Bill Fitch

   I intended this to be a cleaning of the inbox but I wrote so much about Bill Fitch that I decided to make this a solo piece.

Goodbye to Bill Fitch at the age of 89.

Fitch won an NBA title with the Celtics in 1981, took the Rockets to the NBA Finals in 1986, coached the Nets and Clippers to the playoffs as well and won NBA coach of the year twice. (Cleveland 1976 and Boston 1980)

Fitch was referred to by Larry Bird as the best coach that he ever had and when Fitch was inducted into the basketball hall of fame in 2019, it was Bird that gave the introduction speech for Fitch.

It was also Fitch that gave Cleveland their forever voice of the Cavaliers in Joe Tait, as it was Fitch that knew Tait from their days in small college basketball (Fitch started at the then-called small college level at Coe) and recommended Tait to Cavaliers owner Nick Mileti as the voice of the Cavaliers.

And before Fitch coached basketball at Coe, Fitch coached baseball at Creighton where he would coach a hard-throwing righthander named Bob Gibson.

To me,  I'll always remember Bill Fitch as the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers and it was Fitch in those awful leisure suits of the day, that led the Cavaliers to their first playoff spot and division title in 1975-76 in the famous "Miracle of Richfield" season.

Fitch coached in Cleveland for nine seasons, the first nine seasons of the franchise's existence and was also the general manager of the team, so it was Fitch that not only coached those Cavalier teams, he built them as well.

Fitch took the Cavaliers job after only three seasons of Division I college coaching, one at Bowling Green and two at Minnesota, and famously used assistant coach Jimmy Lessig's son's Topps basketball card collection to help plan the Cavaliers strategy for the expansion draft where Cleveland would select center Walt Wesley from the Bulls with their first pick.

Fitch was known for his humor and quips during those expansion years in Cleveland where the team and arena (Cleveland Arena) were so awful that some thought the Cavaliers wouldn't make in Cleveland and that's before anyone knew the name, Ted Stepien!

If you really need to select one person that allowed a franchise to survive the rough initial years where franchise loyalty begins and where apathy can set in if the wrong decisions are made and apply it to the Cleveland Cavaliers, You could do far worse than picking Bill Fitch.

A few years ago, I sent Fitch a few basketball cards and in my letter, I noted that I was a Cavaliers fan and how I wished I had a Cavaliers card of his to sign (Topps didn't make coaches cards when they had the NBA license).

Fitch sent me a nice note and said that he dug this up for me- It was his business card from his Cavaliers days and Fitch signed it. 

I can't imagine that he had plenty of business cards from a team that he left thirty-five years ago at a location that had long disappeared lying around and I thought it was a very kind gesture to a fan.

I'll be catching up with more later.