Exactly Who is Bill Fitch?

Exactly Who is Bill Fitch?

February 20, 1980

BILL FITCH: WHO IS THIS MAN WHO HAS COACHED THE CELTICS BACK FROM THE DARK AGES TO THE LEVEL OF EXCELLENCE THEY ONCE TOOK FOR GRANTED? THERE IS NO SIMPLE ANSWER, JUST AS HE IS NOT A SIMPLE MAN. BILL FITCH IS MANY THINGS, BUT FOREMOST AMONG THEM IS WINNER.

For 26 years, his world has been basketball. Bill Fitch has a game face. Bill Fitch has a living face. Only a select few can tell the difference when watching the first-year Celtic coach at work.



Try spending a day with Bill Fitch to take a candid look at the man who perhaps has received too much - or too little - credit for the rapid turnaround of a Boston franchise that some thought was collapsing of its own ineptitude a year ago.

But there is no end to a day with the Celtic coach. Fitch's game and living faces are so similiar even he finds it difficult to separate the two.

"How do I start the day? Do you mean a practice day or a game day? Do you mean after a practice or a game? "If it is after a game, my day usually starts the night before. I review the tapes and evaluate them. Then I make notes and plans for the next day's practice. Some mornings I get up and watch a college game to see a prospect, or watch a tape of a future opponent.

"Sometimes I listen to the radio tape of a game. I've gotten to the point that I can scout' a game off radio, just by paying attention to where the ball is each time, or how many times, for instance, the ball or a player comes up the court. Are they on the right side or left. Things like that."

History will record that Bill Fitch is either a battle-trained genius in pro basketball, or a 46-year-old coach with the luck of the Irish and the timing that put him in the right place at a point in his career when his contemporaries are moving aside for younger, more energetic, college-oriented coaches. Slowly, the trend in pro coaching is moving away from the pure ex-player, although nobody would quibble about the success of a Lenny Wilkens at Seattle or Billy Cunningham at Philadelphia.

Fitch, however, is no stranger in that regard. He was an ex-college coach and a trend-setter back in 1970 with Cleveland, long before the John MacLeods, Dick Mottas, Hubie Browns, Tom Nissalkes and Cotton Fitzsimmonses arrrived to leave their imprint on the NBA world. If his first year in Boston is any guide, he figures to outlast all of them.

If you ask Fitch about his coaching philosophy today, he would tell you the same things he said in the 1960s at North Dakota, Bowling Green and the University of Minnesota. His insistence on hard work and more dedication than one normally expects from today's highly paid but difficult-to-motivate athletes is no different now than when he was coach of the Cavaliers for nine seasons. Only, until the mid-'70s, he also had to keep people laughing at his jokes instead of his teams.

"I know I haven't changed in one regard," he said the other day. "I'm still a strong believer in basic fundamentals. I know I wouldn't do anything different in terms of teaching. Our priorties were to come here and build a program, one that would stand the test of time. We're going to have draft choices and a mixture of young and veteran players in the years to come. If our free agents, both young and old, sign and stay. If we develop good players as well as pick up good ones in the draft, I think we'll be a solid organization.

"What do we mean by Celtics' Pride around here? We mean The Family and hard work and the players who want to pay the price of success. Even though we have the same people back next year, they will battle for their roles. Superstars have to maintain their roles, and that doesn't always happen because younger players beat out older players. Sometimes they reverse roles. But it's all part of the program, and it would be that way if we had a 20-20 record and were trying just to win the 21st game."

If you ask Bill Fitch about his personal life, he will speak mostly of playing racquetball and sticking to a diet that has allowed him to drop more than 50 pounds this season. "I feel as good this year as I have for a long time," he said.

Bill Fitch is a coach. He is not a former player or a man who had ties to the early days of the NBA. He was hired as coach and general manager at Cleveland in 1970, and, in the next nine years, he devoted his total energy to building that franchise. As with most dedicated basketball men, it put his personal life on rocky shores. Today he is a bachelor, with three children and an ex-wife to support. He was divorced two years ago. One daughter, Lisa, is a point guard for the Ohio University women's basketball team.

Fitch has been the resident punster of the NBA ever since those grim days at Cleveland. But it is only a facade covering a complex personality, which has only just begun to emerge. The club hasn't lost enough games, yet, for him to become a Jekyll and Hyde. But a nationally televised loss to Los Angeles last month sent Fitch into a state of depression that lasted two days. He has been described as amateur psychiatrist, which he denies. He is right. He is no amateur.

He is no more dedicated to winning than Bill Russell or Tom Heinsohn were. His intelligence is no greater than Satch Sanders' nor is his experience greater than Dave Cowens'. But not since Red Auerbach himself was on the bench has the word "coach" commanded the respect from the Celtics that Fitch gets. Of course, he is aware that there are millions, particularly in New England, who still credit Auerbach for the Celtics' revival. But for now, recognition as "coach" is enough of a reward for Fitch.

"I make the same amount of money," says Fitch. "I've got the same amount of friends. I don't know how much credit I'm getting, but if somebody is saying that we're winning because of me and me only, they are wrong. You have to take the credit and success of this team and divide it among 12 players, two coaches, a trainer, a general manager and an owner like Harry Mangurian. Everybody has played a role in what has happened to us. If you are going to win a championship, that is what it takes.

