Rudy Hackett isn’t a household name among basketball fans. Born in the poor African American neighborhood of Mount Vernon, New York, he was a right-handed forward at Syracuse University who played with the ABA Spirits of St. Louis in 1975–1976, and split the next year between the NBA Nets and Indiana Pacers.
With the Orangemen varsity team, Rudy was a bona fide star, his name high on its all-time scoring and rebounding lists. As team co-captain in his senior year, he led them to the NCAA Final Four tournament.
When I joined the Nets in 1977–1978, Rudy was out of the league. For one reason or another, his natural abilities did not translate to the NBA. It happens with many great college athletes.
In 1979, Rudy began playing professionally in Italy, where basketball was a highly popular sport. He would spend a decade in the Italian leagues. I met Rudy in the summer of 1980, during my period of recovery in Santa Monica.
He was the hardest-working player I ever saw. I always thought I prepared with greater intensity than anyone. I was wrong. Rudy broke the mold. He taught me how to train at a whole new level.
That year, Rudy was back in the United States playing with the Southern California Summer Pro Basketball League—now known as the Summer Pro League. It was a league where young up-and-comers looking to hone their skills, or unaffiliated veterans looking to stir up interest in their availability as free agents, could showcase themselves on teams sponsored by NBA ball clubs, led by NBA coaches, and officiated by NBA referees.
There were three games a night, five nights a week. At forty minutes long, the games were shorter than the NBA’s. But the rules were identical and there was a high caliber of play.
Four or five months after checking into St. John’s for treatment, I signed up for the SoCal Summer League. I wasn’t the type of player you’d normally see on its rosters. Most of the guys were hoping for a spot as an NBA team’s tenth or eleventh man. Billy Ray Bates, Larry Demic, and Brad Holland were some of the guys playing that year.
I was a star forward in my prime. I’d gone toe-to-toe with Julius Erving. Not once, but for two full seasons.
I’d also made some terrible mistakes. I knew I still could be one of the best players in basketball. But first I needed to win back the league’s respect. I had something to prove, like when I’d been a kid playing with the older players, demonstrating I should be on the court.
I committed myself to achieving that goal… to resurrecting my career, whatever it took. Besides playing summer basketball, I started working out at Pete Newell’s camp for forwards and centers—his famous Big Man Camp. Newell had been one of the great college coaches in the game during the 1950s and 60s, led the men’s U.S. basketball team to a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics, and was general manager of the LA Lakers when they traded for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He had a well-deserved reputation as a master of footwork in the low post and on the wing position.
It took Newell a little while to warm to me. He’d heard stories about my problems off the court and had been hesitant to even let me attend camp. But he spoke to some players who knew me personally and changed his mind.
Camp ran for a week or two, and one of the guys with whom I became friendly was Kiki VanDeWeghe. A small forward, Kiki was a star of the UCLA Bruins under Larry Brown from 1976 to 1980. He’d been a top pick for the Dallas Mavericks in that summer’s draft, but would be traded to the Denver Nuggets later in the season.
I didn’t have a car in California, so Kiki used to drive to my apartment and give me a lift to camp. Later on, we practiced at the UCLA gym with other NBA players in the Summer League. Kiki had grown up in the area and still lived with his family. Sometimes after our sessions with Pete Newell, he’d bring me over to have dinner with his mom and dad.
It was a time of healing and rejuvenation for me. Mentally, I’d never felt healthier. I hadn’t had a drink since Utah. You take things day to day with alcohol problems. It was too soon to declare I’d beaten them. But I felt I could and was making great strides in my recovery.
My training with Rudy Hackett laid the groundwork for my return to the court. Every morning, I would bicycle out to the UCLA campus and meet him for workouts. He always took the lead. We’d run the steps at Drake Stadium, do sprints on its track, train on the soccer field. I never lifted weights during my career, but kept him company in the weight room. After we had a bite to eat, I’d hop on my ten-speed again, pedal home, get an hour’s rest, and then ride back out to Santa Monica on the bike path, going past Venice Beach and the Pacific Ocean to the marina with its sailboats and motor yachts.
I couldn’t have chosen a better place to be noticed than the SoCal Summer Pro League. The games were at Cal State, Dominguez Hills, in the South Bay area, a half hour’s drive from UCLA on the freeway, and only minutes from the Big Man Camp in Long Beach. I remember an LA newspaper article that said you’d see more NBA scouts and coaches in the stands than spectators. I’m not sure it was meant literally, but it seemed that way to me. There were executives, too. General managers, team presidents, even owners.
