In any other year late-March would be a time for reflecting on the Elite 8 and looking forward to the Final 4, but this year is not like any other year. Instead, we will spend the week reflecting on champions of the past, from a famous coach who won the 1947 NCAA title as a player to a Hall of Famer who led her team to a perfect 34-0 season in 1986. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel commences our 8-part series with Bill Reynolds, who covered Coach Joe Mullaney as a coach at Providence many years after he won a title in 1947 as a teammate of Bob Cousy at Holy Cross.
Mullaney was co-captain of the basketball team at Holy Cross and helped lead his team to 23 straight wins and the 1947 NCAA title: what did it mean to him to win a title, and how much of a mentor was he to his backup PG (Bob Cousy)? I knew Joe very well and we spent a lot of time together through the years. Everything in his life was about basketball so winning a title was huge for him. After Cousy became extremely popular Joe could not believe it. I saw Joe play in some pickup games and he had a flashy game like Cousy.
After retiring as an NBA player he spent 2 years with the FBI: how did he make the transition from basketball to law enforcement, and why did he later take a job as head coach at Providence in 1955? He was coming out of school and the FBI was glamorous at the time. Coaching was always his passion but you had to know somebody to get your foot in the door. He kind of fell into the FBI but I do not think that it was something he wanted to stay with long-term. Holy Cross was so huge in that era that it gave him some clout on his resume. Providence did not have a real program back then so they were not in the same league as Holy Cross.
He had an amazing 5-year run in the NIT (1959 semifinals, 1960 runner-up, 1961 champ, 1962 2-PT loss, 1963 champ): what was the key to his postseason success? I remember that era very well because I was a basketball nut at the time. It came out of nowhere: all of a sudden this little school that nobody outside of Rhode Island had ever heard of captivated the entire state. It was new both to the state and to the radio: it was never planned. He had good talent like Lenny Wilkens who was a backup on his high school team in New York but he knew somebody with a connection to Providence. They got Johnny Egan a year or 2 later and built a new on-campus gym but basically it was a fluke.
His assistant Dave Gavitt went on to coach the Friars to the 1973 Final 4 and later helped found the Big East Conference: how much of an impact did the mentor have on the protégé? I think that Joe had a great impact on Dave. Joe was ahead of his time by playing a zone defense with man-to-man principles and Dave later used that defense as well. They would shift the zone around to match-up with each guy but the opponent still thought that they were in a zone. It is common now but back then the guys on offense would just stand there and not know where to move. Joe was a defensive pioneer.
He left Providence in 1969 to become head coach of the Lakers, and despite losing Wilt Chamberlain/Elgin Baylor to injuries during the season he led LA all the way to Game 7 of the NBA Finals before losing to the Knicks: what are your memories of 1 of the most famous playoff games ever (Willis Reed was considered unlikely to play in Game 7 but jogged onto the court during warmups to huge applause and scored the Knicks’ 1st 2 field goals while also holding Chamberlain to 2-9 FG)? I remember that game. If Joe had won that game then I think that the rest of his career would have turned out very differently: it was a seminal moment for him. People viewed him as a college coach but that game could have changed everyone’s minds.
In 1973 he made it all the way to Game 7 of the ABA Finals before losing to the Pacers, then became head coach of Utah and lost to the Nets in the 1974 ABA Finals: was his career playoff performance viewed as a success (due to making so many Finals appearances) or a failure (since he kept losing once he got to the Finals) or other? It is 6 of 1 and a half dozen of another. The match-up zone defense was his calling card but he let his best players do whatever they wanted on offense. In college Jimmy Walker would just play 1-on-1 from the top of the key. When I played basketball at Brown we would use that defense as well and it worked wonderfully.
His 319 wins remain the most in school history: did he realize at the time how prolific a coach he was, and do you think that anyone will ever break his record? Everybody in Rhode Island thought of him as a great coach. It got more complicated over time because by the time he returned the game had changed and it hurt his stature.
He passed away in 2000: when people look back on his career, how do you think that he should be remembered the most? He will not be remembered as such but I think that he should be recognized as being ahead of his time defensively as a pioneer. It remains a very popular defense today and makes it easy to guard your opponent.