Back to Bach; John Bach has seen it all: from Fordham-St. Perter's to the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. (Person to Person).

COACH: You were a Brooklyn-born, bred, and schooled "hoop rat" in the late 30s and 40s before the Navy stepped in and interrupted your college career. You are possibly the only basketball player in history to have lettered at three colleges--Fordham, Brown, and Rochester; and it wasn't until 1948 that you finally got back to Fordham to become the MVP of the team and graduate with a degree in economics.

What kind of basketball person were you after this long and varied experience?

BACH: Because of being long and lanky, and 6-foot-3, I usually played center and that meant coping with centers like [St. John's] Harry Boycoff, a 7-footer, at the start of the big man era. I wasn't completely defenseless. I had been schooled at St. John's Prep by Herb Hess, a fabulous Brooklyn coach, who had played in the Pittsburgh-Doc Carlson Weave and the Princeton Weave, which is currently enjoying a revival in the NBA. A great fundamentalist, Herb Hess always had me moving and that gave me an advantage. I could rebound. I could play the post. I could run the floor. I thoroughly enjoyed the game.

World War II accelerated all of us. We had to grow older quicker. I went into the Navy in my freshman year at Fordham (1942). The only question back then among the players was: Could you get in one term, two terms, three, or possibly four terms before they called you up? I finished three full terms and actually got enough credits to get in the fourth term.

The Navy, looking to accelerate its Naval Officer Training Program, sent me to the University of Rochester where I played under a wonderful coach named Lou Alexander. I was there for about six to eight months and then was sent over to Brown University.

At 20, I was commissioned as an ensign.

COACH: After graduation from college in 1948, you went on to play a year in the NBA. What was the NBA like in the late 1940's? Did it add much to the background you already had as a player and to the coaching career you were about to embark on?

BACH: I found it idyllic. I played for the Boston Celtics under an excellent coach named "Doggie" Julian, who had won a national championship at Holy Cross. It was interesting because he played an open, middle game with an awful lot of movement and cutting. My only claim to fame was that I was one of the just 96 guys in the NBA. I felt very fortunate. It was a different era. We traveled by busses and trains. The NBA was eastern in nature except for Chicago, Minneapolis, and Fort Wayne.

It was an avenue into a new type of basketball. We played 54 games, then many of us played summer league ball up in the Catskill (NY) Mountains.

You knew everyone in the league. It was a wonderful experience.

I cannot say that about my second year in the NBA. I made it to the last day of the tryouts before I was cut. Then I went to the Eastern League, which was a big step down.

Actually it turned out to be a treasure as I got to play with all the black athletes whom I had either read about or played against, and who were barred from playing in the NBA. I'm talking about guys like Pop Gates, Rabbit Walthour, and Deacon Younger. It was great to see how good they were.

Then I got to thinking that if I didn't make the NBA again, I would have to make a career change. Do I go to law school? Do I look into the various government programs as a veteran? I didn't know which way to go.

I got lucky. I had just taken a job as a trainee with the Swift Meat Company when my alma mater, Fordham, asked me to come in for an interview. I never understood it was to be for the head coach position.

It was a great thrill to be offered the job. But there was also some trepidation. Having always played and never coached, I wondered: Am I prepared for this?

So I went to see Joe Lapchick, coach of the Knicks, and told him I was being offered the Fordham job and that I wasn't sure I was prepared. His answer was, "Johnny, none of us has ever been well prepared for coaching." He told me to take the job and find Out for myself whether coaching was for me.

COACH: OK, John, you are now 26 years old and about to start your 18-year career at Fordham. What kind of offense and defense did you choose?

BACH: I had always favored man-to-man defense, but I also knew I had better have another defense available to help me.

As for offense, I loved the open middle and the dribble exchanges and cutting that I had used as a player. Since we didn't have a professional type team at Fordham--the big center and the big forward--the offense with the open center, dribble exchanges, and cutting appealed to both the players and myself. Frankly, that's all I knew at the time. I did put myself on a crash program to read everything, but as you know there's no substitute for experience. Especially in coaching.

COACH: Were the ideas all your own? Did they come from any specific coaches you admired? Or were they simply a mixture of a lot of things you had learned from experience?

BACH: I was always willing to beg, borrow, or steal. I admired "Doggie" Julian's continuity offense. It was flexible and I seemed to be comfortable with it. I was to later be influenced by people like Pete Newell, Henry Iba, and the old-timers.

I also liked the [New York] City rivalries like City College-Fordham and Fordham-St. Peter's. The intensity of those games really challenged you in coaching.

St. John's used a freestyle type game under Joe Lapchick that got people to do what they did best on the floor.

