Pete Newell: Difference between revisions

Peter Francis "Pete" Newell (born August 3, 1915 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a former college men's basketball coach and current basketball instructional coach. He coached for 15 years at the University of San Francisco, Michigan State University and the University of California, Berkeley, compiling an overall 234-123 record.^[1] After his coaching career ended he ran a world famous instructional basketball camp and served as a consultant and scout for several NBA teams. He is often considered to be one of the most influential figures in the history of basketball.^[2][3][4]

Newell attended both high school and college in Los Angeles, California and was a classmate of Phil Woolpert at Loyola Marymount University (then called Loyola University). After serving in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1946,^[1] Newell was appointed head men's basketball coach at the University of San Francisco in 1946. During his four-year tenure at USF, Newell compiled a 70-37 record and coached the Dons to the 1949 National Invitation Tournament championship.^[1] In 1950 he accepted an appointment as head coach at Michigan State University where he stayed until 1954.^[1]

Newell returned to the West Coast in 1954 when he was hired as head coach at the University of California, Berkeley. Newell was very successful at Cal, compiling a 119-44 record, winning four consecutive Pac-8 titles from 1957 to 1960 and leading the Golden Bears to two straight appearances in the NCAA tournament championship game--which they won in 1959.^[1] Newell himself earned national Coach of the Year honors in 1960.

Newell also coached the U.S. Men's Olympic basketball team to a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics, making him one of only three coaches to win the "Triple Crown" of NCAA, NIT and Olympic championships.^[2] Newell is also known to have introduced the reverse action offense in the late nineteen fifties.

After retiring from coaching, Newell served as team executive or scout for several NBA teams, among them the Houston Rockets, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors. He retired from his job as Lakers GM in 1976 to spend more time with his ailing wife.^[2]

Considered "America's Basketball Guru", Newell conducts an annual training camp for centers and forwards known simply as "Big Man Camp", which has since been informally dubbed "Pete Newell's Big Man Camp". The camp originally when word spread that Newell was working with Kermit Washington. After Washington's game rapidly improved, more and more big men started to work with Newell and he later opened the camp. The camp's impressive participants list features over 200 current and former NBA players.^[5] Newell has attracted this list of players due to his reputation of teaching footwork, being what one publication described as "The Footwork Master".^[3] Former attendants include Shaquille O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, Bill Walton, and many others.^[5] The camp is almost seen as standard for players coming out of college into the NBA; according to ESPN's Ric Bucher, "[ [f]or the past 24 years, every big man of any significance has spent at least one summer week trying to get close enough to Pete.".^[2] Since Newell opened the camp in 1976 he has not accepted any money for his services, instead he has donated his time feeling that as he states, "I owe it to the game. I can never repay what the game has given me."^[6] The camp has taken place in Honolulu, Hawaii and most recently Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 2001 Newell opened his version of the Big Man Camp for women and dubbed it "Pete Newell's Tall Women's Basketball Camp" with the following simple sentence serving as a summary of it's intentions: "The Pete Newell Tall Women's Basketball Camp goal is to continue to do what Pete Newell has done his whole life-to teach the fundamentals and footwork of the game of basketball to young players."^[7]

Newell's wife Florence died in 1984. His son, Pete Newell Jr., led the Santa Cruz High School boys' basketball team to the California state championship in 2005.

In 1979 Newell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.^[1] An annual college basketball tournament is held in his honor in Oakland, California, and frequent participants in the Pete Newell Challenge include USF and Cal--the very schools where Newell coached. In addition in 1987 Cal dedicated the court in Harmon Gym as "Pete Newell Court".

In an interview with Mike Greenberg on ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning on January 2, 2007, Bob Knight singled Newell out as one of the greatest coaches in Men's College Basketball history. Knight stated that although he had not won as many championships as some other coaches he felt "he was as good as anybody who's ever coached this game." Newell's influence on basketball is often stated in what would seem to be almost exaggerated terms by many Hall of Fame coaches and players.^[8] However, his contributions to the game of basketball have been so great that according to many Newell has perhaps had as much or more influence on the game of basketball as any person in the modern era.^[2]

• Basketball Methods (1962) w/ John Benington
• Basketball:The Sports Playbook (1976)
• Basketball Post Play (1995)
• Pete Newell's Defensive Basketball: Winning Techniques and Strategies (Art & Science of Coaching) (2001)

• Chin, Oliver Clyde. The Tao of Yao: Insights from Basketball's Brightest Big Man, California: Frog, LTD. 2003 ISBN 1583940901
• Mandelbaum, Michael. The Meaning Of Sports: why americans watch baseball, football and basketball and what they see when they do, New York: Public Affairs 2004 ISBN 1586483307
• Ramsay, Jack and Halbertam, David. Dr. Jack's Leadership Lessons Learned From a Lifetime in Basketball, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. 2004 ISBN 0471469297

• Basketball Hall of Fame listing
• 1960 Henry Iba Award