Dr. Jack Ramsay (a.k.a. “Dr. Jack”), has, to date, enjoyed a long and esteemed professional basketball career. Throughout this however, the work he has been best known for, was when he coached the Portland Trail Blazers to the 1976-77 NBA Championship. This is the team in which Greg Oden was selected first overall in the 2007 NBA Draft. This shouldn’t have been too surprising, since Oden was named the 2006 Indiana Mr. Basketball.
Ramsay was no longer coaching the team when Greg Oden was selected. But he himself has a pretty impressive basketball history, being the seventh highest-winning coach in NBA’s history, as well as a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Prior to that he was head coach of the Sixers, successfully leading the team to three playoff appearances throughout four seasons. Unfortunately for him though, he made some pretty poor decisions when he traded away top quality players like Wilt Chamberlain and Chet Walker. The team suffered severely as a result. Before joining the Trail Blazers, he was coach for the Buffalo Braves but didn’t do them all that many favors either.
With the Trail Blazers however, he started earning back his high-class basketball coach reputation. The timing couldn’t have been better for him. The team hadn’t done well in the six years since its inception but just when Ramsay arrived, Maurice Lucas joined and the team was starting to really come together until Bill Walton. It was under Ramsay’s tutelage that the Trail Blazers earned their only NBA title to date. Now that’s something to be proud of.