NBA Finals Game 2 updates

Rudy Tomjanovich barely played on his junior high school basketball team.

“I got in against the teachers,” he said Sunday night, after the two-time NBA championship coach of the Houston Rockets was named the recipient of the 2024 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Basketball Coaches’ Association.

“I had the French teacher isolated,” he continued. “I shook him – and shot an airball. That was my junior high school career.”

But the man who became known as “Rudy T” perservered, becoming an All-American at the University of Michigan in 1970, averaging 30 points and 15 rebounds per game, then embarking on what would become a stellar career over 11 NBA seasons, during which he made five All-Star teams. After his playing career ended, Tomjanovich pivoted to coaching, starting on the ground floor under Hall of Fame coach Bill Fitch, doing videos and scouting for the Rockets.

After nine seasons as an assistant, Tomjanovich was named Houston’s head coach in 1992, beginning what would become a Hall of Fame (2020) head coaching career. During 13 seasons – 12 with the Rockets, before he finished his head coaching career with the Lakers in 2004-05 – Tomjanovich won 527 games. Most famously, his Rockets went back-to-back in 1994 and 1995, beating the Knicks in seven games after falling down 3-2.

The next year, Houston fell behind 3-1 to the Suns in the second round, but came back, with forward Mario Elie hitting the famous “Kiss of Death” 3-pointer to beat Phoenix in Game 7. After Houston swept Orlando in four games to defend its title, Tomjanovich uttered the line for which he will most be remembered. He told a delirious home crowd, “Don’t even underestimate the heart of a champion!”

“I cannot tell you what basketball did for me,” Tomjanovich said before Game 2. “I was from a very poor family (in Detroit). My parents were not educated. My father went to the second grade. My mother went to the sixth grade. I didn’t even know how to sit down at a table and have a meal, because we only had one table, and we only had two chairs.”