Interview with Adolph Rupp

RUPP: And the contact, of course, is the thing that I then started hollering about. Because, a screen, we always talked at every coach's meeting, what is a legal screen? Well, a legal screen is a screen where you impede the progress of another player--of an opponent, without contact. In other words, I come to you and you have to decide which way you're going, but there's no contact. I just impede your progress.

RICE: Right.

RUPP: You got it?

RICE: I got it. That's what had me, because back--

RUPP: Now then, the South made contact. They used contact. And then I had to get that straightened out with them.

RICE: You know, back then before the war is Dan Tehan and Bowser Chest, Ben Chapman, and that bunch. And they were whistling quite a bit.

RUPP: Yeah. Well, Ben Chapman especially. My God, he was almost impossible. He called everything whether he imagined it or didn't. I tell you. I sat down, because I was on the rules committee, and the things that I liked about things then, many times before a game, the two officials would come and--

[Pause in recording]

RUPP: --to them just exactly what the rules committee had said. And, in that way, I think I had a tremendous influence on the officiating in the Southeastern Conference by virtue of the fact that I was on the rules committee.

RICE: Do you think it was just a matter of those people not being educated? I know we--

RUPP: That's right.

RICE: --you said where you have a guy that worked in the factory, or sold books, or whatever he did, sold the insurance, he would officiate 00:02:00four hours a week, maybe.

RUPP: Yeah. And then that's when I then called on the commissioner to have an official's meeting with the coaches where we could sit down and discuss the rules.

RICE: This--who was it that wrote you? A letter I found that said he had never had an argument with you. Was it--wasn't Tehan. Sheriff I guess.

RUPP: I guess.

RICE: It was--

RUPP: Yeah.

RICE: Of course, I've got a picture of you two that looked like you were pointing at each other, but I guess that's just one of those friendly things.

RUPP: Yes, that's right. That's right.

RICE: But he said in twenty-five--that's when you had won your seven hundred and seventy-second game, he wrote you a letter congratulating you, and said in all those years that you had never had an argument.

RUPP: Are we on?

RICE: Yeah.

RUPP: Well, I'll tell you a funny thing about Dan Tehan. The coaches, especially down at Tennessee, they thought I was coaching from the sidelines, which at one time was illegal. And, of course I'd take a 00:03:00piece of paper and I'd wave it, you know, every time we had the ball. And everyone down there would just jump up and holler and everything else, and in one game there, we had one official that didn't do anything but watch me. And of course, I'd wave this paper, scratch my head, and so I told the kids, I said, "Now this guy isn't doing anything at all on this side of the floor." I said, "Run the plays over here where you screen." And I said, "This is--" I said, "this clown is just watching me." He'd been intimidated. So, we were down there one time with Dan Tehan, and of course, they were always giving me the devil down there. It didn't make any difference. They had a booing section organized, a shameful one, just to intimidate me. And, of course, I played the game along as well as we could. So one time right 00:04:00after the half, just as the half ended, I ran out on the floor and got with Dan Tehan, I says, "Dan," I said, "How in the hell is the family?" And I was shaking my head all the time. He said, "They're just fine! They're just fine!" He was shaking his head like that. And I said, "All well then!" He said, "Yeah, they're all well." I says, "How's things in Cincinnati?" And he said, "Things in Cincinnati are fine." And, after the game, he said, "Dang you," he said, "everybody in there thought that you were really giving it to me, and all the time you're asking me how's the family." He said, "You do more to get the people on your back than anybody I know of." That's actually happened. Dan'll tell you, he'll laugh about it.

RICE: Well, you know, going back to our fans, of course, they gave the referees a pretty rough time too.

RUPP: Oh yes. Yes.

RICE: Some of them said they hated to come in here.

RUPP: Yeah, that's right.

RICE: Max Macon did. He should have though. We talked about that.

RUPP: Yeah. He should have. Yeah. That's right. Well--

RICE: But from the very start, our fans hated slow-down basketball.

RUPP: Oh yes. That's no ques--there's no question about that at all. No question about that at all. They wanted to see action, and they--our game was devised so that we used the fast break. If the fast break broke down, then we had an option of one of our ten plays. And those ten plays were always designed with someone running at that basket. And that's what made a beautiful game out of it. It was, if I say it myself, a well-coached offense, and was made to score, and I think this--our success is attributable to the fact that our boys just were absolutely ground into a definite offense that they had 00:06:00complete confidence in. And I think that shows how we worked in the last twenty-five or thirty years of my coaching here at the university. It was definite. Everybody knew exactly--I sat on the bench, I knew exactly what they were trying to do. And that's--that shows a definite offensive pattern, which many of the teams today do no longer have.

