The text came out of the blue. Out of desperation. Mostly, though, it derived from a daughter’s love and respect for her father. The daughter is Jodi...
In Motta’s case it was taking over the 7-21 Kings partway into the 1989-90 season; the 13-69 Mavericks after the 1993-94 season; and, finally, going 17-52 in Denver when Bernie Bickerstaff stepped down early in the 1996-97 season.After coaching Washington to its second straight Finals, his career record was 502-397. Had he quit then at age 47 he’d almost certainly be in the Hall.
The son of an Italian immigrant farmer, Motta grew to only 5-7 and never played high school basketball. His coaching career began in 1954 at the junior high level in Grace, Idaho , where he taught homeroom, coached all four boys sports plus girls basketball and drove a school bus.He left to serve in the Air Force, where he also coached, then returned to Grace to coach the high school team, leading it to the 1959 state championship.
At the time, Motta’s only NBA peer who’d coached at the high school level was Larry Costello, who after his pro playing career coached his alma mater for one season before becoming Milwaukee’s coach in 1968. One of his Bullets stars, Wes Unseld, championed Motta’s 2011 HOF nomination. Motta became a finalist. When he failed to get the necessary 18 votes, no one was more disappointed than Jerry Sloan, who played six seasons under Motta in Chicago and considered him his coaching mentor. Sloan was inducted into the Hall in 2009.Salt Lake TribuneSloan and Unseld died in 2020. In Sloan’s final days, Jodi McClendon drove her father to Sloan’s home in Utah.
In 1995, as he neared 900 career victories, Motta told me about the Hall: “I would never expect in my lifetime to see it. I haven’t kissed enough butt. It’s very political. And as long as it’s political, I don’t expect to get in.”“As long as Jerry Colangelo has anything to do with it, I’ll never make it. I don’t lie awake nights thinking about it. And I can’t put that on my Wheaties. I know what I did in my career.
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