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Tribute To Phil Lumpkin

11/13/09

Written by: trailblazers

By Wayne Thompson, Trailblazers.com Senior Writer Long-term Trail Blazer fans, who have been along for most of this 40-year Rip City ride, may not remember Phil Lumpkin, who played for Portland only one season. Nevertheless, there is a great story to tell about Lumpkin, a highly successful Seattle-area high school basketball coach, who died at his home Nov. 2 of natural causes, following a bout with pneumonia. Lumpkin had gained weight over the years and weighed about 340 pounds. According to his uncle in Dayton, Ohio, Phil "had a problem with sleep apnea and possibly just stopped breathing and died in his sleep." Lumpkin's pro basketball story had its origin in the winter of 1973, when Portland Trail Blazers' chief talent scout Stu Inman took note of a six-foot point guard from Miami University of Ohio, whose clever ball-handling and exceptional court vision had just derailed the nation's fourth-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels. His name: Phil Lumpkin, just a college junior. Inman was not one to fall in love with underclassman for in those days, the NBA drafted only seniors. "This guy's a little different. He's such a great passer, he made North Carolina pay for its attempt to rush and double-team him," Inman said at the time. Inman didn't promise anything, other than to say, "We'll certainly keep our eye on Phil Lumpkin in the future, and take another look when he's a senior." That was the first time I ever heard the name Phil Lumpkin and future mentioned in the same sentence. The next time I heard Lumpkin and future used in the same sentence was a year later, in the summer of 1974. That's when Inman and Portland's new player-coach, Basketball Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens, labeled Lumpkin Portland's "point guard of the future." There is irony in all of this. The Blazers, as Inman suggested it might, selected Lumpkin in the May, 1974 NBA college draft with the second round (34th pick overall) selection. It was the draft choice it got from Chicago in exchange for Portland's original point guard Rick Adelman. So in a sense, Lumpkin's future as an NBA player was secured on Feb. 21, 1973 when he led the Miami (O) Red Hawks to a 102-92 win over a North Carolina team that finished the season 21-7, and featured Mitch Kupchak (current GM of the Los Angeles Lakers), George Karl (Denver Nuggets coach) and All-America Bobby Jones. Wilkens invited the rookie Lumpkin for a five-week evaluation at Lenny's Seattle-based summer camp, and it was there that the Hall of Fame coach and player touted Lumpkin as the Trail Blazers point guard of the future (Wilkens, at age 37 then, knew his playing days had come to an end and Lumpkin, at that time, was the only true point guard on Portland's roster.) Before fall camp, all parties were on a high. Wilkens was impressed with what he saw in Lumpkin, midway through the fall camp. "He has a great court sense, "Lenny said, "He takes charge of the situation without making an issue of it. And I like that." Inman, for his part, confirmed what he thought about Lumpkin a year earlier "He is what you would call a lead guard, a leader. In fact, Lumpkin was the best lead guard I saw during the college season," Inman said, And Phil Lumpkin, the six-foot playmaker from Miami (OH), seemed just happy to be along for the ride. "You always dream and occasionally you dream big that you can attain the ultimate. I guess the ultimate for me is playing professional basketball," he said to Trail Blazers' publicist John White. Lumpkin's 1974-75 season, however, didn't work out as well as he would have hoped. He played only 48 games, averaging just 4.2 points per game. Yet just after Christmas that year, Wilkens decided to take an extended look at his rookie point guard and Lumpkin got his chance to start. Over the next seven games, from Dec. 29 against Kansas City until Jan. 16, in a game at Cleveland, Lumpkin averaged 9.1 points and 8.3 assists in 35.7 minutes of playing time per game as the Blazers won three of the seven. And he collected a career high 10 assists against Kansas City and Seattle. That was pretty much the end of Phil's audition as Portland's point guard of future. Indeed, the Blazers traded Lumpkin to Phoenix the following June for a draft choice, and then selected in the 1975 college draft their real point guard of the future -- Lionel Hollins of Arizona State. Though his Blazer days were over, this wasn't the end of Lumpkin's NBA career. At Phoenix, he played a vital role in what arguably is one of the greatest games the league has ever seen -- Game 5 of the 1976 NBA championship Finals between the Suns and the Boston Celtics at the famed Boston Garden. In the first quarter of that game, Phoenix Coach John MacLeod inserted Lumpkin into the Suns lineup to head off what was shaping up as a Boston blow-out -- the Celtics opening up a 22-point lead. Said MacLeod: "(Lumpkin) was a very deliberate guard, and when we put him in, he slowed everything down. It calmed everybody down, and we made a heck of a run. I think we'd have been blown out if not for Phil Lumpkin." "The first quarter I think we called two timeouts plus a 20 second," MacLeod added. "We were having all kinds of problems handling the ball and couldn't advance the basketball against their pressure, so we put Phil in the game to counter that. "Phil Lumpkin's name is not mentioned at all by most observers as far as that game is concerned," MacLeod added, " but he played a pivotal part because he was a true point guard and he dribbled the ball, and he held on to it and he took his time, and he slowed down the Boston momentum. Believe it or not, he got us back into the game." The Celtics finally prevailed in that game, 128-126 in triple overtime and went on to win the series and the NBA title, four games to two. But Lumpkin's first quarter play made it possible for the Suns to overcome that 22-point early deficit. After his NBA career ended at the end of 1976 season, as a result of a serious ankle injury, Lumpkin probably earned his greatest glory as coach of O'Dea High School in Seattle. O'Dea is a premier basketball program on the West Coast, one that challenges against teams that often tout future NBA players, such as Nate Robinson, Jamal Crawford, Jason Terry, Spencer Hawes and Trail Blazers