It was a palace, it was a Mecca of basketball, and we had never seen anything like it in Phoenix....The Madhouse on McDowell, Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Until the building was erected, our biggest gym was the old Sun Devil Gym at Arizona State University.
(Thinking back, the ambiance of the old time gyms like those were unmatched when packed to the rafters. You were so near to the action even in the balcony.) Veterans Memorial held almost 12,000 people! The Suns would eventually pack this place.
The big event in Phoenix was ASU football. Sun Devil Stadium was in its' infancy in those days, but Frank Kush packed them in. This was as close to a profession team that Phoenix had.
The NBA in or around 1965 decided to make Phoenix a test market for expansion.
My dad, or a friend who had a license would drive me to the games. When I walked in, it was like paradise. I could get an actual NBA program and tickets were only about five bucks. Our de-facto home team was the Golden State Warriors. It seemed like every opponent we played against was really good. Cincy with Oscar, The Celtics....a star studded team featuring Bill Russell, Philly with Wilt, the Lakers...you name it...they all came our way. The good thing was the Warriors were our home team for 8 Regular Season games a year. The owner of the Warriors was Franklin Meuli, a cool dude who wore a Kangol type hat in his pictures and looked like a beatnik...we figured he had to be living in San Francisco! Plus the Golden State Warriors had the coolest unis ever with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front and a Cable car on the back going over their shoulder where the number was located. The announcer was Bill King, (see pic) and he was the greatest next to Chic Hearn. I tried to listen to them at home as much as possible at night.
The great thing about the games was, when they started playing, the coliseum went dark except for the lights over the court. It was like watching a movie, only live and certainly not with all the whacked out distractions of attending an NBA game live in 2011. Smoking was still a cool thing to do, so when the lights went out you saw all the smoke up in the rafters. Yes, you could light up that ole Marlboro court side. Oh yes, and drinking alcoholic beverages in the stands was not allowed. The colessium had a room in its' bowels where the adults could get their favorite beveridge at halftime in the great ambiance of the air conditioning ducts...but they could not bring the cocktails back inside the gym.
The ushers would tend to look the other way after the game started, so you could sneak down to an empty seat close to the court and see the action up close and personal.
Hand checking was not a foul in those days. Golden State had two very fun guards to watch: Guy Rodgers and Al Attles. Rogers was the smooth passing play maker and Attles was a Karate black belt who specialized in defense. Attles was considered the toughest guy in the NBA by many. This duo was a joy to watch. They really knew each other intuitively, something you don't see as much with all the free agency movement in 2011. The center was Nate Thurmond, or Nate the Great. Just a great player. The star of the team was a rookie, Rick Barry. This is the man they call "Larry Bird before there was a Larry Bird". I would come early to watch him shoot. He shot from way out and never missed. He was the golden boy of the team and had his hair "Razor Cut". I wanted to get a razor cut as well, but during the season our coach made us go really short...probably so girls would not be a distraction.
Once, we got to the coliseum really early and Wilt was walking by dressed in crazy style, and my friend goes"HIYA WILT". Wilt said "Hows it Goin Kid?" and we almost fell over. It sounded like a voice from on high talking down to the minions. We were dumbfounded.
Fast forward to the summer of 68 and to Brophy Prep High School. A small crowd of fans gather to see Coach John Red Kerr put the inaugural Phoenix Suns through the paces. That team was led by Dick Van Arsdale, their first choice in the expansion draft. He would later be joined by his twin brother Tom in the mid 70's.
The team wasn't very good at first, but in 1976 they would be Western Conference NBA champions, beating the Golden State Warriors...the original NBA home team for Phoenix , and the Warriors coach was Al Attles.
