Forty years after being hired, Dick Vitale recalls tenure as Pistons head coach
(Top photo: Detroit Pistons file)
Thomas Neumann - The Athletics
May 1, 2018
LAKEWOOD RANCH, Fla. — It’s a Monday morning, and Dick Vitale is following up his daily workout with a stack of newspapers and his usual breakfast at Another Broken Egg Cafe: strawberries, apple slices, blueberries, bananas, decaf coffee and water with lemon.
It’s no secret that Vitale is a regular customer, and fans come to eat here all the time just so they can shake his hand, take a picture and get an autograph. A husband and wife from Michigan come up to say hello. They met him here years ago and wondered if they might see him again.
“Why don’t we go back to The Broken Egg where Dick Vermeil was?” the wife recalls suggesting to her husband.
“Vitale,” the husband says, politely correcting her.
“It’s OK,” Vitale says with a wide grin. “My wife has called me worse.”
After the ensuing laughs, the man says he remembers Vitale as the head coach at Detroit Mercy, even though he attended Michigan.
“We beat Michigan in my first season,” Vitale points out, as if he’s contractually obligated to do so.
In a way, he is. The basketball court at UDM bears his name, after all, and his success in four seasons piloting the Titans helped pave the way for a legendary broadcasting career.
In between, however, there were 18 bleak months as coach of the Pistons. He compiled a 34-60 record, guiding a team beset by injuries. For an emotional coach who took every loss especially hard in college, it was an unsustainable situation.
“I had so many dark moments,” Vitale admits. “It was a real tough time. I couldn’t handle losing.”
On May 1, 1978, the Pistons held a news conference at the Silverdome to introduce Vitale as the team’s new head coach. The Detroit skyline appeared on the video board — never mind the 30-mile distance from Pontiac. The visual was accompanied by sounds of drums and bugles, a nod to columnist Joe Falls, who’d used that exact description in suggesting the hiring of Vitale weeks earlier. Then a cannon blasted a massive cloud of white smoke. Vitale emerged from behind a curtain, and a large banner reading “Detroit Pistons ReVITALEized” was unfurled.
A new era was underway.
“I want to thank the Pistons for giving me the greatest opportunity of my life,” Vitale told reporters. “I vow and I pledge that we will play with intensity, with enthusiasm and with feeling. We’ll give an honest effort. … I wish we were tipping off right now.”
It was a heady time for Vitale, and who could blame him for being giddy?
In 7 1/2 years, he’d gone from teaching sixth grade and coaching high school ball in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to being a head coach in the NBA. Pistons owner Bill Davidson more than tripled the salary Vitale was earning as coach and athletic director at Detroit Mercy. At age 38, Vitale signed a three-year deal reportedly worth $100,000 per season, plus a blue Cadillac Eldorado.
“My career was exploding,” Vitale said.
Still, you can take the coach out of college, but you can’t take college out of this coach. Heading into training camp in Ann Arbor, each Pistons player received a T-shirt that read, “Detroit Pistons. I pledge an honest effort.”
It’s difficult to give any kind of effort in street clothes, though, and two key players were limited by injuries. Future Hall of Fame center Bob Lanier played in just 53 games due to knee problems, and the starting power forward from the previous season, John Shumate, missed the entire year with a blood clot on one of his lungs. The team didn’t have enough depth to offset those losses.
Vitale brought New Jersey coaching acquaintance Richie Adubato onto his Pistons staff,
and Adubato later succeeded him as head coach. (Detroit Pistons file photo)
Vitale tells a story of his depleted club struggling against the Lakers.
“Jabbar is sky-hooking left and right, dominating us,” Vitale said. “Lanier was sitting to my left in probably a $1,000 suit at the time. John Shumate is in his street clothes. And Lanier whispers to me. He goes, ‘Coach, I figured out our problem. We’ve got no inside game.’”
At one point during his first season with the Pistons, Vitale took his wife, Lorraine — they’ve now been married 47 years — on a road trip to Texas and the West Coast. She saw his mood swings as the team went 0-5, flying commercial in those days and taking the first flights out of town in the mornings after late games.
One bright spot was the play of point guard Kevin Porter, who averaged 13.4 assists per game in 1978-79. Only one player in NBA history not named John Stockton has a better mark over the course of a season — Isiah Thomas at 13.9 in 1984-85.
The Pistons were streaky under Vitale in 1978-79. They put together a pair of four-game winning streaks. They also twice lost six in a row and five in a row. To end the season, they lost eight of their last nine. Despite a 30-52 record, the team averaged 9,510 fans per game in its first season at the Silverdome, nearly doubling the attendance from 1977-78 at Cobo Arena.
That offseason, Davidson engineered a bold move in acquiring three-time former NBA scoring champion Bob McAdoo from the Celtics. But the Pistons had a young roster overall, including three rookies with regional ties: Greg Kelser out of Michigan State, Phil Hubbard from Michigan and Terry Duerod, who’d played for Vitale at UDM.
Following a 4-3 start to the season, the Pistons went on a five-game losing skid. A 115-107 home loss to the Atlanta Hawks would be Vitale’s last game in Pontiac. The team had regressed, and after just 12 games, the ax fell.
Vitale dials up a play in the huddle during a game at the Silverdome.
(Detroit Pistons file photo)
Vitale remembers the exact date he became ex-coach of the Pistons: Nov. 8, 1979.
