Career…
Remember, my initial plan was to find a way to play for a year and then try to get a tryout with another NBA team. Some things changed after I went to France. First, I loved France, and Europe in general. I was always kind of a history buff, war and all that. France and Europe was a daily history lesson and everywhere you went, you found something that you had heard about in school. People were paying me to be there. One time, for example, I was visiting with Brigitte the Chateau D’Amboise along the Loire River in central France. We were just walking around the gardens on a not very crowded fall day. I knew nothing about the chateau, but saw what looked like a gazebo over in one corner of the gardens. I walked over and was basically by myself as I walked in to the little structure. I looked down and saw the name “Leonardo da Vinci” carved into a big stone slab. Brigitte walked in and I asked “what’s this?” She told me it was da Vinci’s tomb and he had been exiled from Italy and was buried right there. At that moment, it was just me, Brigitte, and Leonardo da Vinci. The second reason things changed for me was that in the basketball games, I played every minute and got to shoot the ball, in fact was expected to shoot the ball whenever I wanted. Americans were stars over there- kids wanted our autographs and so did adults. They marveled at our skills. I didn’t think that would ever happen in the states, even if I got lucky enough to make an NBA roster.
There are just too many stories to tell from a five year career in France. I played for three different coaches- a French guy, an East German, and me. The French guy in Angouleme was the first- he visualized basketball from a soccer aspect and, you know what, there are a lot of similarities in the two sports. I believe James Naismith also looked at his new game that way. In soccer, there are fast breaks, it is important to own the middle of the field offensively and defensively, and penalty shots, to name a few similarities. Coming out of America in the 70’s, I knew virtually nothing about soccer, but when he took me to watch a professional soccer game, I could see what he meant. We ran very few plays, and depended mostly on movement and spacing. The spacing was good for an American, because the French guys expected you to shoot the ball, therefore they would set a lot of on-ball screens or just get out of your way.
The second guy was an East German and he had escaped to the West during the years of the Cold War. The East Germans were notorious for their attempts to enhance performance through growth hormones and blood doping, but he really didn’t have access to any of that stuff in France, because it was heavily frowned upon by the French and the rest of the world. But he was the first person I ever heard mention core training, and we did a lot of Navy Seal kind of log lifting and mid-section work that I had never done. One time, we were running through stations that he had set up in the famous Paris park, the Bois de Boulogne, and he started to get on my case about how I was going about it. Eventually he said “Americans are weak”, to which I responded “who won World War II?” This guy was also the first coach that I had in a while that had a playbook and ran a lot of stuff. I liked him and liked living in Paris for two years. It was so beyond Phoenix in every way possible. Las Vegas is the only thing that comes close. I had married Brigitte by then and we enjoyed life- I highly recommend getting over there while you are young. There was a restaurant that we went to after many games near the famous Boulevard de St. Germaine, that was called Pizza Vesuvio- we had many memorable nights there, getting out at 3 or 4 in the morning. The team I was playing for was asked to tour Madagascar in 1976, which is a whole story that I will save for a later date. Suffice it to say, the island was going through political turmoil, and we were lucky to get out of there with our lives. The trip changed me in several ways, including a realization that I no longer wanted to play the game as much and would only do one more year- for the money.
The last coach was me. I returned to Angouleme for my final season. I had come to a decision point by this time- stay in France and make a life there, perhaps coach; or, return to America and get started with a coaching career there. Brigitte and I agreed that we wanted to live in the USA, but it would be nice to do a final season in her hometown to be around her family a little longer. You may be wondering how you could just from one team to another over there, but every contract was year by year. That was a two-way street- you could get dumped by your team at the end of each year, or you could dump them for a better deal. America had begun by that time to get into multi-year bargains in professional sports. So Herb’s guy over there, who was my rarely seen agent, Jan Vandenbrouck, contacted the team in Angouleme and set it up. My first coach over there had quit after I left, but decided to come back for this season. We had a great training camp at a sports school in the area and looked like we would have a pretty good team. They still didn’t have much money as an organization, so our second foreigner was a Yugoslavian guy. He was about 6’7” and rugged and ornery as most Yugo’s were. They were great to play with, but not so great to play against.
We started out poorly and, quite unexpectedly, the coach quit three weeks into the season. The team’s owner and president asked me if I would coach the team until he could find a replacement. I thought he meant that would happen quickly. His plan was to wait until the season was over. European teams operate in a club system, in which the head coach of the senior men’s team was responsible for all the teams down the line. Schools didn’t have sports teams, so clubs were the way that young people competed. That really complicated my life, as I had to oversee the various levels. I knew I wanted to be a coach and was going to be, but that was a bit of an overwhelming way to get started. I called on everything that I had learned to do and not to do from all the coaches I had previously. I certainly wasn’t ready for the media, who could now hammer me for not only playing poorly, but coaching poorly. The team tried their best for me, but we did not meet our early expectations during the season. It didn’t help that early on, I had a compound fracture of my right hand, had surgery, and missed six weeks.
I left France in August, 1978, for an unknown future in the coaching profession. As mentioned previously, Brigitte and I wanted to live in Arizona, so back we came, with no job and no idea which direction this would go. By then, I had become fluent in French, so much that I was even thinking in French. When we got to Sky Harbor Airport, we had to take a taxi to my parent’s house, because they were out of town. The driver asked me where we wanted to go and I gave him the address. After a few moments, he asked me where we were from. I said my wife is from France, but I am from Phoenix. He said, “no, where are you from originally?” I again said Phoenix. He said he had never heard an accent like that by anyone from Phoenix. Yeah, I was thinking in French.
