Read Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success for Free Online Page B

“the House that Cazzie Built.” Nobody questioned his skill: Cazzie was an excellent shooter who had led the Wolverines to three consecutive Big Ten titles. What amused the players was his obsession with health food and alternative therapies. For once, there was someone on my team who had more nicknames than I did. He was called “Wonder Boy,” “Muscles Russell,” “Cockles ’n’ Muscles,” and my favorite, “Max Factor,” because he loved slathering massage oil on his body after workouts. His room was filled with so many vitamins and supplements that Barnett, his roommate, joked that you had to get a signed pharmaceutical note if you wanted to visit.
    What impressed me about Bill and Cazzie was how intensely they were able to compete with each other without getting caught in a battle of egos. At first Bill had a hard time adjusting to the pro game because of his lack of foot speed and leaping ability, but he made up for those limitations by learning to move quickly without the ball and outsmart defenders on the run. Defending him in practice—which I often had to do—was nerve-racking. Just when you thought you had trapped him in a corner, he would skitter away and show up on the other side of the floor with an open shot.
    Cazzie had a different problem. He was a great driver with a strong move to the basket, but the starting team worked better when Bradley was on the floor. So Red made Cazzie a sixth man who could come off the bench and ignite a game-turning scoring spree. Over time, Cazzie adjusted to the role and took pride in leading the second unit, which, in 1969–70, included center Nate Bowman, guard Mike Riordan, and forward Dave Stallworth (who had been sidelined for a year and a half recovering from a stroke), plus backup players John Warren, Donnie May, and Bill Hosket. Cazzie gave the unit a nickname: “the Minutemen.”
    Not too long ago, Bill attended a Knicks reunion and was surprised when Cazzie, who is now a minister, came up to him and apologized for his selfish behavior when they were competing for the same job. Bill told Cazzie that there was no need to apologize because he knew that, no matter how driven Cazzie was, he never put his own ambition above that of the team.
    —
    Unfortunately I couldn’t be one of Cazzie’s Minutemen in 1969–70. In December 1968 I had a serious back injury that required spinal fusion surgery and took me out of the game for about a year and a half. The recovery was horrendous: I had to wear a body brace for six months and was told that I had to limit physical activity, including sex, during that period. My teammates asked if I was planning to have my wife wear a chastity belt. I laughed, but it wasn’t funny.
    I probably could have returned to action in the 1969–70 season, but the team had gotten off to a great start and the front office decided to put me on the injured list for the whole year to protect me from being picked up in the expansion draft.
    I wasn’t worried about money because I had signed a two-year extension deal with the club after my rookie year. But I needed something to keep me occupied, so I did some TV commentary, worked on a book about the Knicks called
Take It All!
with team photographer George Kalinsky, and traveled with the team as Red’s informal assistant coach. In those days most coaches didn’t have assistants, but Red knew that I had an interest in learning more about the game, and he was looking for someone to bounce new ideas around with. The assignment gave me an opportunity to look at the game the way a coach does.
    Red was a strong verbal communicator, but he wasn’t that visually oriented and rarely drew diagrams of plays on the board during pregame talks. Every now and then, to keep the players focused, he would ask them to nod their heads if they heard the word “defense” while he was talking—which happened about every fourth word. Still, the players drifted off when he was talking, so he asked me to