His NBA career, apparently, is over. His basketball career, most definitely, is not. K.C. Jones seems perfectly contented with the truth of both of those statements.
He's just short of his 65th birthday. He's a recently-fired assistant coach with the Boston Celtics, the recently-hired head coach of the American Basketball League's New England Blizzard. Unembarrassed by the recent past, unafraid of the immediate future, K.C. Jones graciously accepted his new standing Tuesday as the most basketball-significant figure in a second-year women's professional hoops venture.
" 'What's wrong with that fool?' " he mocked his critics as saying. "I have a passion for this game ... a love for this game, and I'm not ready to get out of it yet."
And it seems as simple as that.
It isn't the money. League co-founder Gary Cavalli has said Jones will make a six-figure salary but that it's less than he was earning until his firing a week ago by the Celtics.
It isn't that Jones is a longtime women's basketball junkie finally getting the chance to help the sport establish itself in the long-skeptical United States. What he has seen of the women's game was on TV (the NCAA finals) and videotapes of ABL games.
It isn't the potential for glory. Surely, he has had his fill of that: two NCAA titles, an Olympic gold and eight NBA titles as a player; two NBA crowns as a head coach, two more as an assistant.
Jones's explanation of his motivation: "It's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of excitement."
The Jones-ABL marriage was conceived weeks ago. Cavalli said he was "blue-skying it" with agent Ron Allen about a possible successor to Cliffa Foster in New England, where the Blizzard finished last in the four-team ABL East last season. But New England was not an unattractive job because it was the best gate in the league and because the team had just added one of the most sought-after talents in the game: 6-7 Kara Wolters of the University of Connecticut.
"I mentioned K.C. Jones," Cavalli said, "and Ron (who represents Jones) said he might be able to deliver him."
Meanwhile, Jones was coming to know his distinguished NBA career was near its end. He was an assistant for the most-maligned head coach in the league, on the worst team in the league.
The long run had started back in 1958. He had won two NCAA titles at the University of San Francisco and Olympic gold in 1956 in Melbourne, Australia. In nine seasons with the Celtics, he averaged a modest 7.4 points a game. But his play-making and defensive prowess were essential parts of eight Boston titles during his tenure.
He coached at Brandeis University, then returned to the NBA as Bill Sharman's assistant with the record-setting 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers won 69 games and an NBA title. He departed for a year to direct the American Basketball Association's San Diego Conquistadors, then was back for three seasons at the helm of the Washington Bullets. His '74-75 squad made it to the finals but was dispatched by the Golden State Warriors.
In 1984, Jones was welcomed back in Boston to preside over a new era of Celtic dominance. He coached five seasonsin which his teams won two titles and never won fewer than 57 games in a regular season.
He spent some time in the Celtic front office but in 1990 was lured back to the sidelines, in Seattle. His 1990-91 SuperSonics went 41-41; he was fired the following season after an 18-18 start.
He sniffed around for other possible suitors during the next few years. He interviewed in early 1996 for the Philadelphia 76ers head-coaching job that went to now-fired Johnny Davis. He landed back in Boston, as an assistant coach under one of his former players, M.L. Carr.
Jones says basketball taught him confidence. It also apparently taught him humility because he speaks of his career's low points as unabashedly as he does its highs.
"It was the right thing to do" when Seattle dumped him in favor of George Karl in 1991, Jones said. And as for the house-cleaning in Boston, "when it became apparent Rick Pitino would be coming in, I went to M.L. Carr and asked what my position was going to be -- if I was going to be a part of it or if I was going to be kicked out," Jones said. "M.L. told me, 'I suggest you start making phone calls.' "
Cavalli was taking.
"Growing up in New Jersey a Celtics fan, it's a tremendous thrill for me personally to be able to hire K.C. Jones," he said.
Dinner with Cavalli to Sinatra music out on the West Coast where the league is based, a meeting with three Blizzard players (the reportedly-awed Wolters, Jen Rizzotti and Carla Berube) back East, some details, some paperwork -- the deal went quickly.
For the fledgling ABL, the hiring of Jones "is a real coup," Cavalli said. He's right. Fewer than six weeks before the start of the Women's National Basketball Association season, the ABL has nabbed someone on the WNBA parent league's very short list of all-time most successful coaches.
For Jones, who says this will likely be his final coaching job ("I'll be here five or six years, and that will about do it"), it's a logical end to a long career.
"My whole intent is to teach basketball," he said. "It's what I do."
5/13/97
