From defense to contract negotiations, Wes Unseld’s greatness was understated (2024)

David DuPree noticed Wes Unseld even more relaxed than usual.

DuPree, who covered Unseld’s teams for the Washington Post in the 1970s and 1980s, had gotten to know the Hall of Famer well by this point. He and Unseld had an ongoing agreement about the blurry lines of what was or wasn’t on the record. The writer showed he was trustworthy, so what he could often report would be up to his discretion. And on this occasion inside the locker room at the Capital Centre more than 40 years ago, Unseld was truly getting comfortable — sitting shirtless while smoking a cigarette and sipping a beer.

His chest was beaten up, red and bruised around his ribs. This was how the burly center tended to appear after games. It wasn’t a patented Unseld performance if his elbows weren’t as on target as his put-backs.

DuPree noticed the scene, but before he could say anything, Unseld quipped his way.

“You can write that I smoked. And you can write that I drank,” Unseld said. “But you better not write one word about how I’m not indestructible.”

DuPree never wrote any of it.

This is one of the many ways those who were close to Unseld, who died Tuesday at 74 years old, will remember him, marked with physical reminders of his artfulness all for the sake of teamwork. “Wes was really special,” DuPree said. He would commit to just about any gritty, unselfish act on the court he could, and he never wanted anyone to know about it.

As DuPree so succinctly puts it, “Wes didn’t give a crap about accolades or notoriety.”

Unseld is a Hall of Famer. A champion. A Bullets and Wizards legend, who spent his entire career from 1968-81 with the franchise. He’s one of two players in NBA history, along with Wilt Chamberlain, to win MVP as a rookie. After knee injuries began to plague him, he adjusted his style to become more physical, vocal and heady as his career progressed. He was a central figure in changing the league forever, serving as a player rep to the union during the famous Robertson vs. National Basketball Association lawsuit that ended with the league granting players free agency for the first time in 1976. He was the VP of the players’ association, as well.

He didn’t boast. He and his wife, Connie, opened a charter school in Baltimore, Unselds’ School, while he was still playing. Many of his at-the-time teammates didn’t even know about the school until after it opened.

“He wasn’t just out there bragging about what he was doing. He wasn’t doing it for that reason,” said Mitch Kupchak, who played for the Bullets from 1976-81. “A very humble and proud man. Private. That’s what you’re dealing with, with Wes.”

The low-maintenance way Unseld played wasn’t just his basketball personality. It was how he lived.

“Other than his knees,” Kupchak said, “Wes did not have a flaw.”

He was an undersized center who was technically listed at 6-foot-7 but in actuality was much smaller than that. He used to say he was actually 6-4 and five-eighths, since that’s the height he measured at before the 1968 draft. The Bullets, who needed a big man to go up against giants like Walt Bellamy and Wilt Chamberlain, told him there was no way they could select a center who wasn’t at least 6-7. So, at that moment, he became 2 ⅜ inches taller without growing a centimeter.

In a time that stalky centers ruled the NBA terrain, he defended the league’s largest athletes as well as anyone. He’d bump with the aforementioned, as well as Willis Reed, Dave Cowens and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“He loved contact,” said Bobby Dandridge, teammates with Unseld from 1977-81. “He loved the physical part of the game. … He was a type of guy that you admired his accomplishments because he was probably the shortest (of the great centers). He may not have been totally 6-foot-7.”

His game had the simultaneous grace and immovability of a piano. He was one of the greatest-passing big men ever. While battling on the boards, he would subtly knee opposing big men in the calf throughout games. They might have wondered why they couldn’t move quite as well in fourth quarters. Well, Unseld had an idea.

“He was just a fierce competitor and didn’t back down from anybody,” said Dandridge, also a longtime teammate of Abdul-Jabbar’s with the Bucks. “Wasn’t afraid to put himself out there. … Kareem was basically unstoppable, but Wes would beat him as much as he could. I remember Kareem saying something about, he may have had 40 (points), but he had all kinds of bruises on his hip and on his midsection, where Wes would hip check him or hit him with an elbow or something, just to try to get him off balance.”

He’d go beyond just studying other teams’ offenses or opposing players’ tendencies, instead, getting far more granular. If the Knicks were coming to town, for example, he wouldn’t just examine film on Walt Frazier. Instead, he’d inspect how, say, Phil Chenier guarded Frazier, then figure out how he could help from there. He was famous for noticing when specific teammates would struggle against certain players or even certain plays, then not get caught off guard when a mistake came, because he was already anticipating it.

“He was just a guy that you enjoyed playing with. You enjoyed being his teammate,” said Chenier, a teammate of Unseld’s for 10 years. “He didn’t get a lot of shots. Never complained about that. He would be the one setting the picks. He’d be the one in the high post that would make passes.”

He’d go back and forth with Gus Johnson, his initial front-court mate after first entering the league, during practices or games. Unseld wasn’t much of a trash talker, but he’d save wisecracks for teammates.

His and Johnson’s friendly but frisky tug-of-war began as soon as the Hall of Famer entered the league in 1968. Johnson was a flamboyant forward, who was already one of the world’s greatest glass gluttons. Unseld aspired to be better. “They mixed together like two guys who had known each other for years,” said Earl Monroe, who played with Unseld from 1968-71. The two would challenge each other over who could lift more in the weight room. They would bet each game on who could grab more rebounds. By the end of the year, the rookie — who was the MVP not long later — had snagged almost seven boards a night more than Johnson.

The duo, meanwhile, was unquestionably one of the league’s top frontcourts, and the Bullets jumped from a dreary 36 wins the previous season to 57 the next.

