DALLAS — The text came out of the blue. Out of desperation. Mostly, though, it derived from a daughter’s love and respect for her father.
The daughter is Jodi McClendon. Her father is Dick Motta. He is 91. He once again has been nominated for induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. For all Jodi knows, this might be his last chance.
She also knows that her unpretentious and obstinate father will be displeased when he learns that she reached out to a reporter.
“I’m risking being written out of the will,” McClendon said by phone, only half-jokingly.
I don’t doubt that she’ll be scolded. I’ve known Motta since 1994, when at age 62 he emerged from retirement to coach a Dallas franchise he’d led during its first seven seasons (1980-87) of existence.
Through the years I’ve sporadically asked Motta about his Hall candidacy. He’s consistently dismissed his chances — not because he is undeserving, but because he did not and never will “kiss enough butt” to overcome whatever political force or forces have kept him out.
Why is this topical now? Because the Naismith Hall’s North American Committee is in the process of whittling 37 male nominees to a list of finalists, which will be announced Friday in Salt Lake City as part of NBA All-Star Weekend.
The finalists will be presented to the Hall’s 24-member Honors Committee. Those who receive at least 18 votes from the Honors Committee will be elected to the Hall, with the winners announced during April’s Final Four weekend in Houston. Enshrinement will be Aug. 12 in Springfield, Mass.
Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki is a lock for a first-ballot selection, as are fellow first-time nominees Gregg Popovich, Dwyane Wade and Tony Parker.
Motta’s Hall of Fame creds
Motta’s chances are murky, despite a preponderance of Hall of Fame-worthy credentials.
His 935 victories rank 13th in NBA history. Of the top 15 victory leaders, Motta is the only retired coach not in the HOF. The three active coaches in the top 15 — No. 1 Popovich, No. 9 Doc Rivers and No. 14 Rick Carlisle — are locks to get in, in part because all have won at least one NBA title.
Motta, too, won a championship, in 1978 with the then-named Washington Bullets, whom he also coached to the following season’s NBA Finals.
The only cited obstacle in Motta’s Hall chances is the fact that he lost more games (1,017) than he won, but if that indeed is the impediment it should have been removed when No. 11 victory leader Bill Fitch (944-1,106) was inducted in 2019.
Besides, that is the short-sighted view of Motta’s career, as well as Fitch’s. Both willingly took lumps by coaching expansion franchises (Motta the Mavericks; Fitch, Cleveland). Both also took over franchises in a rebuild.
In Motta’s case it was taking over the 7-21 Kings partway into the 1989-90 season; the 13-69 Mavericks after the 1993-94 season; and, finally, going 17-52 in Denver when Bernie Bickerstaff stepped down early in the 1996-97 season.
“If you worry about your record,” Motta once told me, “you can’t do what I did.”
After coaching Washington to its second straight Finals, his career record was 502-397. Had he quit then at age 47 he’d almost certainly be in the Hall.
Instead, he took over the expansion Mavericks, not surprisingly going 15-67, 28-54 and 38-44 before, just as predictably, earning four straight playoff berths.
Much of the above is to explain why Motta has a sub-.500 career record and why it shouldn’t matter, but here’s the crux of why he deserves a place in the Springfield, Mass.-based Naismith Hall: He’s exceptionally unique. His greatness is as much about his journey as his numbers.
The son of an Italian immigrant farmer, Motta grew to only 5-7 and never played high school basketball. His coaching career began in 1954 at the junior high level in Grace, Idaho (population 761), where he taught homeroom, coached all four boys sports plus girls basketball and drove a school bus.
All for the princely salary of $3,200.
He left to serve in the Air Force, where he also coached, then returned to Grace to coach the high school team, leading it to the 1959 state championship.
He then went to Weber State, which during his six seasons transitioned from a junior college to Division I, with Motta going 120-33 and winning three Big Sky titles.