Martell Webster and Brandon Roy. Receiving his degree in Education from his alma mater (Miami (OH), Lumpkin in 1991 joined O'Dea, where he taught physical education along with his basketball coaching job. Lumpkin brought that same deliberate style he displayed at Miami (OH) and Portland and Phoenix of the NBA to O'Dea. He built a d y n a s t y, leading the Fighting Irish to 15 state tournament appearances while winning f i v e 3 A s t a t e c h a m p i o n s h i p t it l e s (the most recent in 2007) and playing in two other title games. For his great work with Seattle-area youngsters in the sport of basketball, Lumpkin has been elected to the Washington Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and will be inducted posthumously in July. Lumpkin's teams weren't flashy, and his teams didn't often blow opponents out; instead they'd slowly strangled them with stifling defense and deliberate, careful half court offense. When Lumpkin's players played poor defense, or sloppy offense, his verbal eruptions were a sight to behold. When a player sees a 340-pound coach screaming at him after a botched assignment, lessons get learned pretty fast, a former player said. Perhaps the best compliment to Lumpkin as a coach is this: He's the guy Portland Trail Blazers Coach Nate McMillan entrusted his own son to. Jamelle McMillan played on O'Dea state title teams, playing point guard, his dad's old position. Reached in Tempe, Ariz., where he is a junior on the the Arizona State basketball team, Jamelle McMillan, on learning of Lumpkin's death, said, "It's obviously a very tough situation. Coach Lumpkin is way too young for something like this to happen. It really makes you think, really makes you value your relationships with people. It makes you value your health. It really puts in perspective what's important, because life is short." "It still is hard to come to grips with," said Mitch Johnson, another Lumpkin pupil who plays now for Stanford University. Mitch's father, John Johnson, was a Trail Blazer (1973-76) and a ex-teammate of Lumpkin's on the 1974-75 Blazers. And over the last dozen or so years, John Johnson has been Lumpkin's best friend. "There was really no one like coach Lumpkin. He truly loved O'Dea and that was his family," said Mitch Johnson, who, with young McMillan, played on O'Dea's state championship team. Before earning fame as one of the best guards ever to play at Miami University in Ohio, Phil Lumpkin was part of the greatest backcourt in Ohio high school basketball history, according to Ohio prep historian Tom Archdeacon. Back in the late 1960s and into the first few months of 1970, Phil Lumpkin was the point guard and Donald Smith the shooting guard for Roth High School. Both averaged over 20 points a game. Lumpkin went to Miami University and Smith to the University of Dayton. In college, both Lumpkin and Smith ended up in their school’s Hall of Fame, Smith averaging 20.4 points per game for his college career, and Lumpkin 16.1. Both are gone now, Archdeacon noted in an obituary in a Dayton, Ohio newspaper. Smith, who had been drafted out of Dayton by the Philadelphia 76ers, died five years ago at age 53. As a coach, Lumpkin had earned legendary status at O'Dea during his 19-year career there. Once asked to describe his coaching style, Lumpkin responded in one word: "Discipline." "It's pretty simple; I teach the game a certain way and I expect my teams to play the way I teach it," he said in 2005. "I respect the game and my players, and in return I expect them to respect the game, as well as their coaches." Matt Ziegenfuss, an O'Dea assistant who coached with Lumpkin for six years, said, "He was one of a kind, just a great person, a great man. I was fortunate enough to get to know him off the court and he was just a great role model to me and a mentor." One of Lumpkin's biggest influences was Darrell Hedric, a Miami University of Ohio coach. Lumpkin said Hedric got him to buy into the importance of playing good defense, and never crossed the line between being a coach and buddy. Lumpkin recently told colleagues that he could still call Hedric for advice decades after playing for him. Hedric was stunned upon hearing of Lumpkin's death. “I got the call at 7 this morning (Nov. 3). It was Fred Lumpkin — Phil’s uncle in Dayton — and he told me Phil was dead,” Hedric said. “It’s just such a loss. He was just 57. I still can’t believe it.” "When Phil grew up on Laurel Drive (in Dayton, Ohio), he had a basket up on a pole in the backyard,” said his 77-year-old uncle Fred. “They played 3-on-3 on the dirt and the way Phil played, you knew it was his hoop. It’s called claiming your territory.” I also remember going to Oxford once through a blizzard,” Fred said. “Miami was playing Indiana and by the time we got there, Bobby Knight already had a technical. By the half, Phil had 18 or 19 points and Knight was yelling at his guys ‘Check that SOB!’ ” Hedric also recalled Lumpkin's defining college game against Dean Smith's nationally ranked Tar Heels in 1973. “Dean Smith had this ‘run-and-jump’ defense and they tried to run and jump Phil. But he was such a great passer, they couldn’t stop him,” said Hedric. Although he lived on the West Coast since his NBA days, Phil Lumpkin will be buried back home in Dayton. His brother Stephen is flying from his home in Paris to begin arrangements, which are pending at Smith Funeral Home in Dayton. “We’ll have the service at Tabernacle Baptist Church at Home Avenue and Broadway,” Fred Lumpkin said. “That’s where Phil was baptized. And this is where he belongs. This is his home.” No announcements about a memorial service in Seattle have been made, O'Dea school officials said. The Draft Review website recently asked Phil Lumpkin what would be his best on-court and off-court advice to young basketball players? Lumpkin replied: "My best on-court advice would be, pay some attention to the history of the sport. Know who Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Connie Hawkins, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain were to the sport. "Know the level of their contributions to the NBA and how you benefit from their careers. Learn the courtesies of the game, display them at all times. Learn to play the game the correct way and not the popular way. "Do these things and your enjoyment of the game will last much longer."
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