RICE: You know, how do you explain something like that happened down at Durham, when Fox and Macon were calling that dog gone ballgame. You may not remember it, but when "Smitty" was shooting--

RUPP: I remember that. I remember that. I remember the exact incident. They were working that ballgame down there, and they handed the ball 00:07:00to "Smitty", and he shot the free-throw, and they blew the whistle then and said that it was illegal that they had six men on the floor. Duke had six men on the floor. I said, "Well," I said, "the free-throw counts." Well their coach got up and made a violent argument out of the thing. I said, "The minute you hand that ball to a boy that throws a free-throw, he's got to throw that free-throw." And I said, "There's no way to stop the game after that. That ball is then in play when you hand that ball to that boy." Well, we argued and argued and argued, and on the second free-throw then--they did not let that free-throw count. We'd have won the game if it hadn't been for that. But, on the second free-throw, "Smitty" missed it, and then since it was a one and one situation after all that delay, naturally he missed it, and they got 00:08:00the ball, and the game ended right there.

RICE: Not much you can do about--

RUPP: No, you couldn't do a thing about that except I complained. But there's no use to complain. Fox admitted later that I was right. But then what good does that do? Macon, I don't think ever knew the rule. Didn't--or he'd have got in there and fought for us, because he was a representative from this conference. And should have--if he knew the rule, there was nothing else he could do except enforce it. And if he didn't know it, then that's typical of many of the officials that we had in the conference at that time.

RICE: What makes a man want to be an official?

RUPP: I don't know. (chuckle) I can't answer that.

RICE: You were one once.

RUPP: I was one once.

RICE: Probably for the money for one thing.

RUPP: Well--

RICE: It wasn't that much money.

RUPP: No. There was no money in it when I was officiating.

RICE: Okay. Now, we were going to talk about recruiting.

RUPP: All right.

RICE: Now, I know about when you came to Kentucky what the situation was, and all--

RUPP: Well let me go over that again.

[Pause in recording]

RUPP: When I came to the University of Kentucky, I wrote to "Daddy" Boles and asked him when I should report here, and he said, "Report here September the first," which is the opening day of football practice. Well, I did. I was in here, I think the day before. And, I hadn't met Gamage, or Shively, or--I believe Pauly Gilb(??) was helping at that time. And, I didn't know any of them. I didn't know why we were going to use a single wing back, a double wing back, or anything. I didn't know anything about what we were doing. And, funny as it may seem, we never had any coaches conferences. I never was brought up to bear--to learn anything about the double wing back that we were 00:10:00using at the time. And, of course, when we went out to practice then, they told me to help with Pribble on the freshmen. We had an assorted mess of stuff out there. I don't think any of them--maybe some were recruited, and by recruiting in those days, you just meant inviting a boy to come in here. You had nothing to offer them. I've always said that Gamage was a great coach, because his coaching ga--some coaches that did have scholarships, or maybe they didn't call them scholarships, but they had help, working at filling stations or some ----------(??) job that they thought was justified. But Gamage didn't have those. Gamage knew his football, no question about that. Well, it got down to about the time when we were then building one of our good teams, and that was Dave Lawrence. I remember Pribble told me, he said, "We ought to get this Lawrence boy," he said, "he's a pretty good boy." He said, "He's got two brothers down at Western," and I--he 00:11:00said, "I think he's going to Western. Let's go up and see him." So we went up there to Corinth, Kentucky, which is just on the other side of Georgetown. And, they told us he was working on the Southern railroad laying the pipes under the tracks or something. We went up there and there was Dave, with mud all over him, and we talked to him, and he was interested, and we'd been the first ones to see him about the thing. And so he did come here to the University of Kentucky, and we had no scholarship to offer him or anything. The other forward, of course, was Jack Tucker. He came from a fairly wealthy family.

RICE: Yes? Ok, hold on.