Coaching is important in any sport. I'm not going to stand here and say we don't need coaches. It's like saying I don't want to eat tomorrow. If you want to give me one-sixteenth of the credit, I'll take it. But more than that is wrong."

The subject comes up quite often: Will Fitch one day replace Auerbach as the Celtic general manager? Theirs is a delicate relationship. Auerbach has always admired Fitch's ability, and it is no accident that the coach was the first to be hired "outside" the so-called Celtic family.

Fitch puts Auerbach and Pete Newell in the genius class among his contemporaries. There is seemingly no friction, and Fitch insists there won't be for one simple reason. He is not looking beyond his present position.

"I don't think anybody should be a coach and general manager in this day and age," he says. "I started out doing both jobs in Cleveland when it was financially a must to stay in business.

"If we (Cavs) had a general manager who was as tight with the pennies as I was as general manager, the coach would have shot him. I wasn't about to shoot the general manager, as long as I was the general manager.

"That was an expansion team and this is a new decade. With all the changes, free agents and so forth, I think that it is important that you have both a general manager and a coach. A lot of clubs have both, plus a director of player personnel. I said when I left Cleveland the main reason I was going was because I didn't want to do both jobs anymore. What I'm doing right now is not much different from what I do as a coach with any team. But it's going to be nice not to have to spend from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. this summer in the office, taking phone calls and being responsible for office staff, sales and NBA communications.

"Red and I are of the same mind on personnel, anyway. We constantly talk about college and pro players and ways that this club can be improved. I'm looking forward to a summer where I won't have to talk to the lawyers or be totally responsible for making trades or contract renewals."

Veteran players and writers will tell you that Fitch is not an easy man to be around, particularly if you are not basketball oriented. His time is limited. People get courteous but brief attention. Writers get more information in five minutes than most coaches give in a half-hour. And Fitch is genuinely funny. But each day is planned like a master battle plan. Writers, particularly, have found that "flexibility" in scheduling is not one of his strong points.

Fitch is a player's coach . . . tough but fair. He can instill fear, although he prefers to call it respect for authority. Yet he enjoys a loyalty from his players that few coaches command. "Not many guys I know would knock him as a coach or a person," says former Cavalier Jim Chones, now with Los Angeles. "He was tough on players. But what I think about is that he stuck with me and gave me my chance to be what I am today."

Like roles on the basketball floor, Fitch has begun to establish off-the- court roles among this Celtic team, which has been together for a short time. There is the designated whipping boy - a player who, for whatever reason, receives Fitch's wrath.

There is a role for a comedian, a rah-rah guy and, from time to time, an enforcer. Many roles. But one man doing the orchestration.

"I admit I'm a dictator," says Fitch. "We sit in the clubhouse or talk at practice and I do all the talking. But there is always room for players to contribute, and we've come to expect it not only from the veterans like a Cowens or a Don Chaney, but also from young guys like Jeff Judkins and Eric Fernsten. Everybody has ideas, and I believe in listening to anything that can help this club."

Fitch keeps a tight rein on his troops and does not wait until a closed- door meeting to tell them what he thinks. Some days he barks at Rick Robey for not showing the kind of physical intensity in practice that Fitch believes must be shown there first, and then in the game. Another time he might applaud Cedric Maxwell as he does one of his flops or break up over the wide grin on Max's face over a stellar defensive play.

One day you might hear a whistle to stop play as Fitch scolds a Gerald Henderson for being too tentative, or even a Pete Maravich, whom time and circumstances have combined to bring to a club that is light years ahead of him in conditioning.

It is not a matter of breaking rules. When Fitch snarls at a Larry Bird for poor shot selection, or at an M.L. Carr for making a mockery out of garbage time with a wild three-point attempt, it is because, in his opinion, they were not making good basketball judgments. Sometimes, a brief chat between player and coach solves all. Other times, angry words are exchanged. But never in public, which the players appreciate just as much as Fitch.

"I think a winning combination is when you get talent - real basketball talent such you have in a Dave Cowens or a Larry Bird - and you still have a respect for authority. If you have talented players who will sacrifice for the good of the team, you're going to have a winner.

"That also is why you need a disciplinarian in the game of basketball, though. It is a game of peaks and valleys and emotions. If you have a lack of discipline, you'll lose.

"I like people. I like my players and I try to separate the basketball player from the person. He's a basketball player for 48 minutes. He's a person for 23 hours. You have to treat them differently, depending upon which hour of the day it is."

The game has changed, and nobody knows it better than Fitch. His dependence on videotapes and movies is now a way of life. On the road, he carries a portable projector. The hours of watching each day vary. But if there is a college or pro game available via film or tape, chances are that Fitch will watch it.

"When I was at Cleveland, I used films to evaluate teams and players," he says. "There are reels and reels of film still there. But today, I watch tapes. All sorts of tapes. I get the cable of college and pro games. I can see things and learn more off a tape in a short period than you can watching a game in person. I read the papers. Sometimes a player says after a game the very information that we need to know. I saw a clip where Tom Owens of Portland talked about a play and how much he really loved it. We looked for that play when we played Portland. "You can't stop a game and run back a pick underneath. You can't stop it and pick up the hundred little things you can see on film or tape. I like my players to see them, and I hope it helps them evaluate their own games."