From time to time, Supersonicsoul tries to highlight players from the beginnings of the team's history, rather than just the heroes of the last 20 years. The following is a reprint of an article on an original member of the Sonics, George Wilson, who turns 72 today.
I’ve always been curious about the
“winner” label that gets affixed to athletes.
Bill Russell had it – he won with
the University of San Francisco, then with the Celtics, so much winning that
people started thinking he was incapable of losing.
Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry
Bird – they were all winners at multiple levels.
So much of it is nonsense – Cousy,
Jabbar, Pippen, and McHale had more than a little to do with those first four
gentlemen’s successes, right?
It’s funny, though, you never hear
about guys who won a lot before
turning pro, then failed when they got there.
You know, like George Wilson.
---
George Wilson came to the Sonics by
way of the 1967 expansion draft, arriving in town after the Sonics selected him
from the Bulls. A 6’8” or so center/power forward, his career in the NBA never
amounted to all that much – 5.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg in 400-odd games – but before he
turned pro, Wilson was a winning machine, with a record even Bill Russell
himself would envy.
At Marshall High School in Chicago,
Wilson led his team to two state titles and was named a national All-American
in the process. From there, he went to the University of Cincinnati, where he
teamed up with the great Oscar Robertson and won yet another championship.
Not satisfied, Wilson turned to the 1964
Olympics in Tokyo, winning a Gold Medal after sinking two crucial baskets in
the final moments of a nail-biting win over Yugoslavia – the closest the US had
come to losing in Olympic history.
In the span of six years – from 1958
to 1964 – Wilson had accumulated two high school championships, an NCAA title,
and an Olympic Gold Medal.
Let’s say, at this point, George
Wilson, rather than John Thompson, gets selected by Boston in the 1964 draft,
gets another half-dozen rings on his fingers as a reserve big man for the
Celtics, how do we then view George Wilson? Isn’t it possible, just possible,
that rather as a forgotten undersized center from 40 years ago, he becomes a
“winner?” Isn’t it possible that the Hall of Fame starts thinking about adding
him to their ranks?
But enough about that speculation,
let’s look at what really happened to George Wilson, member of the 1967-68
Seattle Sonics.
---
George Wilson was born in Meridan,
Mississippi back in May of 1942. Because of the racism prevalent throughout the
south at the time, Wilson’s family split while he was still young, eventually
winding up in Chicago with his mother and stepfather.
By the time he reached Marshall High
School in Chicago, an all-black school, Wilson was already a talent, but a raw
one. Between his freshman and sophomore seasons, he learned to shoot a hook
shot, and his career took off. Averaging 26 points a game during the next three
seasons, the 6’8” Wilson dominated games, and took the Commandos to the State
Title twice, the first all-black team to do so in Illinois.
With colleges around the country
coveting him, Wilson opted for Cincinnati because of his admiration for Oscar
Robertson. After spending one season on the freshman team while the varsity won
the NCAA tournament, Wilson became a key member of the squad his sophomore year
as Cincy captured its second consecutive title.
By the time 1964 rolled around,
Wilson’s skills were evident to those that put together the Olympic team, but
because of an arcane rule that limited each school to no more than one member
on the team, Wilson’s chances at travelling to Tokyo seemed slim as his
teammate, Ron Bonham, the team’s leading scorer, had already been selected.
Luckily for Wilson, he was selected
for an AAU all-star team that wound up playing against the Olympic team in a
tournament. His 19 rebounds persuaded the selectors to put him on the squad,
and just like that, he was headed for Tokyo.
Wilson made sure they wouldn’t
regret it.
----
When George “Jiff” Wilson joined the
US Olympic Team in Tokyo in 1964, he wasn’t the biggest name there. (How did he
get that nickname? Oh, it’s a delicious story. Turns out that Jiff peanut
butter came out with a kangaroo mascot around that time and George’s teammates
thought he could jump higher than the kangaroo. Laugh if you will, but Wilson
was much better off than his 6’5”, 270-pound teammate, John “Joe Camel”
Franklin).
Walt Hazzard, Bill Bradley, Lucious
Jackson, Larry Brown … those were some of the other names, and I’m guessing
that during the pre-game show on ABC (or whoever was broadcasting it back then,
although I’m willing to bet a small fortune that Jim McKay and/or Lindsay
Nelson were involved), the only time you heard Wilson’s name was when they were
showing one of those super-duper graphics
they used to use back in the day.
Anyhow, after four games Wilson had
18 points and 12 fouls, and while they didn’t have uber-statisticians back then
to tell us how to think about what we were watching, it’s not a stretch to
imagine that he wasn’t up for any trophies at the end of the Olympics.
Considering they had just come up
obliterating Uruguay 83-28, confidence was a bit high going into the Yugoslavia
game. The Yugos, though, had other ideas, and they were within four points of
the US with two minutes to go.
Wilson held the ball, all his
teammates covered. With the shot clock near zero, he fired one up, hit it and
heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Less than a minute later, the
situation repeated itself. Again, the Yugos sloughed off Wilson, he waited,
waited, waited … and hit another jumper.
US lead: 8 points.
