http://www.nba.com/hornets/news/bass_040630.html June 30, 2004 Bob Bass Q&A If you ask Bob Bass, he'll say that he doesn't know. "How I retire? I have no idea," said Bass. "I don't know how you retire." The two-time NBA Executive of the Year has worked for the last 54 consecutive seasons as a coach and/or executive in the high school, collegiate and professional ranks. He spent the last nine seasons with the Hornets (in which he never experienced a losing season). He announced his retirement from basketball at a May 5th press conference and his legendary career came to an end on June 30, Bass' official last day. For Bass, basketball is all he has known. It's been more than his livelihood. It's been his life. "I've never made one dollar outside of basketball," Bass continued. "I coached two years in high school, 17 years in college and was a coach and in the front office for 36 years in the American Basketball Association and NBA." "I felt like it was time for me to take a permanent leave and go back to Texas and enjoy whatever I have left. I've got to get out there and learn how to retire....Enjoy that part of life." Hornets radio voice Bob Licht sat down with Bass for a final Q&A to talk about his decades around the game of basketball, his greatest achievements, changes he has seen in the game over the years and his chances of making it to the Basketball Hall of Fame. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LICHT: We talk about the "R-Word" and usually it's a dirty word with General Managers. It means rebuilding and no General Manager wants to have to rebuild. But today the "R-Word" is retirement. How hard was it for you, Bob, to tell George Shinn that you were finally going to retire? BASS: It was difficult because George and I actually have been pretty close. For a GM and an owner, we were exceptionally close. He'd call seven or eight times a day and you'圬 tell him about a prospective draft pick or trade. 10 minutes later, he'd say 'you got it done?' 30 minutes later, he'd say 'what are you waiting on?' (laughing) you know, just keep going. It was a great relationship, but everything comes to an end at some time. LICHT: Is it my understanding that it comes to an end in terms of an official title but you would anticipate an occasional phone call as a consultant or whatever you want to call it. BASS: (laughing) Well, from George, I probably will. I think Allan (Bristow) will. Allan and I have been talking to each other. He was out of the NBA for four or five years and we still talked so I'm assuming that we'll still have conversations. The difference is I won't be on call 24/7. Not anymore. LICHT: Do you anticipate that being difficult? You're a guy who told me a few weeks back you joined this organization at the age of 66 and now you're retiring nine years later. It's not like you're in any kind of slow-down mode. BASS: You know, I was just a youngster then at 66 (laughing). It's been a great run. I've really had a good time and really enjoyed the work and I'm sure I'll miss it but it was time for me to get along and do something different. LICHT: Let's talk about 54 years in the game of basketball. Reflect back at some of the things that you enjoyed the most, that you admired the most about being the part of the game of basketball. BASS: Well, I think when you go to the collegiate level, the year we won the national championship, the NAIA, in those days, was really something. You're talking about we beat Earl Monroe's team. We beat Luke Jackson's team. We played against Willis Reed's team. In those days, the NAIA was really something and that was quite exciting but I think one of the big things was when the ABA started. To be involved in starting a franchise....We didn't have a ball. Our owner owned a trucking company. All we had were paper clips and a phone. Starting that franchise from the beginning when the whole league started...That was really exciting. LICHT: You have seen through the decades all the changes of basketball. I'm talking now about professional basketball. What would you say were the most significant ones? The things that changed the game to the point where we are now where we're seeing some of the greatest athletes in the world. BASS: Bob, from a coaching standpoint alone....We didn't have assistant coaches. We didn't have film coordinators. We didn't have strength coaches. It was just the trainer and I and 10 players out on the road. Everything really changed, no question. The thing about it though in those days it seems to me that the players, since there were so few teams then, were just happy to have a job especially in the ABA because they were out you know, most of them were ex-NBA players. I've seen a big change there. The rules have changed over the years and it's been remarkable how they've changed and affected the game. They really have. The interpretation of the rules has leaned towards the defensive teams, I think. Their interpretation of how they decide how they play the post, how you defend the post and it's really changed. LICHT: Do you like the direction the NBA game has