RUPP: Came from a fairly wealthy family, and he didn't need a scholarship. In fact, he came in here and came out for the squad and 00:12:00immediately showed promise, so he made the other forward, and was a fine forward. Dave Lawrence was an exceptional forward. And then we had LeRoy Edwards. And I heard about this boy, I think he was from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis. And, I remember going up there to see the fellow, and he said he was coming, and he did, he showed up here one morning at three o'clock in the morning. And he knocked on my door, and I didn't have any place to keep him or anything like that, and he had a shadow with him, another little kid that wanted to come to school down here, and they called him a shadow. So, they went next door to a fraternity house and crawled in there for the night, and the next morning I met him and I took him to breakfast, and so that was Edwards. We finally got him a job, I think, at the motor company where 00:13:00he made six dollars a week working. And, the guard was Andy Anderson who came here, no scholarship, we met him, he's from Covington. We met him, of course, in the state tournament. The other one was Dave--or, Billy Davis from Hazard, Kentucky. He came down here and that was a very fine ball club. I think they lost one game, and that was that disputed game at New York University in Madison Square Garden by one point on a screening foul. Well, from then on, we really didn't recruit a great deal. We had, what I came here, of course, the team was known, there was Yates, at end in football, there was Carey Spicer, back. There was Darrell Darby, a back. There was Worthington, a back. 00:14:00And there was Johnson, a back. And they were all out for football. So, they were the nucleus of my basketball team. Then we rolled along. We finally got along to Layton Rouse, and we got to Huber, and to Carl Staker, and to that crowd. Not a great deal. They were all Kentucky boys. There wasn't a great deal of recruiting in those days, we had nothing to offer them. But finally, I think, in '41, we did get to the scholarship. The athletic department realized that we had to do something, because all the other schools were doing it and they legalized scholarships, I believe that year, in the Southeastern Conference. We were allowed then, to help the boys, and we had an eating hall at--on Maxwell Street. An old lady ran that, and I think 00:15:00she boarded the boys and roomed them for three dollars a week. They had all they could eat. I ate there several times with them. The food wasn't exactly the greatest in the world, but it was good. It was good food for a bunch of boys to grow on, and the boys could eat all they wanted to, and they loved this house mother, and that was the beginning of scholarships. Now, that was room and board. I think we gave them tuition because that didn't cost us anything at that time. It was not held against the scholarship. And, I don't think there was any laundry and books in those days. I'm not sure about that. I'd have to--you'd have to check back on that to find out. But anyway, then we got to the--let's go on now to the next era that we bring in there, and 00:16:00that's the ten golden years. In those years we did have recruiting, and we had to get out and find some of these boys. Now, let's just be honest about this thing, because there's so many people that claim they helped, and they really didn't help. Now, one forward we had Wallace Jones, and the story there is just as simple as this. Everybody up there at Harlan always have told me, "I want some tickets, you know you wouldn't have Wallace Jones if it hadn't been for me." Well, that number finally got as high as ten-twelve thousand and the facts of the case are, Dr. C. M. Blanton, who was a doctor in Harlan, at that time, heard that "Breezy" Wynn, a great football player at Tennessee, who was in a sporting goods business, had sent his Cadillac, with 00:17:00Humzey Yessin to pick up Wallace Jones and get him to Knoxville the next day. I was in Europe at that time with the Armed Forces. I didn't know a thing about it. I had nothing to do with recruiting Wallace Jones except to talk to him several times. Well, when Dr. Blanton heard about this, he said, "There's nothing to this, now," he said, "Wallace, I'm going to take you over there to Middlesboro," and he put him in the home of Alva Ball, he later married one of Alva's daughters. And is still married to her. She's a lovely girl. And, he hid him there. He told Humzey, "You take this car back, and here is your car fare, you get in the bus and come home." And the next day, Dr. Blanton brought Wallace Jones down here, and with Shively's help, Shively was coaching football at the time, took him and put him 00:18:00through the registration lines and he was officially enrolled here at the University of Kentucky as a student. And that ended that business. At the other forward was Barker who came back from the Army, he'd been here before, was just a so-so ball player, but he got married, and was shot down over in Germany, and was a prisoner of war for eighteen months, had a volleyball, put up a basket and shot baskets, and he was at the other forward position. At guard was Kenny Rollins, and I did go down to Wickliffe, Kentucky--it isn't in--Barlow, Kentucky, is the name of the town, and recruited him. And tried to get him to come here to the university. And he turned out to be a tremendous leader and a tremendous basketball player. At the other guard was Ralph Beard, and 00:19:00Shively recruited him. I did want him, but I thought he was a little small. But Shively recruited him for football. The--at the center was Alex Groza, who's brother was Lou Groza at Ohio State, but he didn't want to go to Ohio State, and Ohio State wasn't anxious for him to come there. They didn't want him. But, when I heard about that I went up there and spoke to him and he came down here. And he was here when I got here. I came back from Europe, I think it was the thirtieth day of October. And, the first thing I heard, I had a long distance call from "Butch" Charmoli. A coach down, I believe, at Manual at the time. And he said, "Do you know that Ralph Beard left up there this afternoon, and is back here at Louisville." I said, "No," I said, "Butch, I didn't know that. I haven't had a chance to get my feet on the ground, I just 00:20:00got in late this afternoon." "Well," he said, "I've talked to the boy, and he wants to come back. And if you'll take him back, he'll be there tomorrow morning, I'll see that he's there." I said, "Sure, we'll take him back and we'll put him on a basketball scholarship instead of a football scholarship." Well, that was the beginning of a great team. Then Joe Holland, I did help recruit him, and we had other boys that fit on that ball club. But that was a great team. And, that's where recruiting really got started. But it was still honest. It wasn't nothing under the table or anything like that. Now then, it continued that way on a fairly honest basis. We finally had the great team of '51. We had, that was Ramsey, that was Hagan, that was Tsioropoulos that came here on a football scholarship and Bryant lost him, didn't know where he was for about 4 weeks, asked me one day if we had a Greek 00:21:00out there for basketball shooting around out there, and I said, "I don't know, I haven't been out there." He said, "Well, check around and see if there's a guy there." Said, "I don't know what his name is, it's a big long name," and he pronounced something. And I said, "Well, I'll check up and see." So I checked and sure enough he was out there, a big boy, and I asked him, I said, "You're supposed to be out for football." He said, "Well, I changed my mind," he said, "I'm not going out for football, I'm going to play basketball." Well, I told Bryant that, and Bryant said, "Well, leave him stay out there this semester, you put him on basketball scholarship after this semester then." And that was the way that thing worked out. Then, of course, we had at--this little boy from Owensboro, Bobby Watson, and we had a boy from Florida by the name of--what was that boy's name?

