Hubie Brown got his first NBA coaching job 50 years ago, as an assistant for the Milwaukee Bucks under his fellow Niagara University graduate, Larry Costello.
Brown has vivid memories of those early days, watching a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar roam the low post for the Bucks. Hubie, still working as an analyst on NBA playoff games at 88, has as much credibility on the NBA as anyone alive, and he can provide testimony on the greatness of Bob Lanier.
“I honestly thought that he had the athletic talent, the size and the strength and the advanced technical scoring of Kareem,” Brown said by phone Thursday. “I was amazed at how great he was. He was blessed.”
Lanier, who died Tuesday night at 73 after a short illness (he had battled bladder cancer), was one of the most gifted centers ever to play the game, a Hall of Famer who averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds over a 14-year NBA career with the Detroit Pistons and the Bucks.
He was, without question, the greatest basketball player ever to come out of Buffalo. Clifford Robinson played many more games and had a few more points. Christian Laettner had a celebrated college career at Duke and was a solid NBA player.
But Lanier towered above them all. He is a Buffalo hoop legend — for rising up after getting cut from the Bennett High team as a sophomore, for his mythical size-22 sneakers, and of course, for leading St. Bonaventure to the Final Four in 1970.
“He was on the mountaintop at a time when college basketball in Western New York was at its best,” said Canisius College head coach Reggie Witherspoon, who remembers following Lanier in the late 1960s, during the glory days of the Little Three.
“I was 9 years old in Lanier’s senior year at Bona,” Witherspoon recalled. “I was in those arguments with my brothers over who was better, him or Calvin Murphy. I was the littlest one in the house and had an affinity for the little guy.
“Lanier put me to bed with tears in my eyes during those years.”
That was because Reggie loved little Murphy, who starred at Niagara during that era. St. Bonaventure went 8-0 against Niagara over their concurrent four-year careers, including two games when they played for the freshmen teams.
Lanier went on to average 27.6 points and 15.7 rebounds in his storied three-year career in Olean. He led the Bonnies to an undefeated regular season as a sophomore in 1968 and to the Final Four as a senior.
I have never played in that Final Four, though. Lanier hurt his knee in a collision with Villanova’s Chris Ford in the regional final. Any St. Bonaventure fan will tell you the Bonnies would have won the national title — beating Jacksonville and UCLA — if Big Bob had been healthy.
Mike Vaccaro, the acclaimed New York Post columnist and 1989 Bona graduate, has interviewed Lanier at least a dozen times and is considered the foremost historian of St. Bonaventure basketball.
As a young sports writer at the Olean Times-Herald in 1990, Vaccaro interviewed Lanier for a story on the 20th anniversary of the Final Four team.
“I asked a question as a smart-ass 23-year-old,” Vaccaro said with a laugh. “‘Do you think you could have taken Steve Patterson?’ (Patterson was the UCLA center that season, the one after Jabbar and before Bill Walton).
“He said, ‘Steve Patterson? You tell Steve Patterson to meet me in any gym in America tomorrow and I’ll drop 35 on him in my street clothes.”
Lanier was a fierce competitor, but a gentleman who would become the NBA’s global ambassador after his playing career, touching the lives of countless young people and counseling them on the value of education.
“What I have accomplished after basketball, traveling the world representing the NBA and David Stern and his group, will never be surpassed,” Brown said. “He was a beautiful person, extremely intelligent and a wonderful guy to be around.”
Vaccaro has spoken with a lot of people who played with Lanier at Bona, or were in school at the time. It was the turbulent late Sixties, and as Vaccaro concedes, St. Bonaventure wasn’t the most evolved place for a young Black man.
“Almost anybody I’ve talked to who went to school in those days felt it wasn’t just the team that was unifying. It was really Lanier. He’s such an engaging guy, and has been for his whole life.”
Jack Armstrong, the former Niagara coach and the voice of the Raptors for 24 seasons, got to know Lanier well over the years. Bob knew Jack had coached Niagara and they would chat about local basketball and the old Little Three.
