Hall of Fame
The road between the gymnasium at old Wilson High School and the National Basketball Association is long, bumpy and full of unexpected curves. Bill Fitch traveled that road with great success. He has coached more games than any other NBA coach and has coached more victories than all but one. Twice he was named NBA Coach of the Year and he coached the Boston Celtics to the NBA Championship. When we issued number 32 to Bill Fitch, we quickly saw that he had an unquenchable thirst for playing basketball. He had an intuitive sense of how the game should be played. He was a coach on the floor. He started coaching as an assistant at Creighton University and then returned to his alma mater as head coach. Then he went to the University of North Dakota for five years and three consecutive North Central Athletic Conference Championships. At Bowling Green in Ohio his team won the Mid-American Conference title. Now a big-time school had seen the talent and the colorful flair that Bill Fitch brought to the game and he was signed by the University of Minnesota. The owner of the expansion Cleveland Cavaliers in 1970 finally convinced Bill to coach an NBA team, though he wanted to stay in college coaching. The league newcomers won only 15 games in their first year. By the fifth year the Cavaliers ranked first in the Central Division and Bill Fitch was named NBA Coach of the Year. The highlight of his career in terms of wins and losses came in four years with the Boston Celtics. Bill coached three Atlantic Division champions. In 1980-1981 the Celtics were NBA champions and Bill was Coach of the Year again. In the same manner, as he built the Cavaliers from nothing into a respectable playoff team, he was called to rejuvenate sagging programs in Houston, New Jersey and Los Angeles. Bill guided the Houston Rockets, who won just 14 games in the 1983 season, to the championship finals in 1986. Bill next moved to the New Jersey Nets. The team he inherited won only 17 games. But when he left the Nets in 1992 their record showed 40 wins and a playoff berth. Next came the Los Angeles Clippers seeking a coach to reconstruct a team that had lost its two top scorers to free agency and kept trainers busy with an unbelievable string of injuries. They did squeak into the playoffs once. Bill joins us today after 42 years as a college and NBA coach. He coached 2,050 NBA games. He has had 12 winning NBA seasons, five division titles and one NBA championship. Through it all he has kept his sense of humor and his sanity. The Los Angeles Times said that Bill came from, "tiny Coe College in Cedar Rapids." The college may be tiny but it produced a giant in the basketball world. For that, we are privileged to welcome Bill Fitch into the Kohawk Athletic Hall of Fame.
