Cleveland's Finest. Vince McKee
Iowa, and some other smaller schools such as Baylor and SMU. It was Washington State that caught my attention the most, because at the time the PAC 10 was a dominant conference. I felt that it was a chance to play in one of the nation’s premiere conferences. I had a great coach in George Raveling. He taught me a tremendous amount of respect for the game. He taught me how to use my skills, and we were able to finish my senior season in second place in the PAC 10. We only lost by one game to UCLA and were ranked fourth in the country at that time. We made it to the NCAA tournament and beat Weber State in the first round before losing to the University of Virginia in the second round.
Ehlo was picked by the Houston Rockets in the 1983 draft and played for three years in a limited role. Ehlo explained that the draft back then was much different than the draft today:
The draft was not celebrated and exposed as it is today with ESPN covering the whole thing. I was at Washington State working at our summer camps when the draft was happening. I was on an outdoor court helping out with some young children, chasing them around when the camp director came and told me I was drafted by Houston in the third round. I didn’t do much celebrating. Instead, I just went back to work at the camp. That was when they had rookie camps in the middle of the summer and then we would get invited to the veteran’s camp after that. I made that team for the first three years under one-year contracts each time. It was like $40,000 coming out of a college, and I thought I was a very rich man.
After his third season, Ehlo moved into free agency, which allowed Embry to sign him. The Rockets reached the NBA finals in 1986 before losing to the perennial powerhouse—the Boston Celtics. Ehlo’s championship-round experience made him even more inviting to the Cleveland Cavaliers organization. He shared how it felt to play for the Rockets, and later in that championship series against the Celtics:
In the next year’s draft, we selected Hakeem Olajuwon and he completed the twin towers that the team had, so I didn’t play a lot. I only got into a handful of games, but I can say I was part of the one-man roster that beat the Lakers in five games in the conference finals before losing to Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and those guys in the finals. That was the Celtics year, as they went 40–1 at home and couldn’t be beat. We hung in there, but lost in six games. The last game was a blowout, and I got to play the last few minutes and be out there to score the last basketball before the fans rushed the court. That was my one brief moment in the NBA finals.
Ehlo also explained his decision to sign with Cleveland for the 1986–87 season:
My coach in Houston was Bill Fitch, who was one of the first Cleveland coaches. Cleveland did not have a good team at that point, so coach Fitch would always tease us and say “I’m going to send you to Cleveland” when we weren’t playing well. I was in the Western Conference and only had to go to Cleveland once, and that was when the Coliseum was out there so I wasn’t familiar with Cleveland at all. I grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan, so I was somewhat familiar with the Browns. I knew that Cleveland fans were a very sports-minded group of people. I got signed to a ten-day contract with the Cavaliers when Mark Price came down with tendinitis. Coach Wilkens was familiar with me from coaching in Seattle when I was at Washington State. I had talked with him several times when I was doing the rookie camps. When Bagley went down with a sprained ankle, it left me with a few others to play as the guards. It was a baptism by fire. We played five games in the ten days I was there, which gave me a chance to perform for them. I was able to sign with them for the rest of the year after that stint. It was a weird way of getting to Cleveland, but I’m very glad that I did. I was brought up loyal to keep your word, and when Houston had called me asking me to come back, I knew that even though it would have been easy to go back to Houston, I had given my word to Cleveland and owed it to them to stay there and start fresh.
The 1986–87 season was a learning and growing experience for the Cavaliers that upper management had expected. The team finished with only 31 wins but showed growth in many ways. John Williams, Brad Daugherty, and Ron Harper all made the NBA All-Rookie team. Despite the sixth place finish, the rookies’ playing skills gave Cleveland fans hope.
The 1987–88 season brought low expectations from many outside of the Cavaliers organization, however. The team had gotten off to a mediocre start before Embry pulled the trigger on a blockbuster deal that brought seasoned veteran Larry Nance to town. On February 25, 1988, the Cavaliers traded away Tyrone Corbin, Kevin Johnson, Mark West, and two future draft picks to the Phoenix Suns. In exchange, Phoenix sent Larry Nance, Mike Sanders, and a future first-round pick to Cleveland.
Vince with Larry Nance
Many in the media saw Nance’s acquisition as placing the final piece in the Cavaliers rebuilding puzzle. Larry Nance grew up in Anderson, South Carolina, the youngest in a large family of great athletes. He learned the game of basketball from his brothers, cousins, and uncles. At first his older relatives would not allow him to play with them because he was too small, but then as he grew older and taller, he became very talented, and the family allowed him to play all the time. He spent most of his childhood on the court with his family learning to play and perfecting his skills.
Nance grew up idolizing the great Julius Erving. He was glued to his television every time he had the chance to watch him play. He spent every Sunday afternoon in his own backyard, which he named The Spectrum, pretending to be Dr. J. Nance would later say that Erving was his favorite player until he reached the NBA and played against his idol.
Nance went to a trade school in McDuffie, South Carolina, following in the footsteps of his father, who was a truck driver. While studying basic academics at the school, he also played basketball. Anderson Junior College recruited him to play for a year, but then Clemson recruited Nance. Clemson head coach Bill Foster had already seen Nance play and offered him the last “available” scholarship. Foster’s faith in Nance was strong, and he knew that Nance would be more than worth taking a chance on. It was a loss of a top recruit for Anderson Junior College, but choosing Clemson over Anderson was a no-brainer for Nance. It’s not often that a major ACC college would happen to have an extra scholarship—call it fate, or whatever, but for Nance and Clemson it was the start of a beautiful partnership.
Nance was picked by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the 1981 NBA draft following a good career at Clemson. Nance reflected on the excitement and emotion of being drafted by Phoenix:
To come from a small town like Anderson, it felt really good because making the pros was never a realistic expectation growing up. I just loved to play basketball and playing hard, and because of playing hard, things worked out. When I realized I was going to get the opportunity to go to Phoenix and play, it was just awesome. Upon arriving in the pros, I continued to play the only way that I knew how to play, and that’s just work hard and try to develop to make myself better. That approach turned out a successful basketball career.
It didn’t take Nance long to blossom into a superstar. He participated in and won the 1984 Slam Dunk Championship contest, following in the high-flying footsteps of his hero, Dr. J. The trade that brought Nance to Cleveland would go down as one of the signature moves of the Wayne Embry era, but it was a rough trade at first for Nance, as he explained:
At the time it was the worst thing that could happen to me because I loved playing in Phoenix, plus I loved racecars and was able to get to the track several times a week. I was under the impression that if you played hard and kept your nose clean you would always be with the same team. The night I got traded I was upset because it was cold in Cleveland. There were two places I never wanted to play: Cleveland and New York. It was the worst time in my life, filled with pressure because I was supposed to bring the change. Then I met my new teammates and things began to change. I started to be around them and play with them, and I realized what great people they were with the great coaches that we had and things started changing—we started winning. All of a sudden this trade turned out to be the best thing in my life. I became best friends with “Hot Rod.” We became a very successful team with a great point guard. Things just began to work out better, and I became very happy to be here.
The Cavaliers played well for the final 27 games of the season because of Nance’s addition. They had a modest