COMMENTARY : As Always, Don Nelson Will Do Whatever It Takes to Win

It is a strange union, indeed, this marriage consummated Thursday by Don Nelson and the New York Knicks. It isn’t quite Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, but it’s close. There are elements here of a cornfield in the Big Apple, or a scarecrow in a three-piece suit.

The years and the press clippings have clouded things a bit when it comes to a complete picture of Nelson. Oh, there’s no doubt that he is one of a few who fully understand the game of professional basketball and also excel at teaching it. And there’s no doubt he was the best choice for this high-profile job. Probably the best choice for any job in the NBA, for that matter.

But it will be fun watching the dynamics. It won’t be quite the same for the New York press and public, so recently enthralled with a guy who slicked his hair back, wore suits that cost the same as most California mortgage payments and moved easily and comfortably among the suits of Exxon, for whom he made motivational speeches. Over the years, a large percentage of Nelson’s motivational speeches have been made with the toe of his right foot.

Nellie the new New Yorker grew up in rural Illinois, near the Quad Cities--Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline, Ill. When he grew tall and found he could play basketball better than most, he moved on to the big city: Iowa City. He remains a legend at the University of Iowa, an All-American and still among the school’s top 10 scorers.

After jangling around for a couple of years in a pro career that was going nowhere with the Lakers, Nelson found paradise, a place called Boston Garden. For the kid from the hinterland, being a Boston Celtic was what he was born for. He had all the elements: limited natural talent that the Celtics turned into a greater appreciation of team values, the ability to use--and excel at--every basketball dirty trick they could teach him, and a fire in his gut to win that has yet to flicker.

Nelson was the ultimate Celtic. He was an enforcer and more, a Jungle Jim Loscutoff who actually had some basketball skills. Only a portion of what he did in a game showed up in the box score. Most of it showed up on opponents’ bodies as bumps and bruises.

But he was also so fundamentally strong at things such as screening out on rebounds and setting picks that he frequently drove opponents to terrible acts of frustration.

That’s what happened one night in 1974 in Buffalo, N.Y., in an exhibition between the Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks. Nelson was in the twilight of his career and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Bucks was well on his way to becoming perhaps the greatest of all time. All night, Nelson picked and screened and jostled Abdul-Jabbar until the young superstar, poked in the eye under the basket, punched the basket upright, breaking his hand and costing the Bucks a season of title contention.

A few years later, the recently traded Abdul-Jabbar returned to Milwaukee to play for the Lakers against his old teammates and their newly acquired rookie, Kent Benson. By then, Nelson had taken over from Larry Costello as Bucks’ coach and had taken on the formation of Benson into an NBA star as a personal project. Some said that Nelson saw a lot of himself in the rough but eager Benson.

In the days before Benson’s matchup with Abdul-Jabbar, Nelson worked hard preparing Benson, physically and psychologically.

Early in the game, Benson inexplicably hit Abdul-Jabbar with a sharp elbow as the pair ran side by side near center court. Abdul-Jabbar, by then a veteran who approached this game as just another of thousands he would play, was stunned at first, then he simply caught up to Benson and hit him with a couple of punches that put Benson in the hospital with a concussion and Abdul-Jabbar out of the game with an ejection.

Abdul-Jabbar’s response to Benson’s elbow had to give Nelson a momentary rush of appreciation. Macho basketball will always be a part of Nelson’s game plan, and he made that quite clear to one of his young players a few years later in an incident in Philadelphia.

The Bucks were playing the 76ers at the Spectrum and near the end of the first half, a 76er took a cheap shot at Buck guard Quinn Buckner. Buckner, taken aback, did not retaliate. At halftime, a reporter walking past the Bucks’ locker room clearly heard the sounds of things being thrown. The thrower, it turned out, was Nelson. The reason for the throwing was Buckner, who had failed to retaliate against the offending 76er, thereby sending the wrong message to future opponents.

When the second half began, Quinn Buckner, the Bucks’ star playmaker, was on the bench.

Nelson came to the NBA coaching business with some trepidation. He had been an assistant under Costello, who was a rigid taskmaster and robotic in his approach to all elements of the game. At the beginning of every timeout, Costello would haul out a yellow legal pad, draw the key on it and then draw a play.

One year, Hubie Brown, then his assistant, decided to save Costello all the time by giving him, as a Christmas present, a box of yellow legal pads with the key already drawn in. Costello said thank you and never took them out of the box.

On the afternoon that it was to be announced that Costello was being replaced, Nov. 22, 1976, a reporter ran into Nelson.

“You ready for this?” the reporter asked.

“Hell, no,” Nelson replied.

“Are you scared?” the reporter asked.

“Hell, yes,” Nelson replied.

Nelson stayed in Milwaukee through the 1986-87 season, then followed his longtime friend and team owner, Jim Fitzgerald, to the West Coast and the Golden State Warriors. And somewhere along the way, he became recognized, and correctly so, as one of the great minds in the game.

And soon, the man who had worn fish ties along the sidelines in Milwaukee and who had driven a tractor around the state of Wisconsin as director of Nellie’s Farm Fund, raising money for needy rural families, had a public image as a veteran West Coast coach who not only kept the Warriors in title contention every year, but also did so while keeping his shirttail tucked in.

Truth is, Nelson’s shirttail should never be tucked in, just as nobody should ever have given Larry Costello pre-drawn legal pads. Nelson may be in the big city, and may do very well there. But he isn’t of the big city.

A few years ago, the sportswriter attended a luncheon in the Bay Area where Nelson spoke. After the speech, Nelson sat down next to the sportswriter and said, “You still play tennis?”

Half an hour later, in a steady downpour, Nelson and the sportswriter played tennis. The match was close. The rain was relentless. The sportswriter was stubborn Irish. Nelson was a former Celtic. Neither would quit. Eventually, there was a result, long since forgotten. But not forgotten is a mind’s picture of the post-match Nelson, drenched to the bone, tennis racket in one hand, bottle of beer in the other, shirttail hanging out.

“It doesn’t get any better than this, does it?” he said.