Of halls of fame in general and Ohio State's Joe Roberts in particular | Michael Arace
This story is something about Joe Roberts, a decorated basketball player who went from East High to the NBA via Ohio State, and is the only starter from Ohio State’s 1960 NCAA national championship team not in the school’s athletic hall of fame.
But the story starts with Tom Beck, who died May 8 at age 89, and who received tribute in this space. Beck was a teacher and coach in the Columbus City Schools system. He got the Whetstone High football program up and running after the school opened in 1961 and, as we noted, he could start a track program anywhere.
On Veteran’s Day, my thoughts were with Beck – who was born the same year as my late father, a fellow Korean War veteran. You know the type: service to one’s country is a duty and there’s no need to talk about it.
Beck’s athletes knew him as an always-positive mentor and motivator. Beck’s colleagues were aware that the man put up numbers. And he did it the "right way."
Beck won more than 200 dual- and tri-meets at Whetstone and Briggs. He had a state runner-up team at Briggs. He coached multiple individual state champions and was tapped for various regional and national invitationals.
Upon Beck's passing, former New Albany coach Roy Alt was prompted to write a letter to The Dispatch sports editor. Alt is still hoping the Ohio Association of Track and Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame will yet enshrine Beck, who has twice been nominated.
“In Korea on a night mine-sweeping soirée, Tom's squad was lit up by mortars," Alt wrote. "Two Marines were killed, several badly injured, and Tom wore a band of shrapnel around his neck for a lifetime. That alone was enough to punch his ticket.”
Recently, there was in this space a piece about Chuck Ealey – who in the 1960s and ‘70s never lost a game in high school (Portsmouth Notre Dame) or college (Toledo). I wrote about about Ealey’s too-long-delayed enshrinement in the College Football Hall of Fame, and ultimate justice.
One of Ealey’s schoolboy coaches was Dr. Chet Corbitt – who, not incidentally, was a contemporary of Joe Roberts at Ohio State. Corbitt has his missions. One of them was recognition for Ealey. Another is recognition for Roberts.
Roberts turned 86 on May 18, the day before Tom Beck’s wake.
Roberts was, with perpetually underrated Dick Furry, the co-captain of the 1960 Buckeyes, who went 25-3 and beat Cal by 20 points in the NCAA final. Roberts was a cerebral, versatile, athletic and physical power forward. He had 19 points and nine rebounds in the regional final and 10 points and five boards in the championship game.
Roberts averaged 8.6 points and 8.6 rebounds over three years. While he, like the rest of coach Fred Taylor’s charges, wore a tie to class and graduated with honors, you did not want to bring that weak stuff inside. Roberts, 6 feet 6 and 235 pounds, would not have it.
The Super Sophs of 1959-60 – Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek (RIP), Mel Nowell, Bobby Knight and Gary Gearhart – made it to three consecutive NCAA championship games. They won the title as sophomores, the first year they were eligible. They lost to Cincinnati (with no Oscar!) in the 1961 and ‘62 finals.
It's often speculated why Lucas, who dominated his era, didn’t add another one or two titles to his brilliant college career. Injuries were a factor. Yet a bigger factor may be this: As authors Lee Caryer and Bob Hunter have pointed out, graduations in 1960 and '61 sapped critical talent from those teams.
After the championship year of 1960, the Buckeyes were without their captains – Furry, a ferocious rebounder who subjugated himself to a sixth-man role, and Roberts, whose brains and sinew bound together the starting lineup. (And after 1961, they were without Larry Siegfried, RIP, an ice-cold scorer who went on to win five NBA titles with the Celtics.) Irreplaceable.
Like the four other starters in the championship year of 1960, Roberts was drafted into the pro ranks. He played four years in NBA, a year in the ABA and was a player-coach in the semi-professional leagues (including for the Columbus Comets of the old Eastern League).
And this is cool:
The 1975 NBA Finals was the first to feature two Black coaches, Al Attles of the Golden State Warriors and K.C. Jones of the Washington Bullets, the prohibitive favorite. Attles got ejected early in Game 4 for charging the court to defend his star (Rick Barry) – and Attles’ top assistant, a Black kid from the East Side by the name of Joe Roberts, was suddenly tasked with completing what is remains as the biggest upset sweep in NBA history. Which Roberts did.
The Warriors overcame an eight-point deficit in the fourth quarter and won the first major trophy for the Bay Area. It was 40 years before the Warriors won another ring.
Ohio State has yet to win another basketball title.