Cleveland's Finest. Vince McKee
of some aspects of Jim Brown’s game, including his extreme lack of blocking. Where Jim Brown excelled was running, not blocking or being an all-around good teammate. In Brown’s first season, the team would reach the championship game but go on to lose 59–14.
As Jim Brown rose as a star, players began to question Paul Brown’s leadership and play-calling. By the late 1950s, Jim had turned his teammates and the media against the proven coach. It was Jim Brown’s play on the field that allowed more people to side with him over the seasoned coach. Fans were in awe of Brown’s running ability, and they willingly looked past his off-the-field antics. Jim Brown later started a weekly radio show, which Coach Brown did not like as it undercut his control over the team. The team finished second in its division in 1959 and 1960, but these finishes didn’t bother Jim Brown because he continued to lead the league in rushing every season.
A dark cloud soon rose over Cleveland in 1961 when Art Modell, a New York advertising executive, bought the Browns in 1961 for almost $4 million. At first it looked as if Modell would not be all that bad as an owner—he gave Paul Brown a new eight-year contract and stated that he and Brown would have a “working partnership.”
It didn’t take long, however, for Modell to get in Brown’s way and start playing a heavy hand in the team’s field affairs. This upset Coach Brown, who was used to having total control in football matters. Only 35, Modell was close in age to many of the players, and he took it upon himself to try to buddy up to many of them. Modell became very close with Jim Brown, which was the kiss of death for the disciplinarian coach. Modell could be heard during games second-guessing Paul Brown’s play calling.
Things finally came to a head between owner and coach when Paul Brown traded Bobby Mitchell for the rights to Ernie Davis, a Heisman Trophy–winning running back out of Syracuse. Davis was no stranger to the end zone, having broken all of Jim Brown’s rushing records at Syracuse. This was a trade that did not sit well with Jim Brown, and he was not happy to have Davis as a teammate. Sharing the spotlight was not something Jim Brown preferred. Sadly, Ernie Davis never played a single game as a Cleveland Brown—he was diagnosed with leukemia before the start of the 1962 season.
Paul Brown was a methodical and disciplined coach who tolerated no deviation from his system. He ran a well-oiled machine, which was simply not the way Jim Brown wanted to be coached. In the end, Modell sided with Jim Brown and fired the legendary coach on January 7, 1963. This was right in the middle of a newspaper strike that allowed Modell to keep this move under the radar. It was the first of many shocking moves and disappointing decisions that Cleveland sports fans would have to endure by Modell that would occur over the next forty-plus years. Blanton Collier, Paul Brown’s longtime assistant, was later named as the team’s new head coach.
Paul Brown would only stay away from the game for less than five years; he was quick to throw in his hat for team ownership of the AFL franchise that was starting in Cincinnati. Brown was the third-largest investor in the team and was given the title of coach and general manager, two roles he would succeed in. The Bengals joined the NFL in 1970 as a result of the AFL–NFL merger and were placed in the newly formed American Football Conference. In his years as the Bengals head coach, Brown took the team to the playoffs three times but was never able to win a championship for the Queen City.
Coach Paul Brown was a great leader. Many of the men who worked directly underneath him continued on to amazing careers, including Don Shula, Blanton Collier, Weeb Ewbank, Bill Walsh, and Chuck Knoll, to name a few. Coach Brown finished with seven league championships during his tenure with Cleveland. He led the Browns to 11 straight title games in that stretch. It was the most dominant run of any head coach in the history of football. As one of the greatest head coach in the history of professional football, Paul Brown will forever be remembered as the man whose coaching ways, attention to detail, and discipline reshaped the landscape and model of pro football.
CHAPTER TWO
Richfield
Richfield Coliseum was built in the early 1970s and first opened to the public in 1974 as home to the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, the WHA’s Cleveland Crusaders, the NHL’s Cleveland Barons, and, in later years, the AFL’s Cleveland Thunderbolts, as well as indoor soccer teams the Cleveland Force and the Cleveland Crunch. The Coliseum hosted major sporting events, such as the 1981 NBA All-Star Game and showcased several professional-wrestling events seen worldwide on pay-per-view. It also served as a venue for music concerts by big names from Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder to U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Hall of Fame basketball star Larry Bird mentioned that Richfield Coliseum was his favorite place to play on the road.
The building, in the middle of a large area of farmland, was 30 minutes south of downtown Cleveland and stuck out like a sore thumb. This massive structure held more than 20,000 seats and was one of the first arenas to include luxury boxes. Joe Tait, legendary announcer for the Cavaliers, remembered his first impression of the coliseum as “a beautiful building in comparison to the old Cleveland Arena—it was like going from the ghetto to the palace. The one question was if people would still show up because of the long distance many had to travel to get there. At the time, that part of Summit County was surrounded by farms. It was in the middle of nowhere, and there was a sheep ranch right next to it. I thought it was an absolutely beautiful building.”
Vince McKee with the legendary voice of the Cavs, Joe Tait
The Cavaliers had a new home; now they just needed to start winning. Owner Nick Mileti built Richfield Coliseum for his recently formed basketball team. Until then, they had been playing at the Cleveland Arena but hadn’t enjoyed much success. Since the team’s 1970 opening season, the Cavs hadn’t had a single winning season. Shortly after the move to Richfield in 1974, however, they record started to improve. The team won 40 games that year but fell just short of the playoffs. Tait recalled the 1974–75 season positively in that “things were changing because we were starting to get better ballplayers. We had not yet won a lot of ballgames in the history of the team, so the upgrade in the talent of the roster was crucial. The fact that we came within one game was frustrating but also encouraging because it showed you how close they were to bigger and better things.”
During the 1975–76 season, NBA Coach of the Year Bill Fitch led the Cavaliers to a record of 49–33 and a National Basketball League Central Division title. The team boasted a roster filled with talent such as Austin Carr, Bobby “Bingo” Smith, Jim Chones, Dick Snyder, and the newly acquired perennial All-Star Nate Thurmond. Years had passed since Cleveland had won anything, 1964 being the last time a Cleveland team had won a championship. The team’s newfound success had fans across Northeastern Ohio excited about sports again. “After the horrible start to the season, head coach Bill Fitch made the trade for Nate Thurmond, which was the catalyst that turned that ball club around. Nate was a great player and also a tremendous leader. He came in and really galvanized the team to get them aimed in the right direction and then went on to win the division,” Tait said.
Tait became the man lucky enough to call the action of this new miracle team. In his childhood, he had tried to play basketball but never fared too well, as he wasn’t athletically inclined. And because he didn’t have a television growing up, any form of basketball he experienced came through the radio. To make money while attending the University of Missouri in Monmouth, Tait took a job as a janitor at a local radio station. The station offered him a chance to do two five-minute sports radio spots a day. In 1970, the newly formed Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team of the NBA hired Tait as the lead radio play-by-play man, a job he performed until his retirement in 2011. It was an amazing career that resulted in his being inducted into the Broadcast Hall of Fame in 1992.
The first unit of the Cavaliers consisted of Jim Cleamons and Dick Snyder at guard, Jim Chones at center, with Jim Brewer and Bobby “Bingo” Smith holding up the frontcourt. Coming off the bench were Austin Carr, Campy Russell, Foots Walker, and Nate Thurmond. The bench players were just as good as some of the starting lineups that season. The Cavaliers boasted a solid rotation of players who would take them well into the postseason. Joe Lustek, from North Ridgeville, had no bones about sharing his love