RICE: Whitaker?

RUPP: Whitaker. "Skippy" Whitaker. He had some relatives in Mount 00:22:00Sterling, and they prevailed on him to come here to the university. And that was--and then we had another boy from Middlestown, Ohio, by the name of Shelby Linville. And, that was the '51 team. Green team, mostly all sophomores. Hagan only a half a sophomore. And then we go on to the team of '58. That was another good--we had good teams in there all that time, but we didn't win the NCAA. We had, at that time, at center we had Ed Beck from Fort Valley, Georgia. A 6'8.5", 9" boy. Not a talented boy, but a good boy. He was a fine boy. A good defensive boy. At guard we had Vernon Hatton, a local boy here 00:23:00in Lexington, just a tremendous, gutty player. He just said, "Give me that ball. Don't let anyone else fool with it, give it to me and I'll get her done." And he'd get the job done. At the other one was a little kid by the name of Smith. He wanted to come here and then went to a Mississippi school as a junior college, and then wanted to come here, but he was little, and I wasn't so much--I wasn't too hot for him. But I finally thought I needed a boy like that, and I called him. And, that call just came at the right time, because he was, at that time, packing to go to Mississippi State. And if I hadn't called him and told him to come up here, he'd have been in Mississippi State. He was a tremendous shot. A fine ballplayer that played, I believe thirteen years in the pro league. And, was a great asset to Cincinnati when they were a contending team in that league. At the one forward we 00:24:00had Crigler. He came up here from Northern Kentucky, from some little town there. I don't think we even recruited him. I don't' remember that. Harry possibly could clear up on that. He probably asked him to come. And then, at the other forward we had Johnny Cox. We did recruit him. He came here, and--the Hazard team won the state tournament. And we asked Johnny to come here. A timid boy. Came here, made a great reputation, made All-American his last year. A fine boy. Well that was the extent of the recruiting. No pressure. No high pressure stuff at all, which changed at the close when I was getting ready to retire. I could see the trend was getting vicious. That was an entirely 00:25:00different group of boys, and I don't have to go into that, elaborate on that. Because you can see now the complexion of a team. And, it was a bunch of boys that had their hands out. It wasn't a question of a scholarship. They--you ask them for a scholarship--even my last year they kind of smile and grin a little, laugh at you, as much as to say, "Well, how much on top of that?" And some of them were just bold enough to ask you how much more you could get. And, your recruiting today, according to what I hear, and I hear reports of coaches coming in here, stopping to see me and talk with me, telling me about what is actually taking place. And I can understand that. When a boy goes to school, and he comes from just a moderate family, and--whose 00:26:00daddy possibly makes ten thousand dollars a year, no more. If--and that's a big salary for some of those folks. And he comes to school, he has an apartment, he has--he isn't on scholarship, but he has an apartment, a five room apartment, he has a housekeeper and a cook, and has a car, and his folks fly to see him play almost every game, I don't understand how you can do that at all. You just can't do it. The NCAAS investigated some of these cases, and they can't come up with the answer. I talked to one of these fellows that works for the NCAA and they said, "Yes, we know there's something wrong. But we can't put our finger on where the boy gets his income." Well, that isn't a difficult thing. If they hang around a little bit and really dig into a thing, 00:27:00they could find out about some of these things. But they know it's taking place. And you take today any boy, I don't care who he is, he's got a car, he's driving a car, and some of them are driving cars far better than mine, and I don't understand that.

