miles west from Cincinnati, were outdrawing the Royals, Jacobs needed to make changes.

  In early May 1969, although he had a year remaining on his three-year contract, Ed Jucker, under pressure from owner Max Jacobs, resigned as coach of the Cincinnati Royals.

  About the same time, Bob Cousy, who had resigned as coach at Boston College, entered into a cloak and dagger scenario using the code name “Emil Vudak” to negotiate with Max Jacobs for the vacant coaching job of the Cincinnati Royals.

  In late March, while Bob Cousy was in New York coaching Boston College in the NIT, he received a telephone call from George Mikan, then commissioner of the ABA, asking if he would be interested in coaching the New York Nets. Cousy met with the Nets and they made an offer to him which he turned down.

  Then, Cousy got a call from an editor for the Boston Record-American telling him to call Max Jacobs. At the time, he didn’t know who Jacobs was, but when he learned that Max Jacobs, along with his brother Jeremy Jacobs, were the owners of the multi-million-dollar Emprise Corporation and also owned the Cincinnati Royals, he contacted him. Max met with Cousy in New York and Worcester, and at each meeting, he offered him more to take the Royals job. When Max raised the total of the compensation package to $100,000 a year for three years with the money being invested for him, Cousy came to the conclusion that if the market went up, he would be set financially for life.

  Nonetheless, Cousy went to see Red Auerbach who advised him to wait as he thought Bill Russell might retire after the season, then he could have the Celtics job. But Cousy knew that in taking the Boston job there was only one place to go—down. The press would have been harsh in their criticism and the Celtics didn’t need a “name coach.” They already had all the prestige they could handle. Cousy thanked Red but decided he had to seriously consider the offer from Max Jacobs. He had a $100,000 offer and didn’t have to make an immediate commitment, but after a few weeks of ruminating on the matter, Cousy contacted Jacobs and said yes.

  Although Cousy and Jacobs had attempted to keep their negotiations secret, reporters were starting to follow up on leads. The day before Max Jacobs hired Cousy, he told a reporter from the Cincinnati Post that he had never met with Cousy and he anticipated that Ed Jucker would return as coach of the Royals.

  On May 9, at a quickly arranged press conference in the Cincinnati Club ballroom with about fifty members of the media in attendance, Max Jacobs announced that Bob Cousy would be the new coach of the Cincinnati Royals. Max also apologized to the reporter he had misled saying that he was under pressure to get the negotiations completed.

  Bob Cousy, along with his wife Missie and their youngest daughter Tricia, had flown into Cincinnati the night before and were all present for the formal announcement by Max Jacobs that Cousy had been hired.

  Max Jacobs stated that hiring Bob Cousy was part of the program designed to revamp the Royals’ image. When Jacobs was asked if trades were possible, he replied, “That as it applies to the players, is the business of Bob Cousy. That as it applies to the front office, is the business of Joe Axelson. I’m going to step back and get back to the rest of my business.”1

  In addition to Cousy, Jacobs also hired Joe Axelson to replace Pepper Wilson as Royals vice president and general manager. Axelson was born on Christmas Day, 1927, in Peoria, Illinois. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1949, then joined the Army, serving in the Signal Corps, where he did some coaching. For the past ten years, Axelson had been employed at the collegiate level administering athletic programs for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

  Although Joe Axelson had no professional basketball experience, and Cousy, while one of the all-time great professional players, had no professional administrative experience, Max Jacobs granted them autonomy in making all decisions for the team.

  It was a move by Max Jacobs that clearly exposed his lack of knowledge in running a professional sports team. At the very least, the Cousy-Axelson administration would require a learning curve, and that meant that major mistakes were highly possible.

  Bob Cousy had maintained that when he retired from coaching at Boston College, he had no intention of returning to coaching. But when he started receiving offers from ABA and NBA teams, he reconsidered. That was his story and he was sticking to it. What Cousy failed to mention was that Max Jacobs had just made him the highest paid coach in professional basketball. While Cousy said that his salary was $100,000 a year, the press knew that Cousy had been given a sweetheart deal by Max Jacobs; the New York Times estimated that it was $150,000 a year and that in addition to high salary and stock options, he had been promised player-control and trade authority.

