Alexander Murray Hannum (July 19, 1923 – January 18, 2002) was a professional basketball player and coach. Hannum coached two National Basketball Association (NBA) teams and one American Basketball Association (ABA) team to league championships. He had a combined NBA-ABA record of 649–564 (.535) in the regular season and 61–46 (.570) in the playoffs over 16 seasons. In 1998, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach.
Hannum played for the Syracuse Nationals from 1949 to 1951. Hannum is one of only three NBA players to receive more than six personal fouls in a single game (Don Otten and Cal Bowdler are the others). On December 26, 1950, Hannum received seven personal fouls in a game against the Boston Celtics.[1]
Baltimore Bullets (1951–1952)
On July 14, 1951, Hannum was traded by the Syracuse Nationals with Fred Scolari to the Baltimore Bullets for Red Rocha. Hannum played for the Baltimore Bullets from 1951 to 1952.
Rochester Royals (1952–1954)
On January 18, 1952, Hannum's player rights were sold by the Baltimore Bullets to the Rochester Royals. Hannum played for the Rochester Royals from 1952 to 1954.
Milwaukee / St. Louis Hawks (1954–1956)
On December 10, 1954, Hannum's player rights were sold by the Rochester Royals to the Milwaukee Hawks. Hannum played for the Milwaukee / St. Louis Hawks from 1954 to 1956.
On December 17, 1956, Hannum signed as a free agent with the St. Louis Hawks. Hannum played for the St. Louis Hawks from 1956 to 1957.
Coaching career
St. Louis Hawks (1956–1958)
Midway through the 1956–57 season, Hannum was named player-coach of the St. Louis Hawks. He was actually the Hawks' third head coach that year. Red Holzman had been fired midway through the season in favor of Hannum's teammate, Slater Martin. However, Martin didn't want to be a coach and a player, and gave up the reins after only eight games. Hannum led the team to a 15–16 record for the rest of the season. Despite a losing overall record, the West was so weak that year (no team finished with a winning record) that the Hawks actually won the division title. They advanced all the way to the NBA Finals and lost to the Boston Celtics in seven games.
Hannum retired as a player after that season. A year later, led by Bob Pettit and Martin, the Hawks went 41–31 and won another division title before advancing to the Finals to play the Boston Celtics. They upset the Celtics in Boston for Game 1 before the series was events going back to St. Louis. In Game 3, Celtics star Bill Russell severely sprained his ankle as the Hawks prevailed 111–108. Boston evened the series in Game 4, but the Hawks won a narrow Game 5 to force a clinching game back home. Pettit scored 50 points, with 18 of them being among the final 21 scored by the Hawks, who won 110–109. Coincidentally, the only two seasons in Russell's 13-year career in which the Celtics' center did not win an NBA championship were the direct result of losing to a team coached by Hannum. It currently is the only NBA Championship for the Hawks and it was also the last game coached by Hannum, who was not retained by owner Ben Kerner, whose interference irked Hannum. When he wanted a two-year deal, Kerner did not budge from wanting a one-year deal. Kerner replaced Hannun with Andy Phillip for the 1958–59 season (who in turn was replaced by Ed Macauley early in the season).[2]
Hannum returned to the NBA in 1960 with the Syracuse Nationals, advancing to the Eastern Finals in his first season and losing in the first round two years in a row. He then left the team after the 1962–1963 season, the final one played in Syracuse prior to the relocation of the team to Philadelphia, who would be coached by Dolph Schayes.
San Francisco Warriors (1963–1966)
Hannum, circa 1963
Hannum had expressed interest in coaching the San Francisco Warriors when the team had moved to the region from Philadelphia in 1962. Eddie Gottlieb, the operator of the team before selling to Franklin Mieuli (prior to departing fully in 1964), had stated that Hannum was his third choice in mind next to Frank McGuire (who had coached the team the previous season in Philadelphia) and Bob Feerick. McGuire elected to resign rather than move to the West Coast and Feerick went 31–49 in the 1962–63 season before being fired. As such, Hannum was hired to coach the team for the 1963 season.[5] That year, the Warriors, bolstered by rookie Nate Thurmond to go with Wilt Chamberlain, went 48–32 and advanced all the way to the NBA Finals, losing to the Boston Celtics. Hannum was named NBA Coach of the Year after the season ended. The following year was a disaster, as the Warriors won just 17 games while trading Chamberlain to the Philadelphia 76ers at the All-Star break. Despite the arrival of draft pick Rick Barry in 1965, the Warriors went 35–45 and missed the playoffs by one game. Hannum was fired after the season ended.[6]
Philadelphia 76ers (1966–1968)