RICE: Is that your plate?

RUPP: No, ----------(??). Do you want to turn this off?

[Pause in recording]

RICE: Now, just when did this trend start, that you saw the change?

RUPP: Well, I think the trend started when all these fabulous salaries started to be paid to professional athletes. I think--I know that some of these professional athletes were compensated by outside influences in order to have them turn pro. Many of these boys now don't even 00:28:00bother to go to college. They turn pro when they graduate from high school. And, instead of having a bunch of colleges around there to recruit these fellows, you've got the pros in there too. And, when you start waving money in front of a boy like that, maybe a junior, that's still a junior in high school, and these pros are in there fooling around with these kids, and you can just count the guys that are in the pro leagues now that didn't bother to go to college, because they're making big money. Far more money than any college could afford to give them. And as long as that takes place, you can see that these kids have got their hands out.

RICE: Right. The coach from Texas who reported one of his colleagues and ended up losing his job, what do you think of that? For recruiting violations?

RUPP: About a coach if it's a violation?

RICE: Remember this coach in Texas?

RUPP: Yes.

RICE: And he reported to the A&M or somebody, ended up the pressure got so tough he had to quit.

RUPP: Yes. Well, I tell you, here is the whole thing. I think that you can very well go onto this thing. The NCAA has to sit down now and decide just exactly what they're going to put up with, and then let it go at that. I--you take a coach now that is caught with a violent-- well, not a violent, but persistent recruiting violations, I don't think belongs in the profession. And, I have suggested on the floor of the NCAA convention, that let's have these coaches take lie detector tests. Let's put it out there, right there on the line, and see who's making all these offers and who isn't making the offers. Let's not go around accusing a man of something he may be innocent. If he's innocent, 00:30:00he'll take the lie detector test. If there's any question about it, he may hesitate a while before he takes that thing. But then, if a coach--as some schools now recognize, that if a coach does these--makes these violations, that he should be dismissed from his job.

RICE: All right. The thing that hurt our cause back several years ago, when we did not get Gary Brad--

RUPP: Yes. Yes.

RICE: And I've seen your correspondence.

RUPP: Yes.

RICE: ----------(??) I've seen Mr. Brad's correspondence to you.

RUPP: Yes.

RICE: And to Harry, where he talks about Ohio State offering him a job.

RUPP: Yeah.

RICE: Actually the kid had signed you.

RUPP: Yeah

RICE: He apparently got that job, Gary went to Ohio State, but nothing-- did anything ever come of that in the NCAA?

RUPP: No, nothing ever came of that investigation. You saw the correspondence, of where Mr. Brad said himself that his boy was offered a job by Ohio State. I, with Harry--Harry and I, were at 00:31:00Brad's hometown the night before. I don't think maybe I was there. I think Harry was there though, and Brads promised him that he would be down here the next morning to enroll in school. Well, he didn't show up. That evening I picked up the paper and found that he had enrolled at Ohio State the same day that he promised to be here. And we, of course, presented the NCAA with all this evidence, they didn't do anything about it.

RICE: All right. Of course, Lucas, he wrote about all these offers he had from different colleges--

RUPP: Yes. Yes.

