The following is an addendum to Birthday Tributes to Peter Vecsey, which was published on July 1, 2023. It was edited slightly for clarity and brevity.

By Del Harris

I want to begin by saying I first met Peter almost 50 years ago when he brought a group of good players from New York City’s Rucker Park, including Tiny Archibald, to the Dominican Republic to play against the DR national team to help prepare them for the Central American Championships. I had contacts in the DR and they asked if Tom Nissalke and I could bring some Rockets during this off-season time to play as well. They paid money in DR pesos, but that is another story. It was a good thing to do for everyone and DR won the championship. That was all good.

The Rockets were in receivership when Tom asked me to come there with him from the (ABA’s) Utah Stars. We had a great first year because we traded two future first-round picks (1977, ’78) for Moses Malone at the start of the season. He had been with us in the short time we were at the Stars. Getting what would become an all-time great was not the only boost — we drafted John Lucas in our first round, giving us a great feeder for the big guy and we had very good players who were excellent shooters all around with them. We lost in the 1977 Eastern Conference finals in six to Philadelphia with Dr. J (Julius Erving), George McGinnis, Bobby Jones, Doug Collins and others. Tom was named the 1977 NBA Coach of the Year.

Two years later a new owner came in, the third after just three seasons. At the same time the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah and Tom got the opportunity to go back to Utah where he basically spent the rest of his life (Nissalke passed away in August 2019). The Rockets players asked the new owner to keep me as coach, which he did, but only on a one-year contract for $70,000.

There were a lot of negatives floated about this change, one being that I had undermined Tom and took the job for $35,000. Neither was true. Tom had gotten himself a better deal from a team that wanted him for the good of the Utah franchise, where Tom was popular.

‘I started off on the wrong path with Peter’

As a result I had taken a defensive stance against writers and thus had a most interesting time getting started, but that is not the story here. When I began as the head coach of the Rockets I have to say that I started off on the wrong path with Peter initially in 1979.

That was the same year that Magic (Johnson), (Larry) Bird, (Sidney) Moncrief) and a strong class entered the league. My first game was in Boston Garden in Bird’s opener. There was limited NBA on TV at that time, no sports talk shows on TV or national radio or social media. As a result, the writers were the only arbiters between the coach/players and the public. All but the social media bloomed mostly after 1984 with David Stern as commissioner.

On the other hand, there were a lot of good sports writers in each sport and they competed as wordsmiths to present the game as colorfully as they could. They wrote featured sketches of the players and coaches. Various sports TV and radio networks gradually took over that role to the public.

As a result, only the truly excellent writers survived. Each major league city tended to have one and most of those received the Curt Gowdy Award (the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s print media award), or that for baseball, football, or golf, etc.

Peter was definitely a survivor and arguably the most colorful of all, but he was even more than that. This is what I will refer to here, finally.

To the point … after being in the league from 1975-2010, I gradually came to trust Peter as well through many ups and downs with the Rockets, Bucks, Lakers, Mavs, Bulls and even a couple months with the Nets. Again, Nellie (Don Nelson) and Jerry West helped me learn how to accept Peter as one to respect because he knew “the NBA life, the players, the history” and could write about it in a fair and realistic way, if a person leveled with him.

Peter understood that nothing and nobody could be perfect, and even the least of us can have many redeeming factors. This was shown over and over again ultimately when a player or coach fell on hard times, but most emphatically when one would pass on. His synopses that he wrote of the life of a player or coach are eulogies for the ages.

Del Harris

I always marveled about how much he knew of the early lives, the families, the trials and little-known contributions that each man he wrote about had gone through or given. A reader would have to say, “wow, I had never heard about that!” I am reminded of the Irish line, “Johnny … we hardly knew ye.”

Vecsey: One of a Kind

What set Peter apart?

Unlike many writers, he had played the game and had imbedded himself in the inner-city culture of basketball. He participated as a player at Rucker Park, for example, and then even after he quit playing, he frequented the Park and the school yard and high school games while working as a writer.

In the process, he got to know how to relate to the new pro basketball player; that is, the ones who would be welcomed finally to the pro games that became the ABA and NBA who would garner national and ultimately worldwide recognition This is something that was denied the original inner-city game player that formed the base for what gradually became the modern NBA game.

Due to social pressures, the original professional game was limited to white players, or to blacks who formed traveling teams that became formed into what were classed as Negro Leagues. No need to defend that statement, as anyone who is a student of the game knows how long it took for black players to be able to play not only in the NBA but in the colleges and universities certainly in the South.

Even in the North the number of blacks a team could have on the floor at a time was limited by unwritten rules that were understood in various conferences. So, when the gates were open for the upcoming black players, Peter had formed relationships with so many of these city players, black and white, that it allowed him access to their feelings and concerns. At least this is my take on it.

He held the trust of so many, which was a good thing; but, at times this caused coaches to be leery of Peter because he had better access to them than the coaches did. Of course, by nature of the work, the coaches are at a bit of a disadvantage because a certain distance is inherent in the roles between the coach and the 12 players. Nonetheless, I don’t know of any who were separate from the team who were able to connect to so many players and their families as Peter, especially a national writer.

Parting thoughts

In closing, I say the same about the now 80-year-old, as I welcome him to the Octogenarian Club. I had no idea for the first several years how sensitive this crazy man actually is. Certainly not when I was so mad at him when I was the coach of the Rockets that I wanted to sue him (seriously, I was told I couldn’t).

But this is how this family/ horse/dog-lover dude who understood the city but loved the country, was able to connect to athletes in such a meaningful way. If I needed any reminding, it was so obvious at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the ABA in 2019, when I saw how many were so glad to see him — and vice-versa.

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Editor’s notes: The author is a former head coach with the NBA’s Houston Rockets (1979-83), Milwaukee Bucks (1987-91) and Los Angeles Lakers (1994-99) and a longtime NBA assistant (with the Rockets, Bucks, Dallas Mavericks, Chicago Bulls and New Jersey Nets. Del Harris currently serves as vice president for the NBA G League’s Texas Legends. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022 for a lifetime of distinguished involvement in the game.