turned? BASS: Well, in some respects, I do. When we had two referees, I loved it. I think we were able to fast break more, run more and score more because I guess they didn't see things. But with three referees, it's not that they call any more fouls, because they have proven they haven't, but it seems like to me, and nobody will agree with me on this, that the scoring in the league went down when we added three referees. It just gradually went down further and further. That's just the way I felt about it. LICHT: Talk about George Gervin. He's a guy you're associated with. You influenced his career. He's a hall-of-fame guy and you made a key decision in George Gervin's playing career. BASS: Usually things like that happen because of an injury. We were in the playoffs and we had our two guard, a guy named Donnie Freeman, hurt. So, we moved George to the two-guard position and he was just fantastic. He told me I was crazy. He said, 'I'm not going to do it.' And I said, 'Yeah, you are.' And about a month later, he said, 'Boy this easy. Those little 6-2 guys guarding me. This is something. I don't get killed on the boards.' It was a great thing for him. He turns around and leads the league in scoring four times after that so he benefited greatly from it. LICHT: In today's terms, you were really ahead of your time putting a 6-7 guy with his kind of offensive potential in the backcourt. Now, we see point guards that size, but back then, we didn't. BASS: Bob, he was 6-8 and 3/4 with his shoes. So he was tall, slim and extremely talented. When you look at those old films on Classic, you say there are some guys out there who can't even play in the league now. George Gervin could play in the league today. He was that kind of a talent. LICHT: Who was more of a favorite player for you in San Antonio? George Gervin or David Robinson? BASS: Well, I coached Gervin and I was more involved in him. With David, I was there sometimes with him but I really was closer to Gervin than I was David. I put on a campaign to get Gervin in the Hall of Fame and there's a writer in San Antonio that really helped me and we got him in there. He would've gotten in there anyway but we didn't want him to have to wait any longer. We've named a street after him in San Antonio. The street's about 40 yards long in downtown. LICHT: Let's talk about the Hornets. You have made some amazing moves with this franchise. I like to tell people that sometimes salary situations, sometimes personal or team situations force your hand to make a deal. But in almost every circumstance, when you've traded somebody, you get All-Stars back. You got an All-Star in Glen Rice in that deal involving Miami. You got Eddie Jones, who became an All-Star, in a deal with L.A. (Lakers). You get Jamal Mashburn from Miami and he's an All-Star. In almost every circumstance, what was the key in making those deals work where on the surface fans sometimes would say you gave up too much but after a year or two passed, it turns out you got equal value or more? BASS: In one of those trades, especially, Alonzo Mourning. That was the one (trade) I really didn't want to have to make but Larry Johnson's contract was so large that we couldn't have both of them on this team so when we made that trade, that was a tough one. It really was. And that was a hard one. You couldn't believe what the initial offer was coming from Miami. I had to really stand in there with Pat Riley. Finally, the day before the opening part of the season, David Faulk, Alonzo Mourning's agent called me and said, 'We're not going to make a deal,' and the team had already left to go to Chicago for the opening game of the season and I said 'You tell him to get on the plane and get up there on his own because he missed the team plane' and I said 'The bus won't be there either. Tell him to get his own cab.' And I took strong stand on that. 30 minutes later, they called and we had a deal. They were ready to do it, but they wanted to take one last shot at you, try and milk everything they could out of you. We ended up okay there. We got a draft choice. (We ended up) as well as you could in giving up a player of that stature. That was a hard trade. There were some others down the line that really turned out well for us. I was really proud this year, Bob, when I looked at the All-Star game. We've drafted two All-Stars in the last five years. There's not a heck of a lot of other team's that have done that. We also had an undrafted player that we signed and played in the All-Star game. Take into account our general manager, our player personnel guy and our scouts, we had three All-Stars in that game. I'm proud of that. You lose Brad Miller but the media doesn't tell everybody why you lose him. You lose him because of the system. We were over the cap and we couldn't match it. The rules wouldn't let us match his contract so we lose the guy. Some people say we just let him go. They failed to write that we went as far as we could go inside of the rules. LICHT: You talk about trying to keep the Hornets competitive. Allan Bristow and company have a tough