He recalls Davidson coming to his home at 5264 North Pebblecreek Road in West Bloomfield Township to deliver the news. Sitting at the kitchen table, Davidson told Vitale that a coaching change had to be made but asked him to stay with the team in a front-office capacity. Unable to picture himself in any role other than on the sideline, Vitale declined.
For Vitale, who had won in each previous stop at the high school and college levels, the inability to immediately rebuild the Pistons was uncharted territory.
“It became a tough situation,” Vitale said. “I couldn’t … handle … losing. Losing ripped me apart. Patience was not part of my personality. Mr. Davidson ended up having no choice.”
Nevertheless, the two men who conversed at the kitchen table that day would go on to become Hall of Famers, coincidentally inducted together in the Class of 2008 at Springfield, Massachusetts.
“The Pistons are not a very bright spot on my résumé, obviously,” Vitale said. “But I was honored and thrilled to say I coached in the NBA.”
Now 78, Vitale remembers his days in Michigan fondly for the most part. He enjoyed a lot of good times there, even if some folks got up close and personal.
“People would knock on the door for pictures and what-not, and I accommodated them,” Vitale said. “So word gets out I’m an easy hit, and we weren’t in a gated community, either.”
There was the glorious 1976-77 season at Detroit Mercy. Led by John Long and Terry Tyler, both of whom would later play for Vitale with the Pistons, the Titans went 25-4. They beat Michigan State and Arizona that year and defeated eventual national champion Marquette on a Dennis Boyd buzzer shot in Milwaukee. The Titans eventually lost to No. 1 Michigan in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, 86-81 — “an incredible game that went right down to the wire,” Vitale said.
He recalls going to Tigers games and getting to know some of the players. He would open up the UDM gym for Mark Fidrych and Ron LeFlore to work out. Later, he became friends with Sparky Anderson, who would set him up with tickets right by the visitors dugout at Tiger Stadium.
Vitale publicly offered Fidrych a basketball scholarship during the Bird’s magical 1976 season. Fidrych was asked about the offer by reporters, but said he was sure the move was strictly for publicity. However, Fidrych also mentioned he’d been a good basketball player in high school and might be tempted to accept if a good auto mechanics course was available. (Surely, he was joking. Maybe. It was Mark Fidrych, after all.)
So was it a stunt? Or a legitimate offer?
“Half and half,” Vitale says with a smile. “If he called my bluff, I probably would’ve taken him.”
Stylish as always, Vitale surveys the action.
(Detroit Pistons file photo)
If you can imagine this, Vitale introduced Lanier to the music of Neil Diamond.
“We went with Bob and his wife to see Neil Diamond in concert at Pine Knob Music Theatre,” Vitale said. “He initially said, ‘Who’s Neil Diamond?’ We went and saw the show, and he said, ‘This guy was phenomenal!’ He had Bob dancing in the aisle.”
At training camp in Ann Arbor heading into his second season with the Pistons, the Wolverines were preparing to host Notre Dame in football next door at the Big House. To mark the rivalry, Vitale offered to cancel the back end of a double practice session if Hubbard and Shumate, a Notre Dame alum, were willing to sing their school fight songs for the team.
“They got up and sang, and the guys were going crazy,” Vitale recalled. “Pro athletes acting like little kids.”
Vitale always has time for his fans, including Michigan students in attendance at this year’s Final Four. (Robert Deutsch/USA TODAY Sports)
Asked for a single enduring memory of Michigan, he mentions the blue-collar fans who supported his teams during the highs at Detroit Mercy and the lows in Pontiac.
“They love their sports teams,” Vitale said. “They welcomed me like you couldn’t believe. They appreciated my work ethic. … They take care of their people. If you’re an athlete in Detroit, and you’re successful, or a coach, they will not forget you.”
Vitale landed on his feet, of course. Less than a month after his final game with the Pistons, on Dec. 5, 1979, Vitale provided color commentary for the television broadcast of a Wisconsin-DePaul game. It was his first assignment for a fledgling cable sports network called ESPN. The rest, as they say …
These days, when Vitale isn’t calling games, he’s raising money and awareness for the fight against pediatric cancer — and when he calls it an obsession, it’s not hyperbole.
He takes out a flyer for his annual fundraising gala. It bears photos of 16 children, each of whom lost his or her fight against cancer. One of them is Chad Carr, grandson of former longtime Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr. Vitale knows their names, their families and their stories. He attends the funerals. He tears up when he talks about them. The cause is deeply personal.
“I get to know these kids, and it becomes part of you,” Vitale said. “I relate to them, because this could be my grandkids.”
He knows the statistics, too. Of all the monies raised to fight cancer, only 4 percent is devoted to pediatrics. To Vitale, that’s unacceptable. Inspired by a Lakewood Ranch girl named Payton Wright, he began holding an annual gala fundraiser in 2006 in hopes of finding a cure. He expects to raise $3.5 million next week at the 2018 event, where Michigan coaches Jim Harbaugh and John Beilein are among the dozens of sports celebrities scheduled to attend.
Even though his efforts are approaching the $25 million mark in funds raised for pediatric cancer research, it isn’t enough. He continues to campaign for donations to the V Foundation. He sells autographed books and merchandise on his website, giving 100 percent of the proceeds to research.
He never stops evangelizing and sharing the stories. He never stops caring.
“I will not stop until my last breath,” Vitale says. “I’ve promised kids that, and I will live that until I die.”
Thomas Neumann is a Florida-based journalist.
He is a former writer and editor at ESPN and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Follow Thomas on Twitter @tnn95
Commenti
Posta un commento