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Coaching Well Game Builders Interview with Alex OmalevProfessor Emeritus of Cal State University, Fullerton, 1943 University of California All-American, 23 years a college basketball coach, member of the International Committee of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
C.W.: How were you introduced to the game?
A.O.: My introduction to the game of basketball was at the age of five in Detroit Michigan when I took my mother’s stocking and stuffed it full of papers and tied up the end and put up a little hoop and started throwing it through the hoop. Eventually they built a Methodist church across the street from our house and they had a big cement floor basement with baskets there and that is where I would shoot eight to ten hours a day during the summers and eventually that got me my scholarship to the University of Southern California.
C.W.: You were an All-American at USC were you not?
A.O.: Yes I was selected on Clair Bee’s All-American second team for Sir Magazine in 1943.
C.W.: Did you meet Hall of Fame Coach Bee?
A.O.: Well I met him while we were playing against him. As a junior and senior we played his teams in the Gardens. My senior year we snapped his winning streak and beat his team by the astounding score of 48 to 40, which would be a half time score today.
C.W.: To what do you attribute the changes in the scoring over the years.
A.O.: Well, of course kids are better shooters today with the year round play in the junior high and high schools and then the simplification of the shot. Where we spent hours learning the hook shot and the push shot you notice now it is just a flip so you get more accuracy and you get better shooters.
C.W.: Was the pace of the game similar.
A.O.: No, not that fast. Of course I played under Coach Sam Berry at USC and we believed in setting up and working it in and so forth.
C.W.: Would the offensive systems run then work now given the shot clock restriction?
A.O.: Oh I think so. You look at the Chicago Bulls with Tex Winter, who also played for Sam Berry, with his triple post offense. Of course we didn’t have the shot clock when I played nor did we have the three point line. But there are things that don’t change in basketball. One of my teammates Alex Hannum, who was a freshman when I was a senior, coached two NBA championship teams (Philadelphia in 1967 with Wilt Chamberlain, Matt Goukas, Luke Jackson, Billy Cunningham, Wilt Chamberlain, Dave Gambee, Chet Walker, Hal Greer, Billy Melchionni, Larry Costello, and Wally Jones and St. Louis in 1958 with Bob Petit, Ed Macauley, Slater Martin, Frank Selvy, Cliff Hagan, Jack Coleman, Charlie Share, Walt Davis, Win Wilfong, Jack McMahon, and Med Park.). When he came into town one day while coaching Syracuse I asked him what the professionals thought were the most important things in the game. He said number one is screening off the boards, number two is individual defense, and number three is your offensive maneuvers. But screening off the boards is most important because you can’t do anything unless you can get the ball. When I played at USC we were not a very tall team but we did work very hard at blocking off the boards and then getting your share of rebounds. And that still holds today.
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C.W.: During your 23 years of college coaching experience did you teach the same concepts?
A.O.: Oh yes, on defense and screening off the boards and fundamentals. When I started coaching in 1949 at a Junior College here in Fullerton California, we were all influenced by what Johnny Wooden did at UCLA with fast break basketball. So we incorporated a lot of his theories of coaching.
C.W.: Was there a fair amount of exchange of information and about coaching philosophy and style among coaches at that time in that part of the country?
A.O.: Oh yes and of course each year at the final four coaching convention we would all meet. Some of the most important things I learned were up in the hotel rooms in discussions amongst coaches. For example I recall a discussion involving Hank Iba (Coach of the 1945 and 1946 NCAA National Championship Oklahoma A&M Aggies with player Bob Kurland) and Phil Woolpert (Coach of the 1955 and 1956 NCAA National Championship University of San Francisco teams with players Bill Russel and K.C. Jones) in which they talked for twenty minutes about the position of the front foot on defense. They had it broken down that much into where the weight distribution was and so forth. Pete Newell of course was a big influence out here as well.
C.W.: Would you tell us a little about your international experience.
A.O.: Well the Yugoslavia government invited me over there in 1968 and 1969 to give basketball clinics. Some of the players were pretty good, for example Kresimir Cosic who is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and came over to this country and played at BYU. I have given clinics in Mexico and in 1978 was the consultant coach to Tijuana del Norte when they won the national championship in Mexico. I have also been to India twice to give clinics there. That was quite an experience. I thought they would be short players but they had some very tall boys at 7’2" and 7’4". They play outdoors and they had 10,000 people in outdoor bleachers watching the national championship game.
