OAKLAND — Al Attles, who coached the Warriors to the greatest upset in NBA Finals history as part of more than six decades with the franchise, died on Wednesday at his East Bay home. He was 87.
Hard-nosed on the court but engaging in the community, Attles joined the Warriors as a player in 1960 and never left. His 64 uninterrupted seasons with the team marked the longest active streak in the NBA.
“Alvin Attles did not just epitomize what it meant to be a Warrior – he was Mr. Warrior,” the team said in a statement. “His tenacious playing style earned him the affectionate nickname of ‘The Destroyer’ on the court, but it was his gentle soul, grace and humility off the court that served as a guiding light for the organization for more than six decades.”
Attles is best known for shocking the basketball world by guiding the plucky Warriors to the NBA title in 1975. With just one star, Rick Barry, the team finished with a 48-34 regular-season record. But the Warriors found their groove during the playoffs that culminated with a 4-0 sweep over the highly favored Washington Bullets.
Attles engineered that upset by relying on his end-of-bench players for meaningful minutes.
“We knew that it didn’t matter if we were a starter or not, Al valued what we did, and if we were doing it, he was going to leave us in there,’’ center George Johnson said during a reunion of the Warriors’ first title team in October 2018. “I think that’s what helped us many, many nights. We were down and out of many games but were able to come back because physically, using more players than the other teams, we were able to go hard.”
In all, Attles spent 13-plus seasons drawing up plays, the longest tenure for a Warriors coach. His teams went 557-518 in the regular season, earned six playoff berths and won two division titles.
But his distinguished coaching career represented only a fraction of his overall tenure with the Warriors. Attles was a player, general manager and an executive while starting with the team when the Warriors were in Philadelphia and Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House.
Attles’ final job title simply was “Warriors Legend & Community Ambassador.”
“I’ve been very, very fortunate – I’ve played with some great players, I’ve coached some great players, fortunate to be a part of a championship before,” Attles told The Undefeated in 2016. “There’s an old saying, ‘Great things happen to great people,’ and it’s nice when you have good people.”
Al Attles, #16, makes the jump during a San Francisco Warriors versus Los Angeles Lakers game. From left are Jeff Mullins, #23, and Happy Hairston, #52. (Bay Area News Group Archives)
A star at North Carolina AT&T, the point guard was a fifth-round draft choice of the Philadelphia Warriors in 1960. He considered not bothering to show up for camp, reasoning that the team already had its unofficial quota of four black players. “I said, ‘There is no way I am going to make this team,”’ he told The Undefeated.
But when the team traded power forward Woody Sauldsberry to the St. Louis Hawks, Attles stuck with it and wound up with a playing career that lasted 11 seasons. He averaged 8.9 points, 3.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists over 711 regular-season games.
He owed his career highlight as a player to teammate and one-time roommate: Wilt Chamberlain, who scored 100 points on March 2, 1962, an NBA record likely to stand forever. (Less remembered: Attles scored 17 points while making all eight of his field goals.)
He was nicknamed “The Destroyer” because he knew his way around an on-court scuffle. That didn’t change during his coaching days.
“They didn’t call him ‘The Destroyer’ because he was a pleasant man,” Hubie Brown joked during the 2017 Finals, when he and Attles were co-honorees of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Any time a fight would break out in the days that (Attles) was there, you knew that your guy was going to be taken to the floor. Gently, but you’re going to the floor, so that you cannot land any blow against a Golden State Warrior.”
Near the end of the 1969-70 season, team owner Franklin Mieuli approached Attles and proposed the idea of becoming a player/coach. Attles answered “no” to that idea more than once.
But Mieuli kept pressing and once tried to tell Attles that he wasn’t going home until he could announce that he was going to take over as coach.
“I said, ‘Well, Mr. Mieuli, you’ll never go home again,” Attles said. “And, so finally, the next day, I talked to my wife. She convinced me to do it. I said I’d do it for 30 games.”
That so-called trial run as coach lasted into the early 1980s. One of his traits, especially with the memorable ’74-75 champion team, was that he would rely heavily on his bench. Of the 13 players on the roster, 10 averaged double-digit minutes.
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“Everybody thought I was going against conventional wisdom until we ended up winning, then everybody thought it was the thing to do,” Attles told The New York Times. “There was no ego; they were a team that came to play every night. That was a team that any coach at any level would have been happy coaching. ”
The Basketball Hall of Fame honored Attles in 2014 by bestowing him the John R. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award. That’s the most prestigious award presented by the Hall outside of enshrinement.
The Warriors retired his No. 16 jersey, making him one of only six players in team history to be so honored. The others are Barry (24), Chamberlain (13), Tom Meschery (14), Chris Mullin (17) and Nate Thurmond (42).
“I always enjoyed the games against Al because the team would be well-coached,’’ Brooks said. “And that plan would be backed up by outstanding players who could deliver under pressure.”
Daniel Brown is a former Bay Area News Group sports writer.