There was a lot of fine coaching in New York back then. You might take a piece of the sideline work that Manhattan was doing. You could take some part of a post game that some other coach was running. You'd see an out-of-bounds play or an attack against the press. I was a thief. I used anything I thought could help us.

COACH: In this 18-year journey, did you find your philosophy changing?

BACH: Yes. You had to ask yourself at the end of each season, "Where do we go?" or "How can we get better?" We'd look at all the teams at the top of their leagues or the NCAA and NIT and figure out which ones were worthy enough to beg, borrow, or steal from.

Pete Newell had a powerful influence with his defense. He could actually run a shuffle-type offense from it. I'd sit at his feet whether he was lecturing or speaking at a coaches convention. I also corresponded with him. I started leaning more and more on defense as the staple of my coaching philosophy.

Offense wasn't quite as important anymore.

COACH: In 1968, you moved over to Penn State. Were there any new influences, like different coaches and different opponents, who affected your thinking?

BACH: I was going to a school that had made history with its sliding zone defense under three great coaches: Dr. John Lawther, Dr. Elmer Gross, and Dr. John Egli.

I know it was hard for the players to accept my straight man-to-man defense after being brought up on a legendary zone defense. But I had to do what was best for my personnel.

The recruiting was something else. Bob Knight met me one night and said, "Johnny, you're conveniently located 100 miles from nowhere." Sometimes it seemed that way. I was there for 10 years. Butch van Breda Kolff used to tease me. He would say, "You spent 10 years at State Penn."

COACH: You were an assistant to the legendary Henry Iba at the controversial 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. Does the fact that the U.S. men's basketball team was robbed of the gold medal still leave a bad taste in your mouth?

BACH: Yes. I was interviewed by HBO for a documentary about the game but I still refuse to look at it. It was the most unpleasant experience of my basketball life. It was the first loss the U.S. had ever suffered in international or Olympic competition.

When we came home, we were perceived as failures. Anyone who watches that game knows that the medal was stolen from us. [The U.S. to this day has refused to accept the silver medal.] The players were hurt the most.

Doug Collins--who made what should have been the winning free throws in that game--and I have been together off and on for the past 18 years. We never talk about the game.

COACH: After another decade of coaching in the college ranks, including a stretch with the U.S. Olympic team and conducting clinics all over the world, you moved into the NBA. Over the next 20-plus years of coaching you had good teams, poor teams, and championship teams--including, of course, your tenure with the Chicago Bulls, with Michael Jordan on the court and Phil Jackson on the bench. What were your particular areas of expertise in this coaching scheme?

BACH: I think in the NBA you have to fit in wherever needed. It might be in planning, it might be in the execution of practice, it might be in scouting, it might be in editing tape, or it might be in looking at personnel.

I did anything that was asked of me when I was with the Bulls.

I edited tape of upcoming opponents. I scouted. I went out and looked at personnel. I sat in on planning sessions. I enjoyed all of it.

But I didn't enjoy my three years as a head coach with the Golden State Warriors. There are times that I wish I had been more pleasant in those days.

COACH: We must include the obligatory question, of course: What is it like having a player like Michael Jordan? What do you say to the greatest player of all-time? How do you coach him? How do the other players react to him?

BACH: He was such an impact player. I told him only what I thought would be of some help to him or make some observation that he could ignore or accept.

He is a basketball genius in that he sees the game, knows the game, has an unbelievable confidence, and brings a great joy to the game. I thought he was an easy player to coach. He practiced hard. He could josh. He could intimidate. And he could perform.

He used practice as a springboard for the next game. He was also a predator. He came to kill and he prepared for it.

You have to love a fierce competitor who makes everyone else around him work harder and be a better player. He drove some. He encouraged others. He probably intimidated a lot, too.

COACH: What were the circumstances in your moving from the Bulls to the Wizards?

BACH: I left the Bulls in 1995 following a salary dispute. Then I went to work for the Charlotte Hornets. After that, I joined Doug Collins for a few years with the Pistons. Then I got a phone call from Michael Jordan and he said, "What are you doing?" I was in Rockport, Maine at a seminar for watercolor painting. Michael told me to get down to Washington, D.C. as fast as I could to interview for an assistant coach job with the Wizards. I got the job, and Doug Collins became the head coach in 2001. So we were reunited again.

COACH: What is your feeling about the future of the pro game? Will the impact of all the foreign players change the game in any meaningful way?

BACH: I think David Stern has masterfully guided it through contract negotiations, through bad publicity, through all of its problems. What he has done for the game is remarkable and wonderful.

The foreign players are going to help. They come in well coached. Jerry West's jump shot was imported and preached in Russia as the perfect shot and the perfect form. That's why their big men shoot better than ours.

Surprisingly, the Europeans and now the Asians-I was in Turkey a few years ago-have some of the best pressing teams I've ever seen. Their tactics are good.