C.W.: What changes do you think would improve the current game?
A.O.: I think the game needs cleaning up. It has just gotten to be a little too rough particularly in the pro game. Palming the ball is a farce. You put the defensive player at a strict disadvantage when you can put your hand under the ball and take several steps and then bounce it. Naismith did not have a tape measure when he put up the peach basket. It just happened to be a convenient place to nail it and it happened to be ten feet high. We are so tradition bound that we have not changed that. Now had that convenient spot been fifteen feet high we would not have this problem with dunking. So there is a move afoot to at least raise it up to eleven feet. Dr. Edward Bilik, Director of Athletics at Springfield College is part of the movement to do that. I think that will help out. Now there is no defense against the dunk. You put your hand out to stop it and it is automatic goaltending. Raising the hoop may also open up the game. We should also go to a single international uniform distance for the three point shot. College is right at the top of the circle. The pros are three feet back. International is in between. I think that should all be standardized. The larger international key would also help because players are just getting too big and agile.
C.W.: What was your inspiration for the poetic trilogy "The Birth of Basketball"?
A.O.: I have always been fascinated by the Scottish people. Naismith is of Scottish descent and I have always admired Bobby burns the poet. I wondered how it would be if I told the story of the first basketball game in poetic form. So I wrote it and went over to John Wooden because I knew that he had received his Masters degree in poetry as a graduate student. He wrote a forward for the trilogy. I returned to Springfield to do some research and met Naismith’s great-grand daughter who was a librarian there. The athletic director, gave us a brick from the building in which the first game was played in 1891. That building was demolished in 1965 but the brick is now in the Orange County Hall of Fame.
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C.W.: How did you get the inspiration to tell the story from the three perspectives?
A.O.: Well I am kind of a creative person. There was only one goal scored in that first game and they called Mr. Stebbins in to get the ball out. I thought how would it be if we told the story from Naismith’s viewpoint, and then that of Bill Chase, the player who scored the first basket, and then from the janitor who had the peach baskets, Mr. Stebbins. I may have taken a bit of poetic license with the way Bill Chase made that basket. But we do know that it was a long shot taken from quite a way out. Coincidentally Dr. Paul Pastor who illustrated the trilogy graduated from Springfield College.
I am pretty proud of "The Birth of Basketball" poetic trilogy and have written another one based upon my experience in India titled "The Saga of Salaam Dunk".
C.W.: What are your current activities in the game of basketball?
A.O.: Well I am still a member of the International Committee of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and awhile ago I worked with the Los Angelas Lakers as an interpreter for Vlade Divac whom they brought from Yugoslavia. My parents came from there and even though I was born in the United States that was the first language I learned. I have kept it up and am glad I did because it has opened up a lot of doors. But Vlade learned too fast and I only worked with the Lakers for three months. These days I love to watch my 11 year old grandson play. I watch him play and then we enjoy ourselves discussing the game.
The Birth of Basketball
A Poetic Trilogy of the First Game
Includes:
- The Ballad of the Birth of Basketball with a foreword by John Wooden. (This poem describes the circumstances and process of the game's invention.)
- The Ballad of Bill Chase with a forward by Ralph Miller (Bill Chase scored the first basket. His opponent's defensive tactics and how he scored it are hilarious.).
- Mr. Stebbins Stands By with a forward by the late Henry Iba (Without Mr. Stebbins it would not be "basket" ball.).
- Reflections of a Naismith Student by John McClendon.
Forty eight pages of poetry and drawings as well as photographs of Dr. Naismith, the gymnasium in which the game was first played, the first eighteen players to play the game, and the first basketball team. This historical and artistic work was written by Alex Omalev, former All American, Professor Emeritus of Cal State University, Fullerton, and a college basketball coach for over 23 years.
To own this Poetic Trilogy send a cheque for $6.00 U.S. to:
The Orange County Sports Hall of Fame, Inc.
C/O 1365 So. Acacia Avenue
Fullerton, CA 92631
United States of America
(The Orange County Sports Hall of Fame, Inc. is a 501 C3 California Corporation
Fed. ID # 95-3827911, State reg. #CT-51703)
Return to the Basketball History and James Naismith at the Kansas Heritage web site.
Of course, Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Kansas, but he came from Canada, so you may read the Dr. James Naismith biographyat the Naismith Museum web site in his home town.
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