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Tiny Archibald, Basketball Hall of Famer
October 15, 1973
Posted: Tuesday November 10, 1998 10:35 AM
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Neil Leifer |
All
eyes
are still on
Nate Archibald. The gazes, however,
aren't
those of fans in an NBA arena or at a Rucker League
blacktop. Rather, they are the eyes of sixth- to
eighth-graders, watching intently as their phys-ed teacher
demonstrates a textbook bounce pass at
P.S. 175/I.S. 275 in Harlem. "Did you ever play for the
Knicks, Mr. Archibald?" a student asks as the bell
rings to end the
period.
No, Archibald never played for the Knicks, but in his
14-year career as a point guard with five
NBA teams he established himself as one of the best little men
in the game. In 1972-73, as a member of the
Kansas City-Omaha Kings, he became the only player to lead the NBA
in scoring (34.0 points per game) and
assists (11.4) in the same season; he also won an NBA
championship with the Boston Celtics in 1981. Archibald
retired after the 1983-84 season and was inducted into the
Hall of Fame six years
later.
From 1984 to '89
Archibald was an
assistant at Georgia and then at his alma mater, Texas-El Paso.
However, his heart remained in his hometown, New York. During
his NBA days the playground legend would return to the city
in the off-season, running clinics, coaching amateur teams
and buying equipment for kids. Archibald earned a degree in
elementary
education from UTEP in 1974, and after going home for good in
1989, he earned a master's in adult education and human
resource development from Fordham. He is now pursuing a
doctorate.
Archibald is in his ninth year of teaching health and
physical education at the Harlem school. It's not the
milieu in which you expect to find a Hall of Fame
athlete—an overcrowded
inner-city facility where faculty turnover is high and new
books are
often lacking. "People wonder why I'm back here, but I
just love kids," says Archibald, 50, a father of five
and grandfather of eight who lives in the Gun Hill section
of the Bronx. "I'm not here to change lives," he
says. "These kids need positive people
to take an interest in
them."
Though he admits to sometimes thinking about the glamour of
running his own college program, Archibald knows that that
life is not for him. "Maybe I should have stuck it out
in college coaching, but I'm not really the type," he
says. "I never liked to
cruise around in fancy suits. I always felt most comfortable
in my
sweats."
—John
O'Keefe
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