Al Attles, a Golden State Warrior in Name and in Spirit, Dies at 87
He was known as the Destroyer for his gritty intensity as a player. He later coached Golden State to an N.B.A. championship and served as its general manager.
Al Attles, a Basketball Hall of Fame guard who was among the most prominent figures in the history of the Golden State Warriors and their forerunner franchise in Philadelphia, died on Tuesday at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 87.
His death was announced by the Warriors, the team Attles served as a tough, defensive-minded guard, an N.B.A. championship-winning coach, a general manager and, until his death, a community relations representative. His career spanned the Warriors’ Philadelphia years and their decades in the Bay Area.
When Attles was selected by the Philadelphia Warriors in the fifth round of the 1960 N.B.A. draft, he was a newly hired junior high school gym teacher in his native Newark.
As a little-known player out of a historically Black college, he knew that his chances of making the Warriors’ lineup seemed slim.
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But he decided to give it a shot at training camp, and for six decades he remained an enduring face of the Warriors’ franchise.
The Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., presented Attles with its John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and inducted him in 2019. Although he was never an All-Star in his 11 seasons in the backcourt, he was among six players whose numbers have been retired by the Warriors.
Attles was only six feet tall and 175 pounds or so, but he was a gritty player; he was known as the Destroyer for his intensity, whether diving for loose balls or standing up to opponents who were presumably more rugged. On occasion, he was even a self-appointed bodyguard for Wilt Chamberlain, considered the strongest man in basketball, before Chamberlain left the Warriors for the Philadelphia 76ers in 1965.
“I’d get into a shoving match with Wilt, and here would come Al, stepping between us and wanting to take me on,” the burly center Wayne Embry, who played mostly for the Cincinnati Royals before becoming the first Black general manager in the N.B.A., recalled to Terry Pluto for his oral history “Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball” (1992). “If you played with Al Attles, you never had to worry if you got into a fight because you knew the Destroyer would be right next to you.”
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Attles told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2004: “It took a long time for my temper to go. I used to always try to stay away from stuff, but sometimes our macho side gets you, and you’re reluctant to walk away.”
Attles, the future Hall of Fame guard Lenny Wilkens once told Sports Illustrated, “wasn’t dirty, but he was on you like a glove all the time.”
Attles averaged only 8.9 points a game in his career. What didn’t show up in the box score was his defensive prowess.
He was part of the supporting cast when Chamberlain scored 100 points against the Knicks in a game in Hershey, Pa., on March 2, 1962. Attles had a perfect night from the field — not that anyone noticed — hitting all eight of his shots and a free throw, and fed Chamberlain for six of his 36 baskets.
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The Warriors moved to San Francisco the next season, and Attles became their coach midway through the 1970-71 season. He was the third Black coach in N.B.A. history, following Bill Russell, with the Boston Celtics, and Wilkens, with the Seattle SuperSonics.
He coached the Warriors to the N.B.A. championship in 1975, when they swept the favored Washington Bullets, coached by K.C. Jones, in four games. It was the first time two Black coaches faced each other in an N.B.A. championship series.
Attles led the Warriors to six playoff appearances in a span of seven years in the 1970s. After 14 seasons as head coach, he served as their general manager from 1983 to 1986, then held a variety of other front-office posts.
Alvin Austin Attles Jr. was born in Newark on Nov. 7, 1936, to Alvin Sr. and Geraldine Attles. His father was a train porter. He played at Weequahic High School in Newark.
He attended North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, where he averaged nearly 18 points a game as a senior. His teammate Vince Miller, a friend of Chamberlain’s who played with him at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, touted Attles to the Warriors’ owner, Eddie Gottlieb.
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“I wasn’t that gifted,” Attles recalled, but he was smart and “I played hard.”
Attles replaced George Lee as the head coach of the floundering San Francisco Warriors in January 1970, during his next-to-last season as a player.
His 1975 N.B.A. championship team was led by Rick Barry, the high-scoring Hall of Fame forward, and included Clifford Ray at center, Jamaal Wilkes at forward and Butch Beard at guard.
Attles commonly gave almost all his players significant time on the court, breaking with fellow coaches, who typically sent only a select few bench players into a game to spell members of a starting five.
“Everybody thought I was going against conventional wisdom until we ended up winning, then everybody thought it was the thing to do,” he told The New York Times in 2015.
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Early in the first quarter of Game 4 of the 1975 finals, Attles ran onto the court to keep Barry from retaliating against Washington’s Mike Riordan, who was evidently trying to provoke him into a fight that would bring his ejection. Attles, a peacemaker this time, was thrown out for leaving the bench and watched the Warriors clinch the championship on television in the locker room while his assistant, Joe Roberts, handled the team.
Attles is survived by his daughter, Ericka; his wife, Wilhelmina; a son, Alvin III; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
When the Golden State Warriors were hailed with a victory parade in Oakland after defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2015 playoff finals for the franchise’s first N.B.A. championship since the 1975 team, Attles was among the figures from the Warriors’ past sitting on the stage. But he was very much a part of their present as well: He was a team ambassador, in his sixth decade as a Warrior.
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