That seemed to be the case with most of the teams based in the smaller towns - the fans were more rabid, and they wanted to literally kill the opposition.

But as a coach I wanted to keep things from being too complicated.

These days I smile benignly at the fights that I see in NBA games. There aren't any broken noses or black eyes, which happened quite often when I played.

Kerner decided to trade my rights to the Chicago Stags, which sounded better to me than Tri-Cities, but the Stags folded up almost immediately.

The NBA wasn't a big deal at that time, so it wasn't really in my career plans.

I had endured six years of frustration so I think winning it all meant more to me than most of the others on the team.

The MVP award was very satisfying in terms of personal accomplishments, but the championship was the most important thing of all.