"Let me tell you something about Rupp. All I ever hear from people is that he was a racist. You know what? He did hate black guys - who couldn't play! He also hated white guys who couldn't play, blue guys who couldn't play, and green guys who couldn't play. He hated Jews who couldn't play, Catholics who couldn't play, and Muslims who couldn't play. That was it. All these people who never met the guy said he was a racist. I knew the guy. I traveled with him, I spent time with him. I never saw any sign from him or heard anything from him that indicated to me that he was a racist or a bigot in any way.
"Now cheap, that was another story. He was the single cheapest person I've ever met in my life."
Red became friends with Adolph Rupp, the legendary coach at Kentucky, while scouting some of his players. It wasn't often that he got to go watch college teams, but whenever Kentucky came to New York to play in Madison Square Garden, Red would go to see them if he schedule allowed. In those days, Rupp's program was one of the most dominant programs in the game, if not the dominant program. Kentucky won the national championship in 1948, 1949, and 1951. Then in 1952-53 the NCAA shut it down as part of its investigation into the point shaving scandals of the early 1950's that infected - and destroyed - a number of prominent programs, most notably the one at CCNY, the school Red couldn't get into as a high school senior.
It was the shut down of the Kentucky program in 1952-53 that led to Red getting the draft rules changed so he could pick Frank Ramsey and Cliff Hagan. Those were the days when Red often socialized with Rupp, sometimes in New York when he went to see his team play and occasionally in Kentucky during the off season.
"Once, I'm in New York and I go to lunch with Rupp. We go to the old Gayety Deli, which was a few blocks from the old Garden. I think we each had a couple of hot dogs. The bill came to something like three bucks. I paid it and then left a fifty cent tip. That was pretty much standard in those days.
"Rupp looks at me and says, 'Fifty cents! That's way too much.' Before I could argue with him, he picks up one of the quarters - and puts it in his pocket. Never said a word. I was so stunned I let it go. I kept thinking he was joking and was going to give it back to me. He never got around to it."
Rupp and Red, along with Bob Cousy, actually traveled overseas together in 1955 to do a series of clinics in Germany. "One of the guys we used in the clinics was an air force guy named Sidney Cohen," Red said. "He was a good player. Without saying anything to me, Rupp recruited him - convinced him to go to Kentucky. Now, if he were anti-Semitic, why would he recruit Sidney Cohen?"
One of the other air force officers the two coaches used in the clinics was a lieutenant named Dean Smith. "I think Rupp tried to recruit him too," Red said. "Then he found out he had already graduated from Kansas." Forty one years later, Smith would break Rupp's record for college coaching victories.
Smith ended up starting his coaching career at the brand new United States Air Force Academy as an assistant coach. He was also the golf coach his first year there. "I knew I was in trouble," he joked later, "when I realized the first day of practice that I was the best player there."
The Air Force Academy golf team was 1-4, the worst record any Dean Smith coached team would ever record.
Smith, who is now seventy three and has a memory comparable to Red's Still remembers those clinics vividly. "Red used Sid [Cohen] and me as the main demonstrators at the clinics, along with Cousy, of course," he said. "The thing I was struck by was his relationship with Cousy. There was such a clear camaraderie, a mutual respect, but there was no question about who was in charge. I always remembered that fact later when I became a coach that there was a way to have a friendship with your players while still maintaining their respect. I saw that with Red and Cousy.
On that same trip, Red, Cousy, and Rupp went out to eat and sightsee on a regular basis. "Everywhere we'd go, when it came time to pay Rupp would pull out a one hundred dollar bill," Red said. "He'd say, 'Gee, I guess they can't make change.' Finally, we were going into Les Folies Bergere and I said,'Adolph, you're breaking that one hundred dollar bill or we're not going in there.' He'd probably been carrying the thing around since 1956."