When I wasn’t playing in a game, I would sit in the stands and take notes about what was happening on the court. I wanted to demonstrate my seriousness about reviving my career, and knew people were watching me carefully.
One of those individuals was Al Attles.
Al was a former point guard who’d spent his entire playing career with the Warriors, then become the team’s head coach and general manager in 1970. With pioneers like Bill Russell and Lenny Wilkens, he was among the first African American coaches in the NBA.
Everyone respected Al—fans, players, coaches, executives. As a competitor, he’d been as tough as anybody in the game. His background as a professional athlete gave him an understanding of what made them tick. But he also held a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and knew how to run and organize a team. Knowing both sides of the game firsthand made him a perfect bridge between ownership and talent.
Al and Pete Newell had a friendship that went back years. Besides running the Big Man Camp, Newell had been a longtime advisor for the Warriors. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard it was his idea to change the name of the franchise from the “San Francisco” to “Golden State” Warriors when they moved across the bay to Oakland.
After the first few days of Summer League, Al was there for every game. I saw him, but didn’t know he’d come especially to see me perform. I was on a tear that would earn me MVP of the league, and Newell had phoned him and said he’d better get down to Dominguez Hills before somebody else made an offer to the Jazz.
Al didn’t waste any time contacting the Warriors’ owner, Franklin Mieuli. They were building a team to compete for a championship and wanted me to be part of it.
But there was only one problem.
I was still under contract to Utah and would be for another year.
AL ATTLES HAD A PLAN for rebuilding the Golden State Warriors. Not over many years, but within a season or two.
When he’d begun thinking about how to do it, Al didn’t have to check out other teams’ blueprints for success. He could look straight back over his shoulder and see the answers in his own footsteps.
In 1974–1975, Al had coached the best Warrior squad in memory to a 48–34 regular season finish and then swept the Washington Bullets to win an NBA Championship. The next year, the Warriors surpassed their previous season’s win total by going 59–23, but lost to Phoenix in the conference finals.
There was a steady decline over the next three seasons. In 1979–1980, the Warriors’ 24–58 record sank them to the bottom of the Pacific Division.
People didn’t talk about hustle stats in those days. But the team’s numbers for rebounds, free throws, and inside scoring couldn’t have been worse. They weren’t stopping anyone from scoring points or capitalizing on opportunities under the basket.
Al realized he’d made some mistakes putting together his recent squads and went back to the drawing board using his 1975 championship team as a model. It had been led by Hall of Famer Rick Barry, a well-rounded player who could score and defend, and was one of the highest percentage free-throw shooters ever to play the game. The center, Clifford Ray, wasn’t in the lineup to put up points, but nobody in the league could out-rebound him. Jamaal “Silk” Wilkes, the other starting forward, was known for his agility and soft hands. On defense, he buzzed opponents like a wasp with his speed and nimbleness. On offense, he was always ready for a pass.
The team was like that from top to bottom. Barry drew the spotlight because of his scoring ability. But he was surrounded by steady, unselfish role players.
Al envisioned getting back to that kind of game and was already on his way to accomplishing it. He’d brought in some solid rookies using a combination of high draft picks and trades, but still needed one or two experienced guys.
After seeing me in the summer league, he’d decided I could fill Barry’s role of primary scorer and bring added defensive and low-post ferocity to the floor. He was also eyeing another move—a trade for the Jamaal Wilkes of his new team.
That player turned out to be one of my old buddies from Brooklyn, World B. Free. World was born Lloyd Bernard Free and legally changed his name in the 1980s, but “World” was always his nickname. Some people say he earned it when he did a 360-degree dunk in junior high school. Some say it was because he could score from anywhere around the court.
I don’t know how it got started, but I’d called him by that name since we were twelve or thirteen in the playgrounds. He was flashier than I was and loved to dunk the way honeybees love flowers. Some coaches thought he hogged the ball. I’d played with him before and knew we could work together without problems.
A couple of weeks before trading for me, Al acquired World from the San Diego Clippers in a two-player deal. I’m not sure when I heard about it. While Al was focused on rebuilding the Warriors, I was rebuilding myself.
There’s a saying that the past is another country. That was how I felt about Utah. I didn’t want to go back there. I couldn’t go back there. I was sober and in a good place and wanted to be traded.
When I went to the Warriors for power forward Wayne Cooper and a draft pick, I was as happy as I’d been the day I was drafted into the NBA.
I knew it was my last chance and did not intend to waste it.
