When you spend a lot of time in the world of college basketball you bump into a lot of notable names. Russ Bergman is 1 such person: he was a college roommate of Pete Maravich at LSU, was an assistant coach at Appalachian State under Pete’s father Press, and faced Bobby Knight in the NCAA tourney. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Russ about both of the Maravich men and becoming an NBA scout. Today is Russ’ 74th birthday so let us be the 1st to wish him a happy 1!
In 1965 you graduated from Lincolnwood High School as the all-time leading scorer in school history: how good a player were you back in the day? I felt that LSU was a good choice for me because I wanted to be in the SEC and I fell in love with the Tigers during 1 of my official visits.
You went to college at LSU where you played/roomed with Hall of Famer Pete Maravich: what was it like to play with Pete, and what was it like to live with him? I only roomed with him on the road but we had a lot of fun. He was a great guy and we got along well together: he just tried to be 1 of the guys. You knew that the defenses were focused on trying to stop him so on a 3-on-2 break you just had to prepare for 1 of his spectacular passes because they were going to key on him.
After college you played professionally for the Decatur Bullets in the CBA: what did you learn from that experience, and what was the biggest difference between college basketball and pro basketball? Everything is just a little bit faster: you have more time to think on the college level but you just have to react as a pro. I also learned that when you take the ball to the hole you had better see the opening of the red sea otherwise you will get slapped pretty good…so I did a lot of work on my 15-footer!
In 1972 you became an assistant coach at Appalachian State under your former college coach Press Maravich: what made Press such a great coach, and what was the most important thing you ever learned from him? Coach Maravich had a love for the game because he had played in college and in the pros and paid a lot of attention to the history of the game. He would quote guys like Clair Bee and Bruce Drake. I went to a clinic once to try and learn from other coaches: Coach Maravich would look at my notes and tell me about the person who originally came up with the strategies! He was a dedicated Xs and Os coach who spent a lot of time trying to come up with new offenses to combat various defenses. He also worked on box-and-1 and triangle-and-2 defenses to give our players better opportunities to win. I learned so much from him: he taught me that I could better execute a play if I tweaked it to my own needs. He helped my career by making me an Xs and Os junkie. He would stay up until 3AM drawing up different plays to show me in the morning.
In the 1991 NCAA tourney as head coach at Coastal Carolina Brad Penny scored 34 PTS/13-15 FG in a 10-PT loss to #2-seed Indiana: how close did you come to pulling off the upset? I have fond memories of that game because it is the 1 that put our school on the map. We previously had some good wins but we almost upset the Hoosiers as a #15-seed after making a great comeback. Penny was just unstoppable in the 2nd half: CBS picked up the game and showed it coast-to-coast. I got calls afterward from people who I had not heard from in a long time. Coach Bobby Knight later invited me to spend some time hunting with him: when you prepare to coach against someone like him it educates you and makes you a better coach.
In the 1993 NCAA tourney Juwan Howard had 16 PTS/10 REB in a win by #1-seed Michigan: what are your memories of the Fab 5? I came up with a junk defense to use my best defender against Ray Jackson because he was not quite as strong of a scorer as the other 4 starters. It totally backfired because Jackson hit a lot of shots early and we never got on track. They showed us just how good they were.
In 1994 you admitted breaking some NCAA rules after seeing the movie “Blue Chips”: why did the film have such a powerful impact on you, and how prevalent do you think violations are in today’s NCAA? I have been away from the college game for almost 3 decades so I do not really know what is going on in the recruiting wars today. Some of the violations that were hung on our staff back then are actually legal today. Hindsight is 20-20 but I wish that I would not have made any comments because too many people took it the wrong way. We had done some things wrong but there were some things that I was unaware of. However, as captain of the ship I was responsible for them in the end.
You later became coach/director of basketball operations for the Oklahoma City Calvary and won a CBA title in 1997: how were you able to get back into coaching, and what did it mean to you to win the title? I was very fortunate after resigning under heat in 1994 and not having to miss a beat by joining the CBA. I had no idea that the CBA had players at such a high level: I helped 28 guys get called up to the NBA (such as Voshon Lenard/Damon Jones). They are highly-motivated athletes because they want to get to the NBA in the worst way…but some of them go to Europe for the money. It was like juggling 7 basketballs as I tried to keep a competitive team on the floor because once you got a good team together the best players would soon head to the NBA. It makes it challenging to be a coach, especially because your playoff seed is based on how many quarters you won, which is how they have started scoring the NBA Summer League. Even if you are down by 20 PTS in the 4th quarter the fans will stick around to see if you can win the quarter!
In 2000 you became a scout for the Utah Jazz: how did you like being a scout, and do you think that you will ever return to the NBA? Ever since 1997 I have been trying to get onto an NBA bench, but I was naïve at that time and thought that the most important thing was to know what you were doing. Once you get there it is about what you know…but until you get there it is about who you know because it is such a tight fraternity. I really liked the advance scouting where you go over all the plays of your upcoming opponent and the individual characteristics of all their players. As far as scouting college players and where to draft them, it was very challenging because I missed bench coaching too much, which is why I returned to the CBA in 2004.
You later coached a pro basketball team abroad: why did you decide to go overseas, and what was the basketball culture like compared to in the US? When I got overseas the thing that impressed me the most was how coachable the European players were. American players receive better fundamental coaching because here the coaches are more advanced from 1st grade through high school: the best coaches in Europe are found at the senior level. I also like having 10-minute quarters, 8-second over-and-back violations, etc. The only thing that is really difficult is that you do not have as many timeouts during games so you had better do a good job of coaching them up in practice.