  A lot of people were shaking their heads when informed of Cousy’s hiring. It just didn’t seem like a good fit. Bob Cousy, a lifelong easterner and pro basketball legend who probably could have had any job in the game back in the east that he wanted, suddenly packing up his family and coming to the edge of the Midwest to coach basketball. As it turned out, it was all about money and going forward, even Cousy would jest that he was overpaid. For those meager 4,000 but fiercely loyal Cincinnati Royals fans that still went through the turnstiles of Cincinnati Gardens, Cousy’s arrival would be bad news in the making.

  Both Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas were present at the news conference and expressed opinions on Cousy’s hiring. Oscar Robertson reinforced that reasoning. “I had no idea whatsoever Bob would get this job,” said Robertson. “With a person of his caliber, we ought to play to sell-out crowds next season.”2

  Jerry Lucas felt that as Bob Cousy was a former player, he would have an advantage as a coach over one without that experience.

  The bottom line on Max Jacobs’ reasoning for hiring Cousy was that with his name, he had the potential to attract fans for his sagging franchise.

  The fallacy in Jacobs’ reasoning was that he already had two of the biggest names in professional basketball playing on his team, Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas, and fans weren’t knocking the doors down at Cincinnati Gardens to see the Royals play.

  When Jacobs hired Cousy, there was immediate speculation as to how he would interact with his old NBA rival Oscar Robertson. Previously, the relationship between the two had been competitive, player vs. player. Now, with Cousy the coach and Robertson the player, that relationship would be asymmetric with Cousy in control, and some wondered if it would lead to conflict.

  When asked how he thought he would interact with The Big O, Cousy gave a vague reply, “I haven’t had that much exposure to him. I don’t know how our personalities will blend. I do know every player who gives 100% can take advantage of me. Oscar has always shown me he’s always done this.”3

  Oscar Robertson was of the opinion that all of his past rivalry on the court with Cousy was yesterday’s news. It had been a professional relationship and he couldn’t conceive of any grudges or issues carrying over from their playing days. What was there left for Cousy to prove? If anything, The Big O felt he and Cooz would be able to merge their skills and experience and the team would benefit greatly from the strategy they formed.

  At that point in time, Robertson was concerned with the more recent decisions that the previous Royals management had made. He felt that Ed Jucker had lost control of the Royals and that the team lacked bench strength. Robertson also was critical of outgoing general manager Pepper Wilson’s first round draft pick that had just occurred in April when he passed up former University of Cincinnati standout forward Rick Roberson in favor of guard Herm Gilliam of Purdue.

  Robertson was also quick to point out that since he had
joined the Royals in 1960–61 only two of their first-round draft picks had made the team—himself and Jerry Lucas.

  But in retrospect, the shocking reality for Oscar Robertson was that he was about to experience with Bob Cousy the worst interaction he’d ever had with any coach in his career at any level; high school, college, or professional.

  Cousy came to Cincinnati with a mindset that he had to recreate the Cincinnati Royals in the Boston Celtics image. In order to be a winner, the Royals needed to be a fast-break, running team with a hard-nosed defense like what he knew from his playing days in Boston. He wanted to keep all five men moving purposefully. In Oscar Robertson, he had the best middle-man in the game to accomplish it. Cousy also felt that the Royals needed to use their bench more.

  Even today Jerry Lucas is quick to point out, “The Royals already had a fast break offense when Cousy took over as coach.”4 That was a fact, but they didn’t use it much.

  Under Ed Jucker, the Royals had used an offense that was slow and deliberate with a lot of picks and screens and a defense that had a tendency to slough off and concede outside shots to opponents in order to prevent layups. It was very similar to the game plan used by the Cincinnati Bearcats’ George Smith when Jucker was an assistant coach.

  But Oscar Robertson felt the Royals needed to run more. “I think that pro ball is all running,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to shoot jump shots all night and win. I think our style had been all wrong.”5

  It begged the question, where was Cousy going to go with the style of play he expected from the Royals? Critics of Cousy’s intentions to remake the Royals’ offense pointed out that he had two of the game’s best men at handing off the ball to someone who can score—but who would that player be that could score at will?