BASKETBALL IS ALL ABOUT COMPETING, and not only against other teams. You compete for jobs, playing time… everything. As a competitor, you need a cold-blooded mentality. You need to be clear on what you want to achieve and pursue it with absolute, unswerving determination.
I wasn’t guaranteed a starting role on the Warriors. Purvis Short had been the starting forward for a couple of years, and Al wasn’t about to just hand me his job.
I’d been a starter since I was a teenager. In high school, the youth leagues, Tennessee, and with two NBA teams. I still intended to be one. But I had to prove I deserved it. I had to compete.
The very first day of training camp, I destroyed Purvis in an intra-squad game. Completely outplayed him. Several of his friends were in the gym. They left in the middle of the scrimmage, and I can still see them marching out the door.
Ouch.
The next day, I became the starting small forward.
I knew I’d flat out embarrassed Purvis. I hadn’t really wanted to. But I’d really wanted to.
I’m sure if you asked him about it, Purvis would tell you he’d have done the exact same thing to me.
That’s the NBA.
I WAS ACCEPTED by the Golden State organization with open arms. No one questioned my past. No one brought it up. Players, coaches, and management made it known right off that they were glad I was there.
Al set the tone early on. He made me feel I was finally where I was supposed to be.
“A lot of people are giving me credit for all this ‘last chance’ stuff, but I think that’s garbage,” he told the press. “It’s Bernard and World who deserve the credit. We’re just the recipients of their talent.”
I can’t speak for World, but I was grateful to Al. Joining Golden State was more than my last chance as a professional athlete. It rekindled something I had lost: My love of the game.
I can’t stress enough how different playing with love is from playing strictly with passion.
When you play with love, there’s joy.
For the first time in my life, I had a measure of inner peace.
We had a great bunch of guys on the team. Joe Barry Carroll and Rickey Brown were rookies who came over in a deal with the Boston Celtics. Golden State had traded for draft picks that they used to sign Carroll and Brown, and the Celtics got Robert Parish, a veteran center, and a draft pick they turned into forward Kevin McHale from the University of Minnesota.
Let’s pause here to examine that trade.
Joe Barry was a durable seven-footer who averaged over 20 points and 9 rebounds a game in his four years with the Warriors. Rickey was a versatile center-forward off the bench.
I loved playing with them. But Red Auerbach, the Celtics’ general manager and head coach, must have had one hell of a poker face to match the thick Cuban cigars that were always poking out of his mouth. With Parish and McHale joining Larry Bird on Boston’s front court, he’d locked his hand around a championship dynasty.
But I’ll get back to the Celtics. I don’t want to take anything away from Golden State, or fail to recognize the team’s impact on me.
Our players had incredible chemistry. I felt it in training camp, and you can’t bottle that. A team either has it or doesn’t. And if you have a talented team, chemistry, and guys who want to play every single night and are willing to be unselfish, if you have all that and you’re well coached—I don’t want to overlook what Al’s soft-spoken encouragement meant to us—then you have everything it takes to go far in the league.
The Warriors were a transition team. We ran. We opened the floor up and we ran.
I was up for it every night. Lorenzo Romar was our rookie point guard. He was drafted out of Washington State, where he eventually returned to become head coach of the Cougars before moving on to an associate coaching position in Arizona. In my first year with Golden State, the veteran John Lucas started at point, and Lorenzo got limited minutes. But he moved like a colt, and I’d have fun sprinting down the court with him.
Lorenzo was quick with a wisecrack and a smile, a very likable guy. I kind of took him under my wing, and we developed a locker room routine before games.
I’d say, “I’m running tonight, Lorenzo. I’m running!” Pumping my arms to illustrate.
Lorenzo would make a face. After a while, he’d see me coming up to him and beat me to the punch.
“I know, B. You’re running. You’re running!”
Lorenzo and I were good friends. Before road trips, I occasionally invited him to my place for dinner. Afterward, we would drive to the airport together.
I was also close to my Brooklyn brother, World B. Free. But we were never above some friendly competition. World was a deadly scorer. That was his forte and his role on the Warriors.
Once, at practice, World shouted, “I got the rebounds. Bernard’s our wing guy. Leave the rebounds to me, and I’ll get the ball to him.” He grinned. “Run B!”
World knew I loved to rebound. To position myself under the basket when someone took a shot, follow that shot, and dunk it.
I could have compared my rebounding and scoring stats to his, but for the sake of team chemistry, I let him lead until January. Besides, I loved a challenge.
During the intra-squad scrimmage, I waited to go up against him, outfought him for the rebound, beat him down the floor in a fast break, and made the layup to score.