In 1966, Hannum was named the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers. That team had moved from Syracuse three years earlier. He succeeded Dolph Schayes, who had been named coach after the move from Central New York but was fired despite winning NBA Coach of the Year because of his strained relationship with Chamberlain. Hannum, now with a team that had players who had played under him in Syracuse such as Hal Greer and Chet Walker, were receptive to Hannum when he addressed the team's strengths and weaknesses, with emphasis on changing the offense to rely on scoring in movement by slowing it down that would see the reigning MVP score a career-low 24.1 points per game but also shoot 68.3% on his field goal attempts.[7] During his first season as coach, the 76ers had a record setting season as they started 46–4,[8] en route to a record of 68–13, the best record in league history at the time.[9] After a 129–103 win over the Pistons on March 3, 1967, he joined Red Auerbach as the only coaches to have won 60 games in a season at that period.[10] Hannum led the Sixers towards the 63rd victory, breaking the NBA-record for most wins in a single season, in an OT win over the Boston Celtics.[11] On March 14, 1967, he became the first coach to have won 65 games in a season.[12] Chamberlain would be awarded the MVP for the second straight season. Hannum then coached the Wilt Chamberlain-led Philadelphia 76ers to the NBA championship, ending the eight-year title streak of the Boston Celtics.[13] The 1967 Championship made him the first of only three head coaches in NBA history to win championships with two different teams (the other two are Phil Jackson and Pat Riley). The following year, the 76ers won 62 games for another division title and advanced all the way to the Eastern Division Finals, but the loss of Billy Cunningham due to a broken wrist in the Semifinals victory came to hinder the team, as the 76ers lost to the Celtics in seven games after having won three of the first four games. It was the first time in NBA playoff history that a team had lost a playoff series after being up 3-1. Hannum left the team after the season to coach the Oakland Oaks in the newly created American Basketball Association due to an interest in being closer to his family on the West Coast.
Oakland Oaks (1968–1969)
In 1968, Hannum was named head coach and executive vice president of the Oakland Oaks (owned by singer Pat Boone along with S. Kenneth Davidson and Dennis A. Murphy) of the second-year American Basketball Association, taking the offer over coaching the Warriors because of the offer of ownership stake and a "special relish to competing against Mieuli", who he called a promoter of himself first.[14] The team would have the services of Rick Barry, who sat out a year rather than play it out with the Warriors when he tried to jump for the Oaks (who also offered Barry a stake in the team just like Hannum) the previous year.[15] Tasked with improving the worst team in the ABA the previous season, Hannum coached the Oaks to 60 wins (jumping out to a 25–4 start) even with the loss of Barry to a knee injury that saw him play 35 games. While fans were not particularly plentiful in Oakland, the Oaks had a 16-game winning streak occur at one point during the year. Warren Jabali (the ABA Rookie of the Year that season) delivered the 1969 ABA Championship over the Indiana Pacers with a performance that saw him named Playoffs MVP, which he closed out with a 39-point performance in clinching Game 5.[16] With the win (the first basketball championship by a West Coast team), Hannum became the first of two coaches to win championships in both the NBA and ABA. Hannum won the ABA Coach of the Year honors the same season. Hannum left after the season ended as the Oaks relocated to become the Washington Caps under new management by Earl Foreman.
San Diego Rockets (1969–1971)
Hannum was hired to be the head coach of the San Diego Rockets 26 gamed into the 1969–1970 season to replace Jack McMahon. The third-year franchise won 27 games that year before improving to 40 the following year, but a seven-game winning streak at the end of the season was all for naught as they narrowly finished one game behind San Francisco for second place in the Pacific Division, which would've meant a playoff spot. Less than three weeks after the end of season, Hannum left the team, which soon relocated to Houston, Texas.
Denver Rockets (1971–1974)
Hannum left his position as head coach of the San Diego Rockets of the NBA to become president, general manager and head coach of the ABA's Denver Rockets on April 8, 1971.[17] It was Hannum who instituted changes to the color scheme of the team from orange and black to columbine blue and yellow.[18] In his first season the Rockets lost their opening playoff match to the Texas Chaparrals. On June 13, 1972, Hannum bought control of the Rockets with A.G. "Bud" Fischer and Frank M. Goldberg. On October 26, 1972, Hannum engaged in an unusual strategy. He instructed his players to foul any player of the Virginia Squires that was taking a shot in the fourth quarter. The result was a 155–111 victory that saw Virginia score 74 free throws while Denver had seven players foul out. The records for that quarter were later expunged and the game was declared a forfeit. Hannum said he was conducting an experiment because of “the trend of pressure defense...I wanted to see how far you could go without hurting your team's chances."[19] In the 1972–73 season, Hannum coached the Rockets to the 1973 ABA Playoffs where they lost in the first round of the Western Division playoffs to the Indiana Pacers, 4 games to 1. Hannum returned the Rockets to the 1974 ABA Playoffs where they lost to the San Diego Conquistadors. On April 30, 1974, Hannum was dismissed as president, general manager and head coach of the Rockets (rebranded to Nuggets after the season ended) for Larry Brown, who had played for Denver in the 1971–72 season before being a head coach with Carolina. Hannum never coached again.
Hannum's combined record (NBA and ABA), was 649–564 (.535) with a 61–46 record (.570) in the playoffs on 11 trips in 16 seasons.
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