road, especially moving out west. You talk about how important it is and how difficult it is to maintain a playoff team while you're also building it? I think last season was a good example. You drafted 18 last year. You drafted David West. He was one of the real finds of the Draft. You had 18 again this year and it's one of those situations where you're almost hampered by your continued success by making the playoffs. BASS: That's true. We've been lucky and we've been fortunate. But I think we've also made some good decisions along the way to keep the team competitive. They have a thing called 'bang for the bucks' and when you look at our team the last nine years, part of that time we were one and two in bang for the bucks. One guy, and I hate to brag on myself, said , 'you're the best in the league on doing it with the least amount of money, according to how many wins you get.' LICHT: You got lucky in one of the drafts. You moved up significantly and got Baron Davis and we've seen Baron's game grow a bit. You've seen a lot of great players in your time....How good do you think Baron Davis can be in the NBA? BASS: Right now, he's probably in the top two or three in the league for point guards. He's got such great explosive power and he's such an athletic guy. We need some other runners to play with him. Hopefully, we can get him that. We had great hope our team was going to run this year but it wasn't designed to run, so we didn't run very much. LICHT: That is the expectation moving out West and bringing Byron Scott in: You have to get more athletic. BASS: It is getting more athletic. But you know Bob, the big bad West is not quite as big, bad anymore since Detroit handled the Lakers. Two years ago we were 15-13 in the West. This year, we were 11-17 and I think the Hornets can win some games, I really do. I think they're going to surprise some people. When you only play people twice, that's one thing. When you play them four times, you may learn a little something along the way and win some of those games that people don't think you can. LICHT: Let's turn to Allan Bristow, your successor. Here's a guy that, I guess, your careers have been intertwined a lot. You probably know more about him than any guy who's in the NBA. What can you tell us about Allan Bristow and things that we can expect from him? BASS: He's got great experience. He's been an assistant coach in the NBA 10 years. He's been a player for 10 years. He's been a head coach for four years. He's been a general manager at Denver and Charlotte. He's about as qualified as any general manager in the league, when you get down to it, unless you're take those guys that have been around forever. When Allan got drafter, he was number 20 in the draft, I think, in the NBA and that was the second round. He got waived a year later by the Philadelphia 76ers and I gave him his job in the ABA and the friendship started from there and we've kept in touch over the years. We worked together in San Antonio and now a year here in New Orleans was great too. LICHT: The art of evaluating talent really is an art. What is it about Allan that you think will benefit in continuing what you've done here in evaluating talent? As a playoff team, a lot of times, you're drafting in the middle of drafts. BASS: You just have to have a feel for that, Bob, of who can play in the league and who can't and what level they can reach as players in the league. It comes as a player and a coach. He can do that. I think he'll do very well here. He's very competitive and I think if a trade comes down, he's going to get a fair deal for the Hornets. LICHT: What do you consider your greatest success in basketball? (that could have been at any level) and what is your greatest regret? BASS: When I was coaching Oklahoma Baptist University, 487 colleges and universities (started the season) in October and there's only going to be one guy standing in March and one time, I got to be that one guy. That was quite a thrill to me coaching a team to be the only one left standing when it's all over and 486 of them have gone by the wayside. I always wanted to win an NBA Championship. We had several big chances to get in the Eastern and Western Finals at San Antonio. Whether we would've beat the Celtics then I don't know. We lost to Portland one time, during David Robinson's rookie year, when Larry Brown was coaching. I though we had a great chance to get to the Finals but we didn't make it. LICHT: The Director of NBA Scouting, one of the most respected minds in the game Marty Blake said that you belong in the Naismith Hall of Fame. I think a lot of us agree and I guess that would be the capper on a 50-plus year career. BASS: I won't get in the Hall of Fame. I haven't accomplished that much. Some of the things I've done are like saving teams some money (laughing). You don't get in there for doing stuff like that but it was great for Marty to say that but I think that's what you call a 'no-hoper'. LICHT: Well, we'll see. I hope to get back to you on that one at a future time. --

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