We both laughed. It was like that between us.
But I can’t talk about rebounds without mentioning Larry Smith. A power forward from Mississippi, Larry was another team rookie. As the season wore on, Al kept increasing his time on the floor, mostly because of his amazing rebound totals.
We called him Mr. Mean. I think he got that nickname in college because he never smiled, on or off the court. But it wasn’t that he was unhappy. He was just quiet and serious about his rebounds. He’d pull one down and you’d see satisfaction in his eyes.
Larry was amazing. He used to say he was a “hard workin’ workingman.” Maurice Lucas and Kermit Washington were the two best power forwards in the league back then. I may have gotten 30 points on a Friday, and 50 against Dr. J on Saturday. But Larry grabbed 25 rebounds back-to-back nights against Kermit and Maurice, the two best power forwards in the league. Unbelievable!
It seemed like Larry beat me to every rebound. Not that I ever complained. I got a kick out of watching him work. He was the most dominant rebounder I ever played alongside.
Larry was fearsome in the paint, but when we traveled to New York for a game, he wouldn’t leave his room other than to go to the arena. Larry came from a town called Rolling Fork, population two thousand. The big city scared him to death. Guys would stick around the hotel to play cards with him. We were a close-knit bunch.
I’d socialize a lot with the guys during home stands. That wasn’t the case when I was on the Nets, or with any other team I played for. Rickey Brown and I would spend afternoons in the park with our girlfriends; we’d all grab ice cream cones and toss around a Frisbee. Joe Barry Carroll shared my appreciation for music, and we sometimes went on double dates. I remember driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco, hitting the jazz clubs, then enjoying seafood dinners in the harbor.
The scenery was breathtaking. I’d bought a new car and would drive over the bridge to Sausalito after every practice, soaking in the beauty around me. I can still picture the low green hills climbing above the harbor in shelves, million-dollar homes perched on their edges like Monopoly pieces, houseboats floating off the piers below. The glints of brilliant sunlight on the water reminded me of sequins on a woman’s gown.
I loved the Bay Area. I’d gained a sense of who I was. This does not mean I’d dug down to the root of all my problems. Some things can’t be solved overnight. But I was no longer on a self-destructive course. My recurring visions of a premature death were behind me. After moving to California, I never had them again.
In my first year with the Warriors, I felt we had one of the most talented rosters in the league from top to bottom. We had our share of losses. But even with three rookies on the team, we were in every game. We’d rarely get blown out.
We would have made some noise in the playoffs. We played our hearts out for Al Attles and had all the ingredients to make a run. Nobody wanted to face us.
We were in the hunt late into the season. The Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs had locked up the top spots in the Western Conference, and we were one of eight or nine teams scrambling for the last four berths.
On March 18, 1981, we hosted the Houston Rockets for one of the biggest games of our season. We were two-and-a-half games ahead of them in the standings, with eight left to play. The Rockets had one less game than we did on the schedule.
John Lucas was our starting point guard. For years, he’d been one of the best, a truly outstanding player. Lorenzo Romar and a few others had rotated as backups all season, but John provided the veteran leadership we needed at that position.
Unfortunately, he didn’t show up that night. John had already missed five games during the season. We were all aware he was struggling with personal issues.
John and I both loved soul food, and we occasionally went out to eat at Lady Esther’s restaurant in downtown Oakland, where the Southern cooking was second only to my mom’s—and she’d long since hung up her iron skillet. Otherwise, I saw very little of John off the court; our lifestyles were very different.
His absence against Houston made things difficult. The Rockets had defeated us the week before in their arena and were looking to overtake us. Their two best players were Calvin Murphy, an All-Star, at point, and Moses Malone in the center position. Calvin was near the end of his career and pushing to go out with a bang.
We didn’t know what happened to John. Nobody in the organization could find him.
I think Houston smelled blood.
The game was close. We ended the third quarter with a 92–84 lead, but Houston made a run in the fourth and we couldn’t stem the tide. They won by a single point, 117–118.
Both teams left the arena alive in the Western Conference, but the game foretold how we’d wind up in the standings.
The Rockets finished with a record of 40–42. We were 39–43. They beat us by a single game to make the playoffs.
Yes, I know. Neither team had a winning record. But guess what?
The Rockets went all the way to the NBA Finals, defeating the Lakers, the San Diego Clippers, and the Kansas City Kings before losing to the Boston Celtics in the championship round.
I had a long career with many successes. But some things will always sting, and missing the playoffs by one game is one of them.
I never would have guessed it would happen again the very next season.