Perfectly Awful by Charley Rosen

Author:Charley Rosen [Rosen, Charley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO004000 Sports & Recreation / Basketball
ISBN: 9780803286450
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2014-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

9

Murph to the Rescue

Kevin Michael Loughery was born (on March 20, 1940) and raised in the South Bronx. “We lived on 145th Street,” he says, “right near Saint Mary’s Park.” His mother was a housewife, and the men in the family had a history of working in law enforcement. Loughery’s older brother and an uncle were cops, and his father was a detective who was assigned to a precinct in Harlem for twenty years.

“We played our version of whatever sport was in season . . . Touch football. Baseball. Punchball. But I played as much roller hockey as I did basketball.”

Loughery was an All-City hooper in his senior year at Cardinal Hayes High School. “My dad wanted me to go to North Carolina because that was the year they beat Kansas and Wilt for the NCAA championship, and Frank McGuire was the coach.” But Loughery never got a nibble from UNC and gratefully accepted a scholarship from Boston College.

In both the 1957–58 and 1958–59 seasons, Loughery averaged 16.9 PPG. “I was only seventeen when I was a freshman,” he says, “and I had no idea what kind of a player I really was. A good one? A not-so-good one? Anyway, I wasn’t very happy at BC because ice hockey and football were the main sports and basketball was only secondary. So I transferred to St. John’s.”

As a transfer Loughery was prohibited from playing for a year: “Sitting out that season was very good for me. My body matured, and I got familiar with the coach and his program.” The SJU coach was the venerable Joe Lapchick, one of the original Celtics. Despite Lapchick’s stern demeanor, Loughery describes him as being “very liberal, and a great man in all respects.”

The season of 1960–61 marked the beginning of Loughery’s eligibility. Mostly coming off the bench, he averaged 10.6 PPG. Both Loughery and the Redmen blossomed the following season. With Loughery a full-time starter, his scoring increased to 15.5 PPG, and with the likes of Tony Jackson, Ivan Kovacs, and Loughery’s future Sixers teammate LeRoy Ellis, St. John’s ended the season ranked as the third-best college squad in the nation.

Loughery was selected in the second round (thirteenth overall) of the 1962 NBA draft and signed a rookie contract with the Detroit Pistons worth $9,500. “During training camp, the living quarters for the rookies and free agents had four of us in one apartment. For some reason that I can’t remember, I was late getting to camp. Turned out there were only three beds in the apartment I was assigned to, and they were all already taken. The only other option was one of those Murphy beds that folded out from a wall. Since I was late, and since I was Irish, it was only fitting that I’d sleep there. And that’s how I came to be nicknamed ‘Murph.’”

Playing in the NBA was much more of a low-rent situation back then than it is these days. “We got six dollars a day per diem,” Loughery recalls.

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