Seven hundred ninety-nine wins ago - give or take a few years spent as a graduate assistant basketball coach - Bob Huggins’ first inclination was to become a doctor, although he didn’t really know much about the profession and had hardly ever visited one while growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs - the New Philadelphia, Ohio suburbs.
“I didn’t know there were different kinds,” he said the other day before practice. “I grew up in a town of 500 people, two stoplights and nine bars.
“But we had a doctor.”
Indeed, he was the type of small-town family doctor that you could bang on his door late at night and he would let you in, or, after taking your blood pressure you could bum a cigarette off him if you smoked. He was a kind, caring man who loved to be around people and people loved to be around him.
But years later, when Huggins realized just how much studying was required to become a doctor, he turned to law school. Same deal, however - too much library time.
“All I ever wanted to really do was play basketball,” Huggins admitted.
So when his WVU playing career ended in 1977, he tried out for the Philadelphia 76ers and actually stuck around until the team’s final cut.
The other two players to survive those initial cuts were the team’s top two draft picks - Arizona teammates Bob Elliott and Herm Harris.
“(The 76ers) had a bad team then,” Huggins joked. “It was Julius Erving, George McGinnis, Harvey Catchings, World B. Free, Bobby Jones … not very good. They had just lost to Portland the year before in seven games for the world championship.”
He continued.
“Their No. 1 pick was Bob Elliott, a 6-foot-11 guy who played at Arizona. The No. 2 pick was Herman Harris, a 6-foot-5 two-guard who was also from Arizona. And then there was me. We were the three left. We didn’t even dress with the good guys. Every time I see Doug Collins (who played for the 76ers then) I say to him, ‘You could have at least let me into the friggin locker room.’
“So we have our own locker room the three of us and their trainer … they called him ‘The Fonz’ (because of his resemblance to the Henry Winkler character Arthur Fonzarelli on the hit TV show “Happy Days”) ... this is before the season is about to start and he comes into our locker room and he says, ‘Hey, you guys want to know who made the team?’ The other two guys jump up and say, ‘Yeah, who made it? Who made it?’
“‘None of you (expletive) and he took off running out of the room. They thought the guy was joking and they were sitting there laughing but he never came back,” Huggins chuckled. “Finally, they get up looking to find someone from the team to talk to and there was nobody around to tell them they were cut. Meanwhile, I’m gathering up all of the 76ers gear I can find that will fit into my bag for mementos before I headed back to Morgantown.
“That’s how I got cut from the 76ers - by The Fonz!”
With a pro basketball career no longer an option and medical school and law school also not practical solutions, Huggins returned to Morgantown trying to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
“I stayed too long with the 76ers - longer than I had any right to be there and when I got back here they really wouldn’t let me into school and Joedy (Gardner) said, ‘Why don’t you be a GA?’
“I went over and begged Sam Folio and Doug Elliott to get into health administration and that’s how I got my master’s degree in health administration, of which I promised them I would never disgrace the school by using it,” Huggins said.
One year spent as a graduate assistant coach at West Virginia, followed by two more years as a graduate assistant coach at Ohio State under Eldon Miller led to his life’s calling as a college basketball coach rather than becoming, say, Dr. Bob Huggins, proctologist.
And I suppose, indirectly, that New Philadelphia family doctor and the wise-guy 76ers trainer who looked just like The Fonz wound up playing a small part as well in Bob Huggins turning into one of the most successful college basketball coaches in NCAA history.
Huggs is now one victory shy of becoming only the 10th Division I coach to ever win 800 games. He can get win No. 800 on Saturday afternoon against UMKC.
By the way, that small-town family doctor who took care of a young Bob Huggins and many others in the sprawling New Philadelphia suburbs was named Dr. Nipple - Dr. Vincent C. Nipple.
No kidding, go look it up on Google.
I did.
And now you know the rest of the story!