When the third-year Chicago Bulls franchise hired Motta as coach in 1968, he’d never seen an NBA game in person, yet he was the 1971 league Coach of the Year, made the playoffs six straight years and won 50 or more games four times.
At the time, Motta’s only NBA peer who’d coached at the high school level was Larry Costello, who after his pro playing career coached his alma mater for one season before becoming Milwaukee’s coach in 1968.
Motta’s extraordinary rung-by-rung climb from junior high to military basketball to high school to college and his 1978 NBA championship made him quite the catch for the expansion Mavericks.
Reminder to Naismith Hall voters, whose identities are anonymous, unlike the pro football and baseball halls of fame: It’s the basketball hall of fame, not the pro basketball hall of fame, which makes Motta’s omission all the more glaring.
One of his Bullets stars, Wes Unseld, championed Motta’s 2011 HOF nomination. Motta became a finalist. When he failed to get the necessary 18 votes, no one was more disappointed than Jerry Sloan, who played six seasons under Motta in Chicago and considered him his coaching mentor. Sloan was inducted into the Hall in 2009.
“It just amazes me that Coach Motta didn’t get in long before I got in,” Sloan told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2011. “He deserves it more than I ever did.”
Sloan and Unseld died in 2020. In Sloan’s final days, Jodi McClendon drove her father to Sloan’s home in Utah. She remained in the car while Motta and Sloan essentially told one another goodbye. Motta was in tears when he returned to the car. He told Jodi that Sloan was guilt-ridden that he is in the Hall and Motta isn’t.
“I know it’s not a big problem out in the world, and Dad says he doesn’t care, but it matters to us kids so much,” McClendon said, alluding to brothers Kip and Kirt. “We tell him, ‘Can’t you just play nice, Dad?’ "
50-year-old grudge?
McClendon has long wondered if an old grudge has played a role in keeping her father out of Springfield. She says that all she knows is that her father for decades has not gotten along with Jerry Colangelo, chairman of the Naismith Hall’s board of governors.
During the early 1980s, McClendon was in the same sorority at Baylor as Colangelo’s daughters, but she never understood why her father and Jerry Colangelo seemed distant during parents weekend visits.
“Dad still won’t tell me what happened,” she said.
In 1995, as he neared 900 career victories, Motta told me about the Hall: “I would never expect in my lifetime to see it. I haven’t kissed enough butt. It’s very political. And as long as it’s political, I don’t expect to get in.”
Now? Motta is more specific.
“As long as Jerry Colangelo has anything to do with it, I’ll never make it. I don’t lie awake nights thinking about it. And I can’t put that on my Wheaties. I know what I did in my career.”
So what happened with Colangelo? Motta says that during the 1970 playoffs, his second season with the Bulls, Colangelo took him to dinner three times, hoping to woo Motta to become coach of the second-year Suns franchise.
Colangelo had been a young executive with the Bulls before going to the expansion Suns as general manager. During that second season Colangelo stepped in as coach when Red Kerr resigned.
“I don’t know if I was guilty of letting him tamper with me, but when someone talks to you, you can’t turn them down,” Motta said. “One of the stipulations was that if I took it, I didn’t want to coach Connie Hawkins.”
The problem was that the Bulls were in the middle of a playoff series against the Hawks. Motta says he wanted to postpone talks with Colangelo until after the playoffs, but then on the morning of a game Colangelo phoned and said, “I need an answer now.”
“Jerry, I’m right in the middle,” Motta recalled saying. “We’ve got a shot at this.”
The next day, Colangelo hired Cotton Fitzsimmons to coach the Suns. Motta and Colangelo barely have spoken since.
Let’s hope a 50-year-old grudge hasn’t factored into Motta not being in the Hall of Fame, which has not responded to a request for comment. It would be unfortunate for a 91-year-old highly accomplished and uniquely qualified candidate and his family to have to wonder if that’s the case.
At this point, there don’t seem to be any legitimate reasons to exclude him.
