Duke basketball hopes to keep things going strong this season after the retirement of Mike Krzyzewski, but its proud history started well before Coach K showed up in 1980. Jack Marin was part of the 1st Duke team to make the NCAA title game in 1964 (a loss to UCLA), then made it back to the Final 4 in 1966 (losing to Kentucky before beating Utah in the 3rd place game). After being drafted 5th overall by Baltimore that spring he spent more than a decade in the NBA and made back-to-back All-Star games in 1972/1973. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Jack about his 2 trips to the Final 4 and making the 1971 NBA Finals. Today is Jack’s 78th birthday so let us be the 1st to wish him a happy 1!
In the 1964 NCAA title game as a player at Duke you had 16 PTS/10 REB in a loss to an undefeated UCLA team (Bruins’ reserve forward Kenny Washington had 26 PTS/12 REB): could you tell at the time that John Wooden was on the brink of the greatest coaching run in basketball history (10 titles in 12 years)? Hardly, although he had a very small team with a center not much bigger than I am (6’7″) and STILL won a national championship! They had great players and future NBA stars in Gail Goodrich/Walt Hazzard/Keith Erickson…but it was Kenny Washington who killed us.
In the 1966 ACC tourney semifinal Mike Lewis made 2 FTs in the final seconds of a 21-20 win over North Carolina: what was it like to face a 4-corners offense where you were just standing around and waiting for the Tar Heels to do something? I think that my dad said he was very close to having a heart attack in the stands! It was really an awful game. We were down 17-12 with about a quarter to go and it felt like a 20-PT deficit but we managed to pull it out thanks to Mike’s clutch free throws. It is unusual (to say the least) to be tied for the leading scorer on your team with only 4 points! Apparently they did not really want to play against us after we had swept them during the regular season.
In the 1966 Final 4 you scored 29 PTS in a 4-PT loss to a 27-1 Kentucky team: do you think that you would have won if your fellow 2nd-team All-American Bob Verga was not suffering from a flu that caused him to lose 5 pounds and score a season-low 4 PTS? I suppose I do but that is just speculation. The Wildcats were damn good with stars like Pat Riley/Louie Dampier. They had someone who was sick as well but Bob was always a big-game player who you could count on down the stretch.
In the spring of 1966 you were drafted 5th overall by Baltimore and ended up making the NBA All-Rookie team: what did it mean to you to get drafted, and how were you able to make such a smooth transition from college to the pros? There were only 10 teams in the league so I was picked in the middle of the 1st round! The Hawks were going to take me 4th overall but I told them that I would be going to Duke Medical School instead. I signed with the Bullets for what I thought would be 2 years: I wanted to put away enough money to go back to school. My rookie season was not a “smooth” transition in any way. We were 4-25 to start and ended an awful year with only 20 wins. I had 3 coaches during our first few months but the final one was Gene Shue, who was a wonderful man/coach who I still think of fondly today. The transition was really difficult. I thought that I had to be better than I was, which of course is the 1st hurdle: believing in yourself. Gene helped me understand that I should take small steps, come off the bench with the goal of giving the team a lift by scoring a couple of baskets, and go from there. I was always a bit of a slow starter but Gene’s words helped boost my confidence and made me a pretty effective player in the 2nd half of that season. It took me until my 3rd season to earn a starting berth at forward next to future Hall of Famer Gus Johnson, which is when I really got going.
In the 1971 NBA Finals you were swept by Milwaukee: how weird was it to have to travel after every single game (the last time ever in the Finals that teams alternated home games)? I just remember losing the 4th game in Baltimore. The worst part is that we had not done well against Milwaukee all year (not that many other teams had either). However, after beating the Knicks in the Garden on Saturday and leaving on Sunday we had to be in Milwaukee to tee it up on a Tuesday. We had essentially no rest after winning a pair of tough 7-game series. The Bucks on the other hand looked like they had just returned from a 10-day vacation in Acapulco! We had a couple of injuries on top of that and were fairly well spent so it was not the best of circumstances. Even if we were completely healthy we would have struggled to win 2 games against their really fine team led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/Oscar Robertson/Bob Dandridge.
In the 1972 All-Star Game you scored 11 PTS in 15 minutes in a 2-PT loss by the East: what was it like to play with so many future Hall of Famers, and how crazy did the Forum get after MVP Jerry West made a 20-footer at the buzzer to win the game? I remember that game quite well. Back then it was a really serious game…because the winners got an extra $300! Today it is just an “exhibition”, which is the most charitable word I can come up with. If I was allowed to play the 4th quarter then I might have ended up with a big night, but as a reserve I just sat on the bench. West hit a historic shot: a signature clutch jumper from the top of the key. It was pretty cool: www.youtube.com/watch?v=28zwDdKG6H4
In 1972 you led the NBA with 89.4 FT%: what was your secret for making FTs? Practice and more practice. I was a good shooter who was taught to shoot free throws underhanded in high school but switched to shooting them one-handed as a sophomore at Duke. Underhanded shooting was just an unnecessary extra skill that I would have to practice. There are a couple of important techniques to adopt and then you just have to practice them. It is a steep progression just to go from 83.3% (missing 1 in 6) to 90% (missing 1 in 10): I always thought that was interesting.
In the decisive Game 6 of the 1974 Eastern Conference Semifinals as a player for Buffalo, Jo Jo White made a pair of free throws with no time left in a 2-PT win by Boston: where does that rank among the most devastating losses of your career? It was very difficult because it was such a hard-fought battle. After I came to the Braves I thought that we would be contenders but the Celtics had an edge on us because…well, they were the Celtics after all! We probably did not get the best of the officiating in that series. Just like in baseball: the best hitters get a smaller strike zone and the best pitchers get a bigger one. Had we won that series it would have been a wonderful Cinderella story.
After retiring you returned to Duke to attend law school: when did you first think about going that route, and what was it like to be back at your alma mater? I was more mature and one of the older guys in my law class so I enjoyed being back in that environment. Back in 1966 I thought that I would postpone medical school until I saved a little money in the NBA, but after 11 years I thought that it was a bit late for me to become a doctor. Business school was not quite the plum that it is today and I was encouraged to believe that a law degree would offer me a number of options. It seemed like a logical step for me…as a chemistry major!
You spent 30 years as a lawyer during which you represented the National Basketball Retired Players Association: what were you able to accomplish as its counsel? That is better asked of other people, but I feel that I helped them work through some difficult situations and helped design certain structures/mechanisms so they could get organized. I am proudest of my work on the NBA Player Pension Plan because it is a safety net for all players. Even with their extraordinary earnings today a defined benefit plan can mean a lot. Even if you made $10 million/year during your 20s you never know what the future holds. I worked closely with the Players Association counsel Ron Klempner and the league’s benefits coordinator: I think that we have a marvelous plan. During some more contentious times I remember Pat Garrity helping with some fine analysis/advocacy. We had to educate the then-active players about what it could mean to them. In an environment like professional sports, a defined benefit plan like ours has certain features that make it unbeatable as part of a player’s financial planning so I hope it will be maintained in perpetuity. Fortunately, along with the Players Association, the leadership of the NBA sees it as a necessary benefit as well.