“That kind of set the pace for our team in terms of how we reacted,” Monroe said. “We were in last place the year before, and in this particular year, (Unseld) came in and we’re battling each other, challenging each other from the outset, and we go from last place to first place.”

Dandridge learned about Unseld’s competitive streak on Day 1 with the Bullets. He was already an eight-year vet by the time he arrived in Washington in 1977, coming over from Milwaukee, where he’d become a top scorer and clever contributor on a winning squad. The acquisition was supposed to put the Bullets over the top. Washington had made the playoffs during every season of Unseld’s nine-year career — including two trips to the NBA Finals, one a loss to Dandridge’s Bucks in 1971 and another, a defeat to the Warriors in 1975 — but it had never won a title.

The talk was Dandridge could be the one to get them there. But during the first practice of the year, he rolled an ankle. Nothing serious, but he’d have to miss a couple of days.

In the moment, Unseld approached his newest teammate. “Oh!” he yelped. “The missing link is hurt already.”

He was doing Bullets satire. How could a man who conceals his own bruises from both the public and his opponents allow anyone else to show theirs?

“He was a great teammate,” Dandridge said. “A great leader who played with injuries that other people would have sat out with. … He carried that as a badge of courage.”

The Bullets did win the title that season, defeating the Sonics in seven games in the spring, still to this day the only championship in franchise history.

“He had the determination,” Chenier said. “He said, ‘I’d do anything short of murder to win this Game 7.’ … Somebody that has meant that much to the team, to the cities of Baltimore and Washington and the organization and somebody that was such a good teammate all these times, all these years, you couldn’t help but be so happy for him when we won that title. I will never forget the picture of (owner) Abe (Pollin) coming in right at the end there and the two of them hugging as if we finally achieved (the championship).”

Unseld and Pollin were especially close. Unseld coached the Bullets from 1987-94. He ran the front office from most of 1996 through 2003. When he was a player, he didn’t use an agent to negotiate his contracts, instead speaking with Pollin directly. Pollin would tell him to write down what he thought he was worth. The team owner would simultaneously scribble what he believed Unseld deserved. Pollin would say that Unseld’s number always came in lower than his own. He’d pay his star the higher salary, anyway.

Chenier calls Unseld “the protecting kind of teammate.” If the 6-3 guard needed an enforcer, he knew his 250-pound center was there. Chenier wasn’t the only one. Kevin Porter, a feisty, 6-foot point guard, used to get into fracases with big men all the time. Well, Unseld had to get him out of them.

“He had a way about him where you just felt comfortable and confident when you were around him,” Chenier said. “He was a great, great teammate to have along with being a great player.”

Unseld would, however, make sure to give his teammates whatever grief they would have otherwise received from hulking opponents. Amidst cackles, Dandridge calls his close friend a “playful bully.”

He used to hip-check Chenier out of the way if the guard got slightly in front of him while stepping onto the team bus. There was no story behind it. He just thought it was fun. Sometimes, when the team would board the bus or a plane, he’d stick his leg into the aisle as if he were stretching, knowing he was blocking someone. He was, after all, quite possibly the most immovable man in a league of immovable people.

“He liked the physical contact,” Chenier laughed. “He liked it. … Of course, somebody like me, it didn’t take much for him to push me out the way. He’d get a big chuckle out of that.”

He’d show it off to inquirers, too. In his beautiful story from Tuesday, David Aldridge told the tale of the time he tried to back down Unseld in the post and fared about as well as one would expect.

Another time, the team was dealing with a bunch of injuries and wasn’t able to scrounge up enough players for a scrimmage. Coach Dick Motta went an unconventional route and asked DuPree — yes, the Washington Post beat writer — if he could join the practice so they could have 10 guys. DuPree was a very good athlete, having played defensive back at the University of Washington. He was on the opposite team of Unseld, but every time the big man would come by to set a pick on him, he would scream it out to let the helpless defender know. Once the game was done, DuPree asked Unseld why he was doing that.

“I want you to do me a favor,” Unseld responded.

He lined himself up on the court.

“I’m gonna stand here,” he continued. “I want you to run into me and just knock me down.”

DuPree sprinted into Unseld as hard as he could — and fared about as well as one could expect. He had his answer.

“That’s why I was telling you I was screening,” Unseld said.

“I don’t want to give the impression that he was trying to hurt somebody, but he liked the physical contact,” Chenier said. “So, when he would get out there and set a pick on Austin Carr or set a pick on Brian Winters, it kind of gave him a thrill. He kinda liked that.”

Long after his playing career was done, Unseld was going in for a knee replacement. He’d fought through injuries and pains for much of his basketball-playing life, but the knees were what did him in most. He and Dandridge were as close as ever at this point. The two became even better friends once they were done playing.

“We talked about things other than just basketball,” Dandridge said. “That’s when I found out what a complete person he was.”

He learned about the school Unseld was working on with Connie. After Unseld retired, he served as a multipurpose scholastic helper, sometimes driving the bus, in other moments filling in on random maintenance jobs inside the building. He played the same role for Unselds’ School as he did for the Bullets; he filled in whatever dirty work was required. But this one time before the surgery, hoops forced its way into a conversation with Dandridge.

“The Bullets sure owe you a lot for the way you played and playing with all those injuries,” Dandridge remembers telling him.

Unseld chuckled.

“Playing through injuries,” he said dryly, “wasn’t all it was built up to be.”

Dandridge knows he was kidding. Unseld remains the franchise leader in games played, minutes played, rebounds and various advanced statistics. He’s the driver behind the organization’s lone championship.

“That was the balance, the type of balanced individual Wes was. He could laugh,” Dandridge said. “But he would probably do it again. I believe he would play. He loved the game that much.”

(Photo: Focus on Sport via Getty Images)