RICE: --in the Saturday Evening Post, but he never revealed who they were, did he?

RUPP: Yes, that's right. He mentioned all the offers that he had from all these different colleges, but he didn't name the colleges, and of course that's no good. You've got to actually name someone or some 00:32:00school in order to get the thing across and make it legal.

RICE: All right. I noticed in one of your correspondence that Darrell Carrier, somebody asked you about him, and you replied that he wanted a scholarship for his brother, I believe it was, or something like that. Did you run into much of that?

RUPP: Yes. Yes. I didn't run into a great deal of it, but then we ran into some--

[Interruption in recording]

RUPP: --the fan--

[Interruption in recording]

RUPP: --where they wanted to tie up a brother, or tie up a sister. I had that thing come up twice, where they want the sister to get a scholarship too. And I think we had a situation like that down here in--with a guy in Mississippi.

RICE: Johnny Newman?

RUPP: No, that wasn't his name. There was another boy, and he went over to Duke, and the way they got trapped, they put his trunk on the train to bring it to Lexington, and of course they had the bill a lady, and 00:33:00everything else at this little town in Mississippi. Then, the coach there, and his assistant came there and got the boy, went out and got the trunk out of the railroad station and took it over to Duke, and when they got over there, they found everything was all right, the boy enrolled in school, and his sister had a job there too, studying nursing or something. And, then, the--when the railroad finally couldn't find this trunk, that's when it hit the fan, and they had to admit then that they took the trunk out of the station, and got the boy that way. A lot of people think that you have to be dishonest if you're going to win. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think there are a lot of honest coaches. A lot of honest schools in this 00:34:00league. I always hear, and it's just persistent, that some of the--

[Pause in recording]

RICE: For sure we'll have one in the first round. And might have one of the top choices in the country, but Warren Bryant going as high as he did, what was he sixth pick? Fifth or sixth pick?

[Pause in recording]

RICE: It was divided up--

RUPP: Well, it'd be four eras then.

RICE: All right.

RUPP: I think the four eras that we divide the University of Kentucky basketball into, and that is at least while I was there. One, of course, is the very beginning that probably ended with the departure of LeRoy Edwards to the professionals. And that was, I think, in '34 00:35:00or '35. Then, we have that war period in there when we had a bunch of good four-F boys in there, that won the NIT for us, and some of them held over until the war veterans returned, and started with the Fabulous Five, or--and built what we call at Kentucky, the ten golden years that finished in '58. And, then, of course, everything after that, I think has to be divided into one period, and that was the ups and the downs, and ups and the downs where we possibly could have won three more NCAAs if we'd have had just one or two good replacements, 00:36:00but we were not deep at any time during those years the way we were during the ten golden years. Of course, we started fading at the--at the last part of the golden years, and I guess the team of Crigler, and Cox, and Beck, and Hatton, and Smith--

OTHER VOICE: It looks like we're going through some light chop the rest of the way--

RUPP: --put an end to the golden years.

OTHER VOICE: It'll probably be best if you fasten your seatbelts, and we'll try to keep it as smooth as possible.

[Pause in recording]

RUPP: When we used to travel through the south, we ran into the Celtics on many occasions. That's the original Celtics. Of course, they had 00:37:00a big center, Dennert, that--Dutch Dennert that was just a big, huge man with big shoulders. In fact, one of the biggest men that I had ever seen play basketball until that time. I used to sit there and talk to him. Prior to that, I did not have a great deal of knowledge of how the pivot play should be executed. He was a master of this. I had LeRoy Edwards, and "Frenchy" DeMoisey and Aggie Sale, and some of those boys, and I was anxious, of course, to develop them into good pivot men. So we'd sit around in the evening, sometimes until two o'clock in the morning and talk about the various phases of the game. I learned a lot of basketball from these boys, as I called them at 00:38:00that time, because they were, at that time, youngsters, traveling to make a living. The thing about it, Dutch had such a huge build that he could screen. And, of course, the screens at that time were--possibly would not be considered legal screens today, because he stepped out, and of course we did that too for a long period of time, until they ruled that you could not step out and impede the progress of someone that had a path to the basket. If you established your position, that was okay, but you could not step out and block him illegally. In those days, of course, you could do that. That was perfectly all right and was considered a good part of how the pivot play should actually 00:39:00be executed.

[End of interview]