SALT LAKE CITY — During one of our long and wandering lunchtime sessions, the Utah Jazz’s first coach, long retired, asked me what I thought about a certain player.
I said I guessed the team liked his character.
“Character,” Tom Nissalke said, amused. “Give me guys who can play. I’ll teach ‘em character.”
Working hard and having the right attitude can take a player far, but it can’t give him a 44-inch vertical. One trait can be learned and practiced. The other is a gift.
Nissalke had both natural talent and attitude.
The former NBA and ABA Coach of the Year passed away Thursday at age 87. He and wife Nancy, who preceded him in death by 13 years, raised two successful children: daughter Holly and son Tom. The Nissalkes lived in Salt Lake long after he stepped away from coaching.
For someone who was both a financial and professional success, you wouldn’t know it.
Almost every time we met for lunch, he would be sitting at an unassuming corner of the restaurant. Someone would inevitably spot him and come over to say hello.
It’s hard to go incognito when you’ve coached the Jazz, even if it’s been 37 years. But he handled it with such unpretentious ease, it always impressed me. He had the knowledge — having coached 879 professional games — but also an innate approachability. One day, former BYU and Philadelphia Eagles return man Reno Mahe saw us and walked over to introduce himself.
“Oh, I know who you are,” the coach replied. They exchanged pleasantries and phone numbers, one pro to another.
Nissalke was a fascinating radio personality and analyst, working on “Jazz Talk” and other shows in the early days of sports radio. He didn’t have golden pipes, he had golden stories. For instance, the time he broke the finger of the Spurs owner, who had poked his chest at a party. But Nissalke was more than a battle-toughened coach. He called John Lucas, his former player, in Houston annually on the anniversary of the day Lucas kicked his drug habit.
“Tom has reached out for me every (sobriety) day for the last 24 years,” Lucas said in 2010. “He helped save my life.”
Our lunches were never structured. I would just get an email from him that would say, “It’s time.”
That’s all. I knew what he meant.
“When and where?” I would answer.
I knew I was in for an education.
Once we met, we would discuss the toughest backcourt of all-time (Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier), the best player ever (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), who he would pay to watch (Kobe Bryant) and his all-time team (Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar and either Larry Bird or Rick Barry).
Yes, it was biased. He was an assistant coach in Milwaukee when Abdul-Jabbar and Robertson won a championship.
But he wasn’t afraid to call it.
On radio, Nissalke was delightfully honest. Someone would bring up a player and why he wasn’t getting minutes, etc.
“He can’t play,” Nissalke would say.
The coach actually broke ground in local sports radio. He was a true insider who dared offer plain-spoken opinions rather than cliches and platitudes about, yes, character. He criticized Jazz players at times — something the team wasn’t used to. I once asked him, on the record, if he thought teams ever tanked to get better draft picks.
“I think organizations tank,” he said. “I don’t think players do. Players know that they’re being auditioned every time they play. If they’re on a bad team, they know they’re not going to be back the next year.”
I also asked if Utah could ever attract a top free agent.
He said yes — for a price.
“Would most top players rather not come here? Probably,” he said.
We had our last lunch a couple of weeks ago, after not connecting for about a year. Same coach. It was 90 minutes of easy listening. As I rose to leave, someone already was beelining to his table.
I left knowing the fan was in luck. The truth was about to happen.