Basketball Remains a Constant for Jack Ramsay - NYTimes.com
BOSTON — In a dream last week, Jack Ramsay said, his wife returned to him.
Jean Ramsay, who died in January, followed her husband to all of his coaching stops during their 60-year marriage, from St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia to the Portland Trail Blazers. She read novels during games to occupy her time. But in this dream, the game mattered to her.
“I dreamed I was driving to the basket and Jean was keeping score, which was as far as possible from what she would do,” he said over lunch Monday. “As I was leaving the floor, someone asks, ‘How many did you score, Jack?’ and she said, ‘You had 41.’ ”
A small smile creased Ramsay’s face.
The dream united two loves: the girl he met at a dance at St. Joe’s who died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease and the sport that still fascinates him at 85.
He is old enough to joke that he was the one to suggest cutting out the bottom of James Naismith’s peach basket. Ramsay is ESPN Radio’s lead N.B.A. analyst, working regular-season and playoff games with Jim Durham.
“It enables me to stay close to the players and coaches,” Ramsay said.
Before Game 4 of the Boston-Orlando Eastern Conference finals Monday, he waited outside the Celtics’ locker room at TD Garden to interview guard Ray Allen in the corridor. Allen is an easy subject: candid, descriptive and analytical. That done, Ramsay strode into Coach Doc Rivers’s office.
Ramsay sat on the edge of his seat — an octogenarian version of the way he knelt on the sideline as a coach — and thrust his ESPN Radio microphone at Rivers.
Each question — about team chemistry, motivation and team defense — made a listener wonder if Ramsay, who coached Portland to the N.B.A. title in 1977, already knew the answers.
“I wanted to hear them,” he said. “I was thinking of our listeners, not me.”
As he walked back into the corridor, Ramsay saw Celtics forward Glen Davis.
“Same as Game 3 for you,” he said to Davis, who scored 17 in the Celtics’ rout.
“Yes, sir,” Davis said quietly.
Ramsay is lean and muscular — his biceps bulge from a short-sleeve shirt — the result of swimming a mile a day in the ocean near his home in Naples, Fla., and a regimen of crunches, push-ups, jogging and stretches that he takes from hotel to hotel.
“Usually, 100 crunches and 100 push-ups,” said Ramsay, a triathlete until he was 70 and a jump-roper. His fixation on fitness began in the Navy when he was part of an underwater demolition team that trained for the planned invasion of Japan in 1945.
“It’s like you had training camp but the season was canceled,” he said of the lost wartime opportunity. But, he said, the training “toughened you, made you value fitness.”
The body that Ramsay has preserved so well has endured a lengthy fight against melanoma. The cancer that began in 2004 on his left foot eventually spread to his lungs and brain but is now in remission, his last chemotherapy two and a half months ago.
“I’m very fortunate to have gotten past the cancer problem,” he said over a lobster roll. “Well, I shouldn’t say that. But I was not expected to live.”
Bill Walton, the center on the Portland championship team, said: “Jean’s death was much tougher on him than the cancer. Guys like Jack are so tough they would do anything to take away someone else’s pain. I don’t think I’ve ever made a rougher call than when I called Jack after Jean died. What do you tell an 85-year-old man whose college sweetheart is no more? She was always there, the gentle one, the quiet one.”
Ramsay said he hoped to create a grant program at St. Joseph’s to help women who want to get a degree while raising children. Jean Ramsay raised five children during her husband’s peripatetic career, which included seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers, the Buffalo Braves and the Indiana Pacers.
BOSTON — In a dream last week, Jack Ramsay said, his wife returned to him.
Jean Ramsay, who died in January, followed her husband to all of his coaching stops during their 60-year marriage, from St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia to the Portland Trail Blazers. She read novels during games to occupy her time. But in this dream, the game mattered to her.
“I dreamed I was driving to the basket and Jean was keeping score, which was as far as possible from what she would do,” he said over lunch Monday. “As I was leaving the floor, someone asks, ‘How many did you score, Jack?’ and she said, ‘You had 41.’ ”
A small smile creased Ramsay’s face.
The dream united two loves: the girl he met at a dance at St. Joe’s who died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease and the sport that still fascinates him at 85.
He is old enough to joke that he was the one to suggest cutting out the bottom of James Naismith’s peach basket. Ramsay is ESPN Radio’s lead N.B.A. analyst, working regular-season and playoff games with Jim Durham.
“It enables me to stay close to the players and coaches,” Ramsay said.
Before Game 4 of the Boston-Orlando Eastern Conference finals Monday, he waited outside the Celtics’ locker room at TD Garden to interview guard Ray Allen in the corridor. Allen is an easy subject: candid, descriptive and analytical. That done, Ramsay strode into Coach Doc Rivers’s office.
Ramsay sat on the edge of his seat — an octogenarian version of the way he knelt on the sideline as a coach — and thrust his ESPN Radio microphone at Rivers.
Each question — about team chemistry, motivation and team defense — made a listener wonder if Ramsay, who coached Portland to the N.B.A. title in 1977, already knew the answers.
“I wanted to hear them,” he said. “I was thinking of our listeners, not me.”
As he walked back into the corridor, Ramsay saw Celtics forward Glen Davis.
“Same as Game 3 for you,” he said to Davis, who scored 17 in the Celtics’ rout.
“Yes, sir,” Davis said quietly.
Ramsay is lean and muscular — his biceps bulge from a short-sleeve shirt — the result of swimming a mile a day in the ocean near his home in Naples, Fla., and a regimen of crunches, push-ups, jogging and stretches that he takes from hotel to hotel.
“Usually, 100 crunches and 100 push-ups,” said Ramsay, a triathlete until he was 70 and a jump-roper. His fixation on fitness began in the Navy when he was part of an underwater demolition team that trained for the planned invasion of Japan in 1945.
“It’s like you had training camp but the season was canceled,” he said of the lost wartime opportunity. But, he said, the training “toughened you, made you value fitness.”
The body that Ramsay has preserved so well has endured a lengthy fight against melanoma. The cancer that began in 2004 on his left foot eventually spread to his lungs and brain but is now in remission, his last chemotherapy two and a half months ago.
“I’m very fortunate to have gotten past the cancer problem,” he said over a lobster roll. “Well, I shouldn’t say that. But I was not expected to live.”
Bill Walton, the center on the Portland championship team, said: “Jean’s death was much tougher on him than the cancer. Guys like Jack are so tough they would do anything to take away someone else’s pain. I don’t think I’ve ever made a rougher call than when I called Jack after Jean died. What do you tell an 85-year-old man whose college sweetheart is no more? She was always there, the gentle one, the quiet one.”
Ramsay said he hoped to create a grant program at St. Joseph’s to help women who want to get a degree while raising children. Jean Ramsay raised five children during her husband’s peripatetic career, which included seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers, the Buffalo Braves and the Indiana Pacers.
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