Past coach Harris honored by peers
The epitome of a coaching “lifer,” Del Harris was given the award to prove it Friday.
Harris, who began his NBA coaching career with the Rockets and led them to the 1981 NBA Finals, was named the winner of the National Basketball Coaches Association’s Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award.
The former coach of the Rockets, Bucks and Lakers, among his stops in 61 years in the game, Harris was so great a fixture and respected of as a basketball mind the recognition for a lifetime in the gamewas not his first. Harris was the recipient of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame John Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
The latest honor, however, came froma panel of his peers Bernie Bickerstaff, Billy Cunningham, Joe Dumars, Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Pat Riley, Donnie Walsh and Lenny Wilkens.
“I’m tremendously thankful for any of the honors I’ve been getting,” Harris said. “This one has a special meaning because of the tremendous names of those that have gotten this before and knowing there are many others out there who have given their professional lives to the sport. Coaching basketball is a special thing. It is a ministry, a service. When you do it right, you’re fitting into the lives of the players in a very special way. A special relation
ship can be developed.
“To be recognized by the people you actually were competitive against and planned against and fought to beat and when itwas over you had a mutual respect for one another makes this one different fromthe rest.”
Harris, the 1994-95 NBA Coach of the Year with the Lakers, went 556-457 in 14 seasons as a head coach. He was an NBA assistant coach for 18 years and coached more than 400 FIBA games, including a stint as Yao Ming’s Chinese national team coach at the 2004Athens Olympics. Hewas an assistant under Rudy Tomjanovich in the 1998 World Championships when a team of free agents with no NBA experience won the bronze medal.
“As I look back atmy life, my goal when I started coaching was to be a small college coach,” Harris said. “At 27, I was coaching at a small college (Earlham College). I did that for nine years. That allowed me to go to Puerto Rico in the summers. I had success there. Tom Nissalke asked me to coach with a team (the Utah Stars) in the ABA. Tom got the head-coaching job with the Rockets. I’ve been working in the NBA in one capacity ever since.”
Harris, 83, the vice president of the Texas Legends G League teamthat is the Mavericks’ affiliate, became the Rockets’ coach in 1979.
“I coached with many players that are now in the Naismith Hall of Fame,” Harris said. “When I’m in-
troduced today … I get introduced as Kobe (Bryant’s) first coach, Magic ( Johnson’s) last coach and the move ‘Space Jam.’
“My first head-coaching job with the Rockets, I had Hall of Famers Rick Barry, Calvin Murphy, Moses Malone, Rudy Tomjanovich and before I left I had Elvin Hayes. With Nellie (Don Nelson), just wonderful players I got to help with (in Milwaukee), (Bob) Lanier, ( Junior) Bridgeman, on and on. Loved them all. I’m so thankful to know them. If I helped any, I’m glad.”
Harris was the head coach or an assistant on teams that included five of the top 10 scorers in NBA history, Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Shaquille O’Neal, Malone and Hayes. Eight of his former assistants became NBA head coaches; two became general managers
Previous winners of the Daly Award were Frank Layden (2019), Doug Moe (2018), Al Attles and Hubie Brown (2017), K.C. Jones and Jerry Sloan (2016), Dick Motta (2015), Bickerstaff (2014), Bill Fitch (2013), Riley (2012), Wilkens (2011), Tex Winter and Jack Ramsay (2010) and Tommy Heinsohn (2009).
“When you went over the list of those coaches that have gone on before and won this award, and knowing how great those coaches were, I coached against just about every one of them in that kind of golden era of the late ’70s, the ’80s and the early ’90s of NBA basketball when it really rose to what it has continued to grow to become,” Harris said, “just the names of the men on the committee, again, I either coached against them as a coach, or as a player in the case of Joe Dumars and some of the rest, and I regard them to be friends.
“I was flexible. When it called for slowing the game down, I did that. If it called for a moderate pace, as with the Bucks, we did that. If it called for up-tempo, as with the Lakers, we did that. With the Rockets, we were able to develop a very strong power game, yet we had some good shooters around. There’s a lot of ways to win the game.”