They come here and they clinic everywhere. Our players go over there. David Stern recognized this 10 or 15 years ago when he sent NBA teams to play in Europe. The best of our basketball is played over there.

Now they're coming to the U.S. and haunting us with players like Vlade Divac, Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, and other great outside shooters who also know how to move without the ball.

Our game, let's face it, is now worldwide. Although we still hold on to the crown it's by no means what it used to be. If we didn't have our professionals playing, believe me, the Olympic gold would be in someone else's hands.

COACH: If you were just beginning your coaching career, what level of the game would you prefer to start with? High School? College? What league?

What part of the country? And why? Would you look down the road toward the pros?

BACH: A good college program would make a great start for a young assistant coach. It's a great environment to learn in. You could work your way to a head job and then you'd eventually be ready to move into the pros.

I would prefer to coach in the ACC. It has always been a power league that cherished basketball and supported it.

COACH: Obviously your creativity is not limited to the hardwood. We understand you know your way around a canvas and easel as well. Tell us about your love of painting? How did you get involved in it?

BACH: I always thought I could draw and I had to go to life-drawing classes to find out I couldn't. But I always drew and I always had trouble with color.

In 1995, I had gone through a major heart attack--flatlined. It was a major shock to my system and unexpected. Since I had also gone through a divorce, I had to find something aside from basketball. I went to a couple of classes by a young Chinese artist. The Chinese are masters of both calligraphy and a light touch. Their work is often connected with poetry. My teacher was complex and yet often simple. He fascinated me and started me thinking that maybe I could do something with art. That's the way it started.

Since then, wherever I go, I try to look up some teaching artist and arrange for lessons. I've found a couple of accommodating teachers where I live in Virginia. I'm trying everything and I hope to settle into something that I can excel in.

I do seascapes because they are easier. Somehow I have a feel for the sea and ships. My father was a maritime officer and a Naval officer. I was in the Navy myself. So when I see a picture or a reference, I sometimes can relate to it and put my touch on it.

Painting has been a great release for me. It takes me away from basketball. It takes me away from everything.

COACH: John, you've seen the greatest players of all-time. Pick an All-Bach 10-man squad for us?

BACH: Jordan was the best I've ever seen. Oscar Robertson was that until Michael came along. I think Bill Russell's impact on the game has to be noted. Ditto, Chamberlain's fantastic abilities. Jerry West certainly is a legend as a competitor and player. Bird comes to mind right way. He wasn't fast but he brought everything else to the game.

He could think. He could shoot. He could organize. He was absolutely vicious as a competitor. I also love Magic. He came in as the big guard who, like Jordan, simply loved the game and a challenge. He was hugely gifted.

I always liked Bob Cousy. I thought he brought what we used to call the French pastry to the game. Some guys are basic bread and butter players. He used to dribble behind the back and pass without looking.

I also want to mention some guys I played against, like Joe Fulks, the guy who brought the jump shot into the NBA. One of the best players I ever played against, and have always maintained would have been an all-time pro had he ever been given the chance was Pop Gates, who played for the New York Renaissance.

COACH: Allow us to end with a bit of personal perspective: During your college career, you wrote seven articles for us. Two of them represented history for us. One was an in-depth piece on the corner clear-out in 1954.

The other was a story on an offense we had never heard of--the motion game. You wrote it for us in 1973. Almost everything in it still holds good today. About six years ago, we asked a mutual friend, Dr. Jack Ramsay, to name the most meaningful trend in professional basketball. He said: "All of pro basketball is pick-and-roll."

With all the respect we have for your creativity and sightedness, we'd like to ask you. What are the two or three most meaningful forces or movements that you see in basketball today?

BACH: I think the hardest thing to do is put together a team. We have so much individualism in our game. People with unusual talent with the dribble or with a shot, but without the overall, all-around game to support it. That's the challenge.

Times have changed. As players we were told what to do. We were told how to play. We tend to treat today's players as simply talented individuals. I don't think we try to understand them and we tend to guide them too much.

COACH: You are retiring from coaching at the end of the NBA season. What will you miss most about the game after 52 years on the bench? What do you feel your legacy will be?

BACH: I will be 79. Very few men can pick their walk-away dates. I told [Wizards GM] Wes Unseld and he said, "What!" I just said, "Yep, it's time to go, Wes."

I'll miss the association with the players. You don't age around them. You stay at their age. You are held back from aging. You think a good deal of them. You understand them. You love them. Sometimes you get mad at them. Through it all you learn to live with them and you learn to live with the game.

Someone once said that if the game doesn't charm you, then for God's sake leave it.

As a coach I did what I had to do. When I was asked to be an assistant coach I found no difficulty with it. I was a good captain in the ligeance of basketball.