Basketball? At Bancroft?
The Oral History of Pete Newell
A growing sense that Berkeley could compete with the best of the nation’s universities developed in the 1950’s, both in academics and sports. The embodiment of national expertise in sports came in the form of Pete Newell, the basketball coach chosen to replace Nibs Price, who retired in 1954 after a 30-year career at Cal.
It was assumed that one of Price’s assistants or former players would be asked to coach. Even Newell expected Berkeley to pick a Cal guy because “they always had.” But athletic director Brutus Hamilton instead turned to the young Michigan State University coach who was building a national reputation for innovative basketball strategies.
At first Cal alumni were not pleased with this new outsider coach, especially when he went 1–11 his first year. And some were troubled when he recruited three black players to his first Cal team in 1954-55 — among the first black players in any sport to play for Cal. But great success followed that first season. Newell is remembered most often as the first and last basketball coach to take the Bears to the NCAA championship, winning in 1959 and coming in second in 1960.
Many remember the towel that Newell chewed during tense games. As Newell says in his oral history: “You don’t realize unless you’ve coached the dark thoughts you can have. There’s such a contradiction in coaching, where you have to speak positively of how you’re going to win the game, and yet in the recesses of your mind you know how many mistakes you’re capable of.”
In 1960 Newell took over as Cal’s athletic director, retiring in 1968. Today Newell is a national basketball legend. Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, he was cited for his contributions to the game as coach at the University of San Francisco (he took USF to the National Invitational Tournament championship in 1949), Michigan State, and California; as U.S. Olympic coach (his team won a gold medal in Rome in 1960); and as NBA executive and international ambassador.
In his own playing days, Newell starred in both basketball and baseball at Loyola University in Los Angeles. He signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939, but an injury prevented him from playing more than one season in the minors. Today, at 82, Newell still teaches at the Pete Newell Big Man Camp on the outskirts of Honolulu, which he founded over 20 years ago to train top-flight professional and collegiate players. Its honor roll includes Shaquille O’Neal, Shawn Kemp, Hakeem Olajuwon, Bill Walton, Scottie Pippen, James Worthy, Ralph Sampson, Bernard King, Vlade Divac, Purvis Short, Otis Thorpe, and Brad Daugherty. ROHO principal editor Ann Lage taped 22 hours of interviews with Newell at his home in Palos Verdes, as well as interviews with NCAA championship team members at their 35th reunion in Carmel in 1994. (Newell and the team reunite every five years.)
Through the oral history, you can see how Newell developed into an innovative basketball strategist and a teacher/mentor to generations of coaches and players. He discusses his exposure during World War II army years to midwestern and eastern coaching legends, the achievements and controversies of his term as athletic director at Cal during a time of student unrest and racial tensions, and recalls his work with NBA teams and contributions to basketball in Japan.
An expert on the press defense, Newell developed strategies that are still used today in NBA play. He emphasizes footwork: “You shoot the ball with your hands, but the quality of your shot depends on your feet,” he says in his oral history.
Regional Oral History Office editor Ann Lage presents Pete Newell with a bound copy of his oral history. |
As Kiki Vandeweghe from UCLA and the NBA explains, Newell’s camps taught him that “there’s always a weakness in the defense, and he teaches you how to take advantage of it.”
Newell’s oral history was bound and presented to him at the Pete Newell Challenge in December 1997— an annual college basketball tournament in Pete’s honor at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. In a half-time ceremony during the Cal- Brigham Young game (see photo), Lage joined representatives of Pete’s college and NBA career at center court to pay tribute to this widely admired basketball legend. Lage thanked Newell for recording for Bancroft this “treasured resource for the study of University history, basketball history, and sport and society.”
Camilla Smith serves on the Publications Committee
of The Friends of The Bancroft Library.
Volume 113
Fall 1998
Table of Contents
"Sinners & Pilgrims" Colonel Denny’s Journal and Photo Album
From the Director: Students in Bancroft?
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Metamorphosed
Bonnie Hardwick Follows Her Passions
Rube Goldberg: An American Genius
William P. Barlow, Jr.—A Friend Indeed
Plumbing the Depths of the Spring Valley Water Company
Basketball? At Bancroft? The Oral History of Pete Newell
Jean Stone Honored at Annual Meeting
New Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting
