Justin Tinsley is a writer based in Richmond, Virginia, USA. His work has been featured in SLAM Magazine, LA Weekly, The Score and more. You can follow him on Twitter @JustinTinsley
For the past 72 hours, during an incredibly exciting first round of the 2014 NBA play-offs, all anyone wants to discuss are Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racial remarks and the impending verdict. The words were callous. The audience, unbeknownst to him at the time, was well-directed. The result was very much impactful – 12 Clippers’ sponsors have all either cut or suspended ties with the organisation – despite the element of surprise being extinct given Sterling’s peppered past in race relations.
Life's game of irony is weird, though. Where many in basketball now pray for a permanent environment without Sterling, many of the same prayers become fortresses of solitude attempting to cope with the passing of Dr Jack Ramsay.
The basketball icon passed away Monday in Naples, Florida, at the age of 89 following complications with cancer. For generations of basketball fans who fell in love with the game after his 21-year coaching career ended in 1989, Jack was simply seen as a “basketball grandfather.” A man whose knowledge of the game nurtured itself in every broadcast his second career afforded in the ‘90s and 2000s with ESPN, the Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat.
Basketball isn’t a complicated sport. It never has been. Sure, backdoor cuts, defensive assignments and things of the sort can become overwhelming. The game, itself, has never changed: score more points than the other team. Ramsay’s teachings revealed basketball’s countless dimensions. His on-air lessons covered a lot because that’s exactly what he saw.
Born and raised in Philadelphia provided him the city’s passion and grit. Traveling the world from his days in the Navy in World War II, an unyielding quest for academic knowledge and the requirements of working in professional basketball spawned a worldly view on life and how its lessons paralleled into basketball and vice versa.
Ramsay’s 864 career wins, unique wardrobe, helping Wilt Chamberlain hoist his first title in 1967 as the Philadelphia 76ers general manager or a decade later as head coach of the Trail Blazers are the old man’s surface level calling cards. They explained a part of who he was. Dedication and passion helped envelope much of the rest.
Precise breakdowns via his broadcasting days represented vivid glimpses into what made Dr Jack an icon in a sport benefitting from its fair share. We watched Jack Ramsay-called games not only because we’d hear the game deciphered in an entertaining and informative aura. We listened because the old man’s DNA was embedded in basketball as much as the superhuman talents on the court who came to revere his wisdom. He was cool as a fan doing it, too.
"Try to find someone who has a bad word to say about Jack Ramsay," said broadcasting legend in his own right, Hubie Brown. "You can't find him."
Google Dr Jack Ramsay's name. What Hubie said holds weight. The only slight attached to legacy is not drafting Michael Jordan in 1984.
Living to the ripe age of 89 and spending the great majority of it in a sport headlined by conflicting egos, it’s almost impossible not to develop an enemy along the way. This isn’t saying Dr Jack was the exception to the rule. Having luminaries like Pat Riley, Bill Walton, Larry Bird, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Gregg Popovich, Micky Arison, Adam Silver and more, however, confess the level of pride and honour it was to call Ramsay a friend is validation. It’s actually well beyond such.
So while the rest of the basketball world awaits Donald Sterling’s fate, realise the loss of Dr Jack Ramsay is a punch to the gut all the same. The man was by all accounts a breathtaking friend, devoted husband and father. To the rest of us, he was a “basketball grandfather.” Just a guy who helped us love the game a tad bit more.
The beauty in life lies in the spirits of those who embody its essence. Jack Ramsay was one those spirits. Heaven landed a great one this week.
