Longtime Warrior Al Attles dies at age 87
Attles worked for the Warriors for 62 straight years as a player, coach, general manager and executive before he passed away Tuesday
Back in 1960, the Philadelphia Warriors drafted Alvin Austin Attles Jr. in the 5th round of the NBA Draft. Attles was so unimpressed that he took a job as a junior high gym coach. But when he changed his mind and headed to training camp, Attles began a lifelong association with the Warriors franchise that only ended with his death Tuesday, at age 87.
Attles spent 11 years as a player for the team, following them as they moved west to become the San Francisco Warriors and then Golden State Warriors. In 1968, he added assistant coach to his responsibilities, took over as head coach his final season as a player, then remained the head man through 1983, at which point he became the team’s general manager. He never left the team’s payoll, working as a team ambassador and in community relations.
Though he was only six feet tall, Attles was a fearsome player, nicknamed “The Destroyer” after a game where he broke the jaw of Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes (6-foot-8). Attles didn’t even throw a punch! That’s just how intensely he went after loose balls. Like the battery that might well have been his namesake, A.A.A. was small but extremely powerful.
Once, Attles trounced 6-foot-8 Bob Ferry (Danny’s father) so badly that teammate Wilt Chamberlain had to carry him off the court “like a loaf of bread”. Afterward, Chamberlain explained he wasn’t worried about Attles, telling reporters, “I had to get to my boy before he killed Ferry.”
For his career, Attles averaged 8.9 points, 3.5 assists, and 3.5 rebounds. He wasn’t much of a shooter from the field or from the free-throw line, but the reason no one could unseat Attles from the rotation was not just his defense and rebounding, but his intelligence, competitiveness, and leadership. And that he was known as Chamberlain’s “bodyguard.”
Though there was one night where Attles did shoot the lights out. After he racked up 17 points on perfect 8-for-8 shooting and an and-one, Attles would later brag about the 1962 game in Hershey, Pennsylanvia, calling it, “The night Wilt and I combined for 117.”
Attles became an assistant coach in 1968 and took over as the head man before the 1970-71 season. He stayed on as a player, mainly because he didn’t want to make one of his other players take over as the enforcer and designated fouler off the bench.
Not that he relinquished that job even as head coach. After a masterful coaching job took the ragtag 1974-75 Warriors to a 3-0 lead in the NBA Finals against the heavily-favored Washington Bullets, Attles made history, and not just by becoming only the second balck head coach to ever win a title.
It was early in Game 4 when Bob Riordan of the Bullets tried to rattle Rick Barry by taking a cheap shot at him. Barry retaliated with a shove, but before things could escalate, with Barry (averaging 35 points per game in the series) likely getting tossed, The Destroyer got involved.
There’s never been an NBA head coach before or since who got tossed from a Finals game for fighting. But Attles cooled his heels in the lockroom and the Warriors won what turned out to be their last championship for the next 40 years.
Attles got them very close to a repeat in 1976, before a similar situation happened in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals and Attles wasn’t able to intervene. Ricky Sobers of the Phoenix Suns hit Barry with an elbow, the Warriors didn’t rush to defend him, and Barry refused to shoot in the second half of their loss. Attles coached through the 1982-83 season, but never again got close to a championship.
From 1976-1986, Attles served as the team’s general manager, where he drafted Hall of Famer Robert Parish in 1976. Of course, he also traded Parish and Kevin McHale to the Boston Celtics for Joe Barry Carroll in 1980, but he’s responsible for drafting Hall of Famer Chris Mullin and bringing in All-Stars Bernard King and Sleepy Floyd, and wasn’t on the job when the Warriors drafted Chris Washburn in 1986.
Since then, Attles stayed on the payroll as an advisor, team abassador, and community representative, attending nearly all of the Warriors games until recent years. The team retired his No. 16 jersey, then the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame gave him their lifetime achievement award in 2014. Five years later, Attles was inducted as a general contributor to the game, a fitting honor for a man who did it all for the Warriors franchise.
There’s been no one in NBA history who worked for a team as long and as continuously as Attles did with the Warriors, in all the different cities and arenas, working for many different owners, witnessing great and terrible seasons, and multiple failed attempts at getting a mascot to stick. But whether times were good or bad in Warrior land, Attles was always there, offering advice, quotes, and support to the organization where he, almost by accident, spent most of his life.
He will be missed.