From then on, the US cruised to
victory in every game, earning Wilson and his teammates a gold medal.
"To this day, I
wonder what would have happened had I not made those jump shots," Wilson
told UC Magazine in an interview.
"When they put those gold
medals around our necks, I don't know how I could have had a bigger
smile," he says. "I think I cracked the corners of my mouth smiling
so big. I was like a little kid at Christmas."
---
Passed over in the regular NBA
draft, Wilson wound up being a territorial selection by the Cincinnati Royals
in 1964, where he would again join Oscar Robertson and two other UC grads (Tom
Thacker and Jack Twyman).
The Royals were good, but not good
enough, earning playoff berths for three straight years and getting knocked out
in the first round in each of them. In November 1966, the Royals decided to
start unloading some of their local talent, and Wilson’s 20% FG percentage
didn’t exactly endear him to the front office, so off he went to Chicago, a
truly dismal team, and he ended the season with the Bulls.
Come that spring, the Bulls were
about as impressed with Wilson’s skills as the Royals were, so they exposed him
in the expansion draft, where the Sonics swiftly snapped him up.
“He is definitely a center,” Sonic
GM Don Richman told the Seattle Times, assuaging any doubts people had about
the 6’8” Wilson while also announcing he had signed the new Sonic to a two-year
deal.
----
Like the rest of the newly formed
Sonics, George Wilson’s expectations were mixed heading into the 1967-68 season.
On the one hand, a new team offered
the opportunity for increased playing time. On the other, an expansion team
meant losing – and lots of it, something Wilson hadn’t experienced much in his
basketball career, although that losing would be tempered by, well, we’ll let
Wilson explain:
"We had nice uniforms, I always remembered those,"
Wilson told the Seattle Times 40 years later. "We always at least looked
nice."
So there was that.
Regardless of how they looked, Wilson could at least count on
more minutes, for as late as mid-September he was ticketed to share the center
duties with Dorie Murrey. Unfortunately, rookie Bob Rule proved to be better
than either Wilson or Murrey (including a remarkable 31/21 performance against
the Knicks in November), and wound up playing almost more minutes by himself
(2,424) than the two veterans combined (2,730).
Wilson, playing only 16 minutes a night, still put up the best
numbers of his career, with 6.1/6.1 in points and rebounds. Still, his low FG%
(35.9) offset his strong rebounding and defense.
Still, there were bright spots, such as an early February night
in Seattle when the Sonics took on Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and the rest of the
mighty Lakers.
Trailing by 19 points behind pathetic 22% first-half shooting,
the Sonics were dealt another blow when Bob Rule found himself ejected
following a punch of LA’s Erwin Mueller (a future Sonic and a former teammate
of Wilson’s from Chicago).
With Dorie Murrey in foul trouble, the Sonics had to lean on
Wilson the rest of the way, and he delivered. Rallying behind Wilson’s 19
rebounds in 28 minutes, to go with 10 points and five assists, the Sonics came
storming back. Seattle held a 107-104 lead late, but even then the Seattle
Center faithful had to hold their breaths after a missed shot attempt fell into
the hands of Baylor.
Thinking quickly, Wilson knocked the ball out of the former
Seattle U’s hands, and, as the Times Gil Lyons’ described it, “while flat on
his back, flipped a pass to Tom Meschery for a layin.”
Ballgame.
Seattle’s 87 rebounds set a club record (later broken), and were
23 more than the Lakers’, thanks in no small part to Wilson’s efforts.
Unfortunately, that would prove to be one of the highlights of
George Wilson’s time in Seattle. By the time spring rolled around, he found
himself once again picked in an expansion draft, this time by the Phoenix Suns.
His time in Seattle spanned less than a calendar year.
Wilson would bounce from Phoenix to Philadelphia (via trade) and
finally to Buffalo (once again, via expansion; Wilson may be the only player in
NBA history to have been selected in no fewer than three expansion drafts; hey,
at least somebody wanted him).
In Buffalo, Wilson got frustrated at management’s double-dealing
(they told him he’d be a center, then tried to make him a forward), telling the
University of Cincinnati magazine in 1984:
“I was very angry and bitter then. They had something like nine guys
with no-cut contracts, then I got cut even though I’d outplayed some of the
other guys in camp.”
Rather than keep banging his head against the wall, Wilson
retired, and pursued a variety of other interests in his post-playing days,
ranging from the restoration of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Museum in Ohio,
working as a YMCA director, for 5 years with a neighborhood youth corps,
taught at-risk kids in the Cincy school district for 10 years, then finally
“retired” in 2002, although he continues to operate his own consulting company,
worked with the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative, gives speeches, and is active
with the NBA Players Association. When he wasn’t busy with that, he helped
raise three children with his wife, Jean, whom he separated from and later remarried,
creating a blended family of six children. His son, Derek, played basketball
professionally in Europe, but in reading stories about George, you can tell
he’s most proud of the fact his children are all good people.
More than anything these days, Wilson serves as
a goodwill ambassador for the University of Cincinnati, ready with a smile and
a greeting to almost anyone he meets. A
champion – on-court and off.