“He was so proud of Buffalo and so proud of St. Bonaventure and the Little Three and Western New York,” Armstrong said. “The vibe I got every time I met him was ‘How are you doing?’ Very welcoming, very friendly.Very Buffalo.”
Lanier never forgot his roots, growing up on the city’s East Side. He once told me a story about skipping school. His dad, Robert Sr., dragged him off a basketball court and gave him a good whipping. He said the experience remained with him. He never forgot how important education was in a young boy’s life.
They ran the NBA’s ‘Stay in School’ program from 1989-94. In 1990, he came to Buffalo to promote a Three-on-Three Challenge at the Aud, featuring former NBA stars, to raise funds for the Bob Lanier Center for Educational, Physical and Cultural Development, a program that helps troubled youth in the city .
Buffalo has not produced many hoop giants. But in Lanier, a town that prides itself on its big, charitable heart might have produced the sport’s greatest humanitarian.
In his playing days, Lanier was given the NBA’s citizenship award and the YMCA’s Jackie Robinson Award for “service to youth, good citizenship and leadership.” Later, he got the Oscar Robertson Leadership Award, a Congressional Horizons Leadership award, the National Civil Rights Sports Legacy Award.
When he came to Buffalo to promote the Bob Lanier Center in 1990, Lanier was asked in a press conference if he felt a duty to give back to his old neighborhood.
“Are you obligated to do it? I don’t think anybody has an obligation,” Lanier said. “But if you came up like I did, you came up Black and you came up poor. If you’re sensitive to seeing things around you that happen to people who have nothing, and how they’re treated, you want to help. I’ve been somebody who had nothing.”
Lanier saw a bit of himself in all those kids he met around the world. He wanted to be remembered as more than just a player, as someone who showed young people in difficult circumstances that anything was possible.
“He came from Northland Avenue, Masten Boys Club,” said Witherspoon, whose family lived near Lanier’s in the city before moving to Amherst. “People tell the story about when he was young, he wasn’t recognized as being this gifted basketball player . I think there was inspirational value in that.”
“I wish Cliff Robinson (who died in 2020) were around to be able to tell the similarities in terms of their growth in the sport.”
Lanier’s legend grew even larger over the years when Buffalo basketball went into decline. It was 48 years after that fateful regional final in ’70 until a Buffalo area men’s team won a game in the NCAA tourney proper. Over the decades, it became an annual ritual for me to point out in my hoop reports in March.
In a way, Lanier was Buffalo college basketball, a fond, fading memory of a long-ago time in the sport.
“Oh, without question,” Witherspoon said. “For him to be able to take that team, and all of Western New York to that level, was phenomenal. He was a great combination of intellect, character and gentleness. But mixed with that, Bob Lanier played the game back in the day when the game was very physical and he didn’t take anything from anybody.”
Imagine if he’d had good knees. Lanier admitted he shouldn’t have played as a rookie for the Pistons in 1970-71, but how could he sit out after Detroit took him first overall in the draft and showed faith in him while he was still in recovery?
Lanier had eight knee operations in his lifetime. Witherspoon was flabbergasted to hear that.
“Eigh!” he said. “Wow, eight knee operations in the Seventies and early Eighties, when medical technology had not advanced. That’s incredible, just incredible. He was No. 1 overall pick and he delivered, even with that.”
Yes, Lanier delivered. People either forgot or never saw what Brown watched up close, when Lanier was battling the likes of Abdul-Jabbar, Wes Unseld, Dave Cowens, Willis Reed, Bill Walton and Wilt Chamberlain. There weren’t many nights off back then.
He is one of three NBA players who appeared in 500 or more games and averaged 20 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists and 1.5 blocks and shot over 50%. The other two were Abdul-Jabbar and Chamberlain (they didn’t keep blocks in Wilt’s day, but please).
Lanier didn’t play in the NBA Finals, but he was a rare, blessed talent, as Hubie says. He was a gentle giant, on and off the floor, an eloquent ambassador for his league and his hometown of him, who will never see another like him.
Jerry Sullivan is a sports columnist with over 30 years experience in Western New York. Follow him on Twitter @ByJerrySullivan or respond via email at [email protected].
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism