Cleveland's Finest. Vince McKee

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ play for a Hall of Fame coach in both college and then the pros. Many considered Daugherty to be one of the best centers to ever play for UNC. He was a two-time All-ACC first-team selection and a first-team All-American in his senior season, during which he averaged more than 20 points a game. Based on his impressive college basketball career, Daugherty was later inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.

      Joining Daugherty on the Cavaliers that year was fellow first-round draft pick Ron Harper, who had been a collegiate All-Star and drew many comparisons to Julius Erving for his high-flying style. Harper was a two-time MAC player of the year and made the NCAA All-American second team in his senior season. He immediately showed that Embry’s faith in him was warranted, averaging more than 22 points a game in his rookie season. Harper was voted second for the Rookie of the Year to Indiana Pacer Chuck Person.

      Mark Price was the player in charge of keeping things running smoothly. A fellow first-round pick of the Dallas Mavericks, he was the perfect man to lead the charge. Price had grown up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where he attended Enid High School. After graduation, he went to play college basketball at Georgia Tech and, with hard work and court savvy, he managed to establish himself as the leader of the team. He was a two-time All-American and the recipient of All-ACC honors for all four years of his college career. In the 1984–85 ACC championship game, he led his team to a win over UNC and his future teammate, Brad Daugherty. He was also named ACC player of the year. Price’s jersey number at Georgia Tech was retired in acknowledgment of his great college career.

      Joining forces with the top three draft picks was Cavaliers 1985 draft pick John “Hot Rod” Williams. Legal problems forced him to sit out his rookie season after being selected by Cleveland in the draft. He’d had a solid career at Tulane University and under Embry, and the Cavaliers were willing to look past his somewhat checkered past and place him full into the fold. Former teammate Larry Nance disclosed how it was to play with “Hot Rod”: “He was very underrated as one of the best low-post defensive players that have ever been around. He was a great defensive guy and also a great friend. Once you’re his friend, he will do anything in the world for you. We became great friends and we still talk today.”

      Midway through the 1986–87 season, Embry decided to sign free agent guard Craig Ehlo. Ehlo reflected on growing up learning the game:

      There was only one game a week on television when I was growing up, so I didn’t really have any one athlete I molded myself after. The most influential person in my life who helped me with basketball was my high school coach Joe Mahaga at Monterey. He was influential in teaching me the fundamentals of the game. He taught us a continuity-type offense, where we would pass the ball about six times before we got anything to look at shot wise. I was blessed in that area because he was determined to teach us the strict fundamentals and the teamwork part of the game, which helped me develop as a player. I wasn’t a very big kid in high school at 6-foot 4-inches tall, so I had to find ways to perform well with using my size against larger opponents. My junior college coach, Ron Mayberry, was also very influential in helping me develop every aspect of my game. I was built to be a swing-type player because I could handle the ball and shoot the ball well at my size.

      Ehlo attended Odessa College and Washington State after that. He reflected on that time in his life and his basketball career:

      My high school team made it to the regional championships in Texas, and I was lucky enough to lead my team in scoring. However, I think my size may have deterred any school from recruiting me. I didn’t have a lot of offers out of high school, even though my team was successful. I did have a few accolades such as being All-State and things like that. I just chose junior college because it was a better avenue for me and close to my home in Lubbock, Texas. I went down there for two years and that was a big part of my life because I was able to put on some more weight. It allowed me to play more and get better as I played 36 games my freshman year and 31 my sophomore year. I was able to average about 24 points a game my sophomore year with 6 rebounds a game and 7 assists. I think that is what caught the attention of several schools. I received letters from the University of Texas, Houston, Oklahoma, Iowa, and some other smaller schools such as Baylor and SMU. It was Washington State that caught my attention the most, because at the time the PAC 10 was a dominant conference. I felt that it was a chance to play in one of the nation’s premiere conferences. I had a great coach in George Raveling. He taught me a tremendous amount of respect for the game. He taught me how to use my skills, and we were able to finish my senior season in second place in the PAC 10. We only lost by one game to UCLA and were ranked fourth in the country at that time. We made it to the NCAA tournament and beat Weber State in the first round before losing to the University of Virginia in the second round.

      Ehlo was picked by the Houston Rockets in the 1983 draft and played for three years in a limited role. Ehlo explained that the draft back then was much different than the draft today:

      The draft was not celebrated and exposed as it is today with ESPN covering the whole thing. I was at Washington State working at our summer camps when the draft was happening. I was on an outdoor court helping out with some young children, chasing them around when the camp director came and told me I was drafted by Houston in the third round. I didn’t do much celebrating. Instead, I just went back to work at the camp. That was when they had rookie camps in the middle of the summer and then we would get invited to the veteran’s camp after that. I made that team for the first three years under one-year contracts each time. It was like $40,000 coming out of a college, and I thought I was a very rich man.

      After his third season, Ehlo moved into free agency, which allowed Embry to sign him. The Rockets reached the NBA finals in 1986 before losing to the perennial powerhouse—the Boston Celtics. Ehlo’s championship-round experience made him even more inviting to the Cleveland Cavaliers organization. He shared how it felt to play for the Rockets, and later in that championship series against the Celtics:

      In the next year’s draft, we selected Hakeem Olajuwon and he completed the twin towers that the team had, so I didn’t play a lot. I only got into a handful of games, but I can say I was part of the one-man roster that beat the Lakers in five games in the conference finals before losing to Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and those guys in the finals. That was the Celtics year, as they went 40–1 at home and couldn’t be beat. We hung in there, but lost in six games. The last game was a blowout, and I got to play the last few minutes and be out there to score the last basketball before the fans rushed the court. That was my one brief moment in the NBA finals.

      Ehlo also explained his decision to sign with Cleveland for the 1986–87 season:

      My coach in Houston was Bill Fitch, who was one of the first Cleveland coaches. Cleveland did not have a good team at that point, so coach Fitch would always tease us and say “I’m going to send you to Cleveland” when we weren’t playing well. I was in the Western Conference and only had to go to Cleveland once, and that was when the Coliseum was out there so I wasn’t familiar with Cleveland at all. I grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan, so I was somewhat familiar with the Browns. I knew that Cleveland fans were a very sports-minded group of people. I got signed to a ten-day contract with the Cavaliers when Mark Price came down with tendinitis. Coach Wilkens was familiar with me from coaching in Seattle when I was at Washington State. I had talked with him several times when I was doing the rookie camps. When Bagley went down with a sprained ankle, it left me with a few others to play as the guards. It was a baptism by fire. We played five games in the ten days I was there, which gave me a chance to perform for them. I was able to sign with them for the rest of the year after that stint. It was a weird way of getting to Cleveland, but I’m very glad that I did. I was brought up loyal to keep your word, and when Houston had called me asking me to come back, I knew that even though it would have been easy to go back to Houston, I had given my word to Cleveland and owed it to them to stay there and start fresh.

      The 1986–87 season was a learning and growing experience for the Cavaliers that upper management had expected. The team finished with only 31 wins but showed growth СКАЧАТЬ