Next…Coaching in the USA…
Remember, my initial plan was to find a way to play for a year and then try to get a tryout with another NBA team. Some things changed after I went to France. First, I loved France, and Europe in general. I was always kind of a history buff, war and all that. France and Europe was a daily history lesson and everywhere you went, you found something that you had heard about in school. People were paying me to be there. One time, for example, I was visiting with Brigitte the Chateau D’Amboise along the Loire River in central France. We were just walking around the gardens on a not very crowded fall day. I knew nothing about the chateau, but saw what looked like a gazebo over in one corner of the gardens. I walked over and was basically by myself as I walked in to the little structure. I looked down and saw the name “Leonardo da Vinci” carved into a big stone slab. Brigitte walked in and I asked “what’s this?” She told me it was da Vinci’s tomb and he had been exiled from Italy and was buried right there. At that moment, it was just me, Brigitte, and Leonardo da Vinci. The second reason things changed for me was that in the basketball games, I played every minute and got to shoot the ball, in fact was expected to shoot the ball whenever I wanted. Americans were stars over there- kids wanted our autographs and so did adults. They marveled at our skills. I didn’t think that would ever happen in the states, even if I got lucky enough to make an NBA roster.
There are just too many stories to tell from a five year career in France. I played for three different coaches- a French guy, an East German, and me. The French guy in Angouleme was the first- he visualized basketball from a soccer aspect and, you know what, there are a lot of similarities in the two sports. I believe James Naismith also looked at his new game that way. In soccer, there are fast breaks, it is important to own the middle of the field offensively and defensively, and penalty shots, to name a few similarities. Coming out of America in the 70’s, I knew virtually nothing about soccer, but when he took me to watch a professional soccer game, I could see what he meant. We ran very few plays, and depended mostly on movement and spacing. The spacing was good for an American, because the French guys expected you to shoot the ball, therefore they would set a lot of on-ball screens or just get out of your way.
The second guy was an East German and he had escaped to the West during the years of the Cold War. The East Germans were notorious for their attempts to enhance performance through growth hormones and blood doping, but he really didn’t have access to any of that stuff in France, because it was heavily frowned upon by the French and the rest of the world. But he was the first person I ever heard mention core training, and we did a lot of Navy Seal kind of log lifting and mid-section work that I had never done. One time, we were running through stations that he had set up in the famous Paris park, the Bois de Boulogne, and he started to get on my case about how I was going about it. Eventually he said “Americans are weak”, to which I responded “who won World War II?” This guy was also the first coach that I had in a while that had a playbook and ran a lot of stuff. I liked him and liked living in Paris for two years. It was so beyond Phoenix in every way possible. Las Vegas is the only thing that comes close. I had married Brigitte by then and we enjoyed life- I highly recommend getting over there while you are young. There was a restaurant that we went to after many games near the famous Boulevard de St. Germaine, that was called Pizza Vesuvio- we had many memorable nights there, getting out at 3 or 4 in the morning. The team I was playing for was asked to tour Madagascar in 1976, which is a whole story that I will save for a later date. Suffice it to say, the island was going through political turmoil, and we were lucky to get out of there with our lives. The trip changed me in several ways, including a realization that I no longer wanted to play the game as much and would only do one more year- for the money.
The last coach was me. I returned to Angouleme for my final season. I had come to a decision point by this time- stay in France and make a life there, perhaps coach; or, return to America and get started with a coaching career there. Brigitte and I agreed that we wanted to live in the USA, but it would be nice to do a final season in her hometown to be around her family a little longer. You may be wondering how you could just from one team to another over there, but every contract was year by year. That was a two-way street- you could get dumped by your team at the end of each year, or you could dump them for a better deal. America had begun by that time to get into multi-year bargains in professional sports. So Herb’s guy over there, who was my rarely seen agent, Jan Vandenbrouck, contacted the team in Angouleme and set it up. My first coach over there had quit after I left, but decided to come back for this season. We had a great training camp at a sports school in the area and looked like we would have a pretty good team. They still didn’t have much money as an organization, so our second foreigner was a Yugoslavian guy. He was about 6’7” and rugged and ornery as most Yugo’s were. They were great to play with, but not so great to play against.
We started out poorly and, quite unexpectedly, the coach quit three weeks into the season. The team’s owner and president asked me if I would coach the team until he could find a replacement. I thought he meant that would happen quickly. His plan was to wait until the season was over. European teams operate in a club system, in which the head coach of the senior men’s team was responsible for all the teams down the line. Schools didn’t have sports teams, so clubs were the way that young people competed. That really complicated my life, as I had to oversee the various levels. I knew I wanted to be a coach and was going to be, but that was a bit of an overwhelming way to get started. I called on everything that I had learned to do and not to do from all the coaches I had previously. I certainly wasn’t ready for the media, who could now hammer me for not only playing poorly, but coaching poorly. The team tried their best for me, but we did not meet our early expectations during the season. It didn’t help that early on, I had a compound fracture of my right hand, had surgery, and missed six weeks.
I left France in August, 1978, for an unknown future in the coaching profession. As mentioned previously, Brigitte and I wanted to live in Arizona, so back we came, with no job and no idea which direction this would go. By then, I had become fluent in French, so much that I was even thinking in French. When we got to Sky Harbor Airport, we had to take a taxi to my parent’s house, because they were out of town. The driver asked me where we wanted to go and I gave him the address. After a few moments, he asked me where we were from. I said my wife is from France, but I am from Phoenix. He said, “no, where are you from originally?” I again said Phoenix. He said he had never heard an accent like that by anyone from Phoenix. Yeah, I was thinking in French.
Next…Coaching in the USA…
