By Woodrow Carroll
Former NBA (National Basketball Association star Wes Unseld passed away last week at the age of 74 after battling medical issues in recent years. He was no at the level of Michael Jordan and some other NBA greats, however, he still deserves to be appreciated.
Unseld stayed put! Unseld attended Louisville (Ky.) Seneca High School where he helped the RedHawks capture Kentucky State championships in both 1963 and 1964. From there, Unseld went to the University of Louisville.
A bit of high school sports history: Unseld’s Seneca High School opened in 1957 with a racially-diverse student body. In the 1963 State basketball championship game, Seneca beat Lexington Dunbar, 72-66. From 1923 to 1967, Lexington Dunbar was a racially-segregated school serving the City’s black population. Today, Lexington has a new Dunbar School building named n honor of the African American poet. The school has a racially-mixed student body.
The Sporting News Collection photo
When Unseld was a junior at Seneca High School, his teammate, Mike Red, was Mr. Kentucky Basketball. The following season when Seneca repeated as State champion, Unseld won the outstanding-player honor.
At the University of Louisville, Unseld was key to many Cardinals’ victories.
However, the late 1960s were the Age of UCLA. As such, Louisville and the competition were forced to watch the Bruins claim most of the glory.
Unseld’s time at Louisville didn’t go unnoticed. He was the No. 2 selection n the 1968 NBA draft by the then-Baltimore Bullets. Unseld was the second pick after Houston’s Elvin Hayes. As fate would have it, Unseld and Hayes together helped lead the Washington Bullets to the 1978 NBA championship. Unseld stayed he course and spent 13 seasons in the NBA all with the same organization. The franchise moved from Baltimore to Washington after 1973, and, for one season, the franchise was called the Capital Bullets, today’s Washington Wizards.
The franchise moved and the name changed, however, Unseld remained!
On four occasions, Unseld’s teams were in the NBA championships, not always with the fondest of memories.
In the 1971 NBA finals, Unseld’s Baltimore Bullets fell four games to zero to the Milwaukee Bucks with Oscar Robertson and Lew Alcindor, later Kareem Abdul Jabbar who were too good for Unseld and Company.
In 1975 with the Washington Bullets, Unseld fared no better. The bullets lost four straight to the Golden State Warriors in the finals. The sad memory here for the Chicago Bulls’ fans was the Warriors’ appearance in the finals.
In 1975, under head coach Dick Motta, the Bulls led the Warriors three games to two in the conference finals and were playing game six at the Chicago Stadium. A victory by the Bulls would have sent them to the NBA finals. It didn’t happen! Golden State took game six and won the deciding game in California. There was a 16-year wait before a guy named Jordan showed the Bulls the way to NBA championships.
Persistence! In 1978, Motta was coaching Unseld and Hayes in Washington and the combo put the Bullets in the finals against the Seattle SuperSonics.
The opening game of the 1978 NBA finals went to Seattle. Unseld had lost nine straight games n the NBA finals. The Bullets, however, proved to be up to the task and prevailed in the finals by winning four games to three, thus, Unseld, Hayes, and Motta, all collected championship rings.
Washington was back in he NBA finals in 1979, only this time it was the SuperSonics in five games.
Unseld retired following the 1980-1981 season. He spent all 13 seasons in the Bullets’ organization. Unseld later became the head coach and general manager in the Bullets’ organization, however, with far less success than when he was a player.
Unseld recap: Two high school state championships, an NBA championship, NBA Rookie-of-the-Year and NBA MVP Awards with the Bullets in 1969. Wilt Chamberlain was the only other player to win both awards. Only in Unsold’s final season, 1980-1981, did the Bullets fail to make the playoffs. Unseld is a true NBA Hall-of-Fame entrant. He was inducted in 1988.