When Warriors, girl both blazed a trail
Team drafted high schooler Denise Long in 13th round in 1969
The most explosive scorer the Warriors ever drafted, the player who created the biggest national stir on draft day, is worried about a horse, a black Morgan named Coaley.
“We have 11 acres,” the 1969 draft sensation says in a phone interview with The Chronicle. “Cedar trees have taken over, and I need to find time to cut all those cedar trees down so grass can grow for the horse.”
Denise Rife is on the line. She and her husband, Dan, are sheltering in place at home in Rose Hill, Kan., near Wichita.
With NBA play shut down, the only real discussion is the draft —
talk and speculation over what will happen in June, and analysis of past drafts. The Warriors have a colorful draft history — good, bad and ugly. Their most startling pick came in the 13th round in 1969, when they drafted a high school girl. And created a place for her to play.
That was Denise Long, now Denise Rife.
Rife, 69, says she was scheduled to have a hip replaced last week, but the surgery was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, as her condition steadily worsens.
She is a retired pharmacist and would love to return to work to help her community during this crisis, but the bum hip won’t allow that. All Rife can do is hobble around the house, and take care of the five cats and five dogs, and Coaley.
Rife doesn’t dwell on the past and on her place in basketball history, but she doesn’t mind talking about it, and it’s quite a story.
In 1969, the Milwaukee Bucks led off the draft by picking UCLA center Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem AbdulJabbar). The Warriors drafted seventh and took Bob Portman, a small forward who would have a short and quiet NBA career.
In the 13th round, the Warriors’ colorful owner, Franklin Mieuli, drafted Denise Long, a 5foot11 high school girl from tiny Whitten, Iowa.
The pick was quickly nullified by NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy. It was against the rules then to draft a player before his college class graduated. Women? They did not play in the NBA, nor in any other pro league, nor in the Olympics.
Adding a layer of absurdity to the pick, Long had not played fiveonfive basketball. Iowa girls played sixperson basketball, with three players on offense, three on defense, and nobody crossing the center line. A player was allowed two dribbles. The girls’ games were crazypopular, with statetourney games packing arenas and drawing up to 3.5 million TV viewers.
The draft nullification didn’t faze Mieuli. He loved to grab headlines, and he had outdone himself by drafting a schoolgirl who had achieved sudden national fame as a senior by scoring 111 points in a game. She scored more than 100 two other times, and averaged 69.6.
The draft was a publicity stunt, and it worked. Johnny Carson invited Long on the “Tonight Show,” where she sat between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. Backstage, she introduced herself to Robert Wagner, who invited Denise and her mother to dinner. She declined because they had a plane to catch. Big regret.
In San Francisco, Long met Wilt Chamberlain, who asked her, “Aren’t you the young lady who broke my (100point) record?”
“Yes,” Long confessed, “but I didn’t mean to.”
Mieuli’s publicity stunt had a deeper purpose. Using Long as a drawing card, he formed the fourteam Warrior Girls Basketball League. The women played a game before every Warriors home game, then played an exhibition quarter at halftime of the Warriors’ game.
“I needed to generate interest in the women’s basketball thing,” Mieuli said years later, explaining the draft of a schoolgirl. “I think the statement I made was very valid. I don’t know if women can play this game, but if anyone can, she can. She was a very sweet, innocent, lovable girl.”
The league lasted only one season, but surely planted seeds, and boosted Mieuli’s legacy as a social progressive. He also thumbed his nose at NBAwide unofficial quotas on the number of black players per team.
Rife has fond memories of her year in San Francisco, when Mieuli arranged for her to live with the team accountant, helped her enroll at USF, gave her expense money and leased her a purple Jaguar.
She recalls Mieuli as a likable and generous boss.
“One thing I remember about Franklin,” Rife says, “was that when he would clap his hands because he was enthusiastic about something, he would stretch his arms clear out in front of him. I would kid him and say, ‘Franklin, you clap like a seal!’ ”
Two years ago, the Warriors flew Rife to the Bay Area to salute her place in the history of the team and women’s basketball. The Warriors honored her at halftime and invited her to a practice, where Rife chatted with Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Steve Kerr, none of whom had created a draftday furor the way she had.
Waiting by an empty court, Rife grabbed a ball off the rack and put up some shots, with the confidence of a former star, even though she hadn’t shot in decades, was wearing high heels, and had a bad hip and an artificial knee. She clanged a few shots, but like a true scorer, she just kept jacking, and shots started falling.
“I guess I eventually hit a few,” Rife says with a laugh.
Back in the day, the kid could play. In a YouTube clip from the Iowa state tourney, Long is slender and graceful, and oh so confident, with a dazzling repertoire of soaring layups, elegant hooks with either hand and a pure jumper.
After her year in San Francisco, Long returned to the Midwest, earned multiple college degrees, and became a pharmacist. She played no more basketball, except for some exhibition games in 1973 against Asian national teams prepping to play in the ’76 Olympics, the debut for the women. Rife says, “My average went down, from 69 (per game in high school) to 35.”
Rife’s 2018 visit to the Warriors solidified her connection with, and affection for, the team and the Bay Area. She rooted for the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
“I would tell people (in Kansas) I was for the San Francisco 49ers and they’d be ticked off, like I was being disloyal or something,” Rife says. “But I was rooting for ’em because they’re San Francisco, and I was kind of part of San Francisco life.”
Outside of the Warriors and 49ers, Rife doesn’t really follow sports. When asked her impressions of Sabrina Ionescu, the decorated Oregon guard, Rife pauses, then asks, “Who’s she?”
Answer: “She’s the you of now.”