In July of 2023 I had a chance to ask Del Harris a few questions. Del is a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, 1995 NBA Coach of the Year, and the recipient of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award. During the 1980-81 season, he led the Houston Rockets to their first NBA Finals appearance.
Beginnings as a head coach
Before you became an NBA head coach you spent many years as a head coach in college, abroad, and as an assistant. How much do you think it helped you, especially when you compare it with e.g., Steve Nash, who became the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets with basically no experience.
It helped incredibly. I would not hire anyone who had no experience in the NBA at least at the top assistant level to a top coach or coaches and would prefer head coaching experience at the NBA level. College level alone and even the G-League is not enough for such a multimillion-dollar job these days. I coached in the league from 1975 to 2010 including the ABA and my years as an assistant and learned a lot. I had coached not only twenty seasons including junior high school, small college, and major college, but in the summers, I coached seven national team in FIBA international tournaments winning a gold and a silver along with a bronze with my Puerto Rico Club team in the World Club Championships in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
I coached a season in Spain in a pro league that lasted only one season as well. I had written two books on coaching and many articles in sports magazines of the United States and Italy and had lectured in many states as well as Puerto Rico. I still learned from my coach and the experienced NBA players when I got into the NBA. Experience in the NBA or wherever one goes, such as the Euro League, is vital.
Houston Rockets
Your first year as a head coach in the NBA (1979-80) started with three straight losses and just two wins in the first nine games. Then, Rockets went on a seven-game winning streak. Even though you already knew most of the players, how difficult was it for you to handle so many Hall-of-Famers?
There were only twenty-three teams in the NBA when I started as head coach in 1979, the year Magic, Bird and Sidney Moncrief came into the league and most of the coaches in that and the ensuing few years are now in the Naismith Hall of Fame. It was a tough start on the road, and a hard year with thirteen that would be in the Naismith HOF, two more who won titles but are not in the HOF, plus three with more than 500 wins who are not in the HOF. No startup coaches except Paul Westhead, who would win the title that year with the Lakers, but one who had coached well in colleges and in Puerto Rico along with so many other ABA/NBA coaches who coached there in the summers in those days, when no coaches were making much money. I was on a one-year contract for $70,000 for example.
Even though you lost in the 1981 NBA Finals, would you say that the 1981 Playoffs are your biggest accomplishment? Rockets defeated the defending champion (Lakers) and very good teams, Spurs and Kings.
I do not measure the many blessings God has given me. That certainly was one that came at an opportune time at the beginning of my time as a head coach in the NBA and probably had a lot to do with why I am still in the NBA working 42 years later.
Moses Malone
Did you believe that Moses Malone would be able to dominate as much against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Lakers in the 1981 Playoffs? He averaged 32 points and 17 rebounds per game and missed only two minutes of the series! (142 of 144 minutes)
I believed in Moses because we had coached him in the ABA briefly and then gave up two first round picks to get him to Houston in 1976-77, when we went to the final four, the Eastern Conference Finals, when the Rockets were in the East at the time. Moses averaged about 26 points and 15 rebounds the season of 1979-80 and always tended to play well against Kareem. Nothing Moses did was a surprise to me over the years. I was with him in eight different seasons on three teams. Moses averaged 42 minutes per game all the season and played 48 different times. We had six sets of back-to-back-to-back that season, and he played 81 games of 42 minutes average. That team was a gutty team that just found ways to survive.
We are the only team to be the last one in and with a sub .500 record and make it to the Finals. The Celtics had the largest win spread over a finalist in history to this moment: they won 60 games, and the Rockets won 40. Still, the Rockets set a record for most road victories with 7 and we did not have four 7-game series, just three and a 3-gamer. Rudy’s Rockets broke that with 8 road wins. Miami may have matched or broken that this year; I haven’t checked.
The NBA looks completely different nowadays, especially when it comes to financial flexibility. But do you think that the Rockets should have done everything possible to keep Moses Malone in 1982?
Absolutely, but we had a new owner who was a simple car dealer in Houston. He bought the team for $9.5 million, and Philadelphia offered Moses $13 million over a six-year span – cannot do that now. So, he chose to let him, and our other two free agents go and finish last and get Ralph Sampson in the draft, the no. 1 player coming in the draft. So, with 3 of our top 7 players gone, that is what happened. They fired me, however, even though I was the winningest coach in Rockets history at the time. They had never made the playoffs two years in a row before, but we went four in a row prior to this.
How frustrating was for you having great names on the Bucks team (Moncrief, Cummings, Sikma, and many others), but not being able to overcome the best teams e.g., Pistons, Hawks, Bulls?
That was a great bunch of guys throughout. I was with the Bucks nine years and over those years from 1983-84 to 1992-93. In the decade of the 80s the Bucks had the fourth best record in the league, the decade that is regarded as the Golden Age of the NBA. There were the Lakers, Celtics, 76ers and Bucks in that order. Only the Bucks did not make it to the Finals. In Fact, Nellie never made it to the Finals with four teams but is one of the most successful coaches in the game, the second most wins in a long career. We played in the toughest division in the history of the game […] One of the best years we won 49 games but lost to the Bulls and Hawks six games each. So, we were 0-12 against them and 49-21 vs the rest of the league for 70%.
But in the first round of the playoffs, we had Pressey out and Cummings got injured in the 3rd game in a five-game series. But we won the series in the fifth game at Atlanta. We lost to Detroit but only had seven healthy players at the end, so the league let us sign a player we had cut in December, just to have the required eight players […] So, we were a very competitive team even though Sidney and Sikma being at the end of their careers. I was the last coach for Murphy, Tomjanovich, and Barry. As for Hayes, he played one more year after I left, but did not play much. The only HOF players I got to coach in their early years are Malone, Kobe and Shaq.
What felt better – winning Coach of the Year award in 1995, or defeating SuperSonics as the underdog in 1995 Playoffs?
No meter for something like that. I was glad to beat the Sonics since we were given little chance to do so but beating them three years later when we both won 61 games, and they beat us 3 out of 4 during the season. George Karl is a great HOF coach and a good friend, but it was a big win. Coach of the Year is way down the line in high moments, not in the top 25 or more.
Why do you think the Utah Jazz were the Lakers’ nemesis, especially in 1998 (Lakers were 3-1 against Jazz during the regular season, but were swept during the playoffs)?
The Jazz were a great team with veteran players like Hall-of-famers Malone and Stockton along with a load of other outstanding veteran players like Hornacek and more. They played in the Conference Finals 4 out of 5 years, and it was the Lakers first time except for Shaq who had been there once with Orlando and got swept. The Lakers were the youngest team in the playoffs. The Bulls with Jordan took seven years to get to the Finals, for example. It is not easy to do so.
Later you had a chance to work with the Mavericks – Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash. Do you think that this duo should have never been separated?
Obviously, hindsight is 20-20. Our owner did not think Steve would hold up for a four-year contract. He ended up being MVP twice in those four years. But when the owner is dealing with millions of dollars, there is nothing the coach can do about it. Think of all the bad trades that have been made in the NBA. It is not a science.
In 2009 you witnessed the historical series between the Bulls and the Celtics (most overtimes in a series in NBA history). Was it the craziest and the most competitive series that you had a chance to see?
Obviously, since it is the only time something happened to that extent, it was special, but a loss. Still, it was a very successful season in that we were picked to finish last in the division and the owner told Vinnie and his assistants, mainly Bernie Bickerstaff and myself, that he did not expect us to be a playoff team in Vinny’s first season as a head coach and with a team that had not been winning.