Bulls On Tap Exclusive: Conversation with Clifford Ray – Part 1: Basketball Beginnings

Add to the mix a few of the early great Bulls NBA All-Stars such as Bob Love, and Norm Van Lier, as well as additional Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinees Jerry Sloan and Chet Walker all of whom shared the floor in a Bulls uniform with Clifford Ray from 1971 to 1974.

Ray spoke with Bulls On Tap to share his basketball story which is a deep legacy of winning basketball at the highest levels, influencing multiple generations of NBA big men as a mentor and coach, his famous Dolphin Rescue story captured in the book Big Clifford Ray Saves the Day, and a life full of wisdom.

The following presents a series of vignettes from Ray’s conversation with Bulls On Tap, edited for conciseness and clarity to preserve an important part of Chicago Bulls history—the Bulls’ 40th overall selection in the 1971 NBA draft, Clifford Ray.

Early Basketball Beginnings and Influences

Clifford:

"When I was growing up [in South Carolina], we did not have television number one. So all we ever heard was whoever the nearest team that you could hear on radio. So we always listened to the Cincinnati Royals, yeah, it was Cincinnati Royals. That's when Oscar [Robertson] played, you know, and Robertson and Jerry Lucas were on that roster.

"Then Bob Cousy came down there and coached [the Cincinnati Royals]. So my influence as a player was I wanted to be a big man. And so because I was lanky and tall, I paid attention to the one person. One or two people that I got to see all the time, which was probably the [Boston] Celtics, Bill Russell. And then my [NBA] rookie year, I kind of was befriended by Chet Walker. And Chet Walker's best friend was Wilt Chamberlain.

"So Wilt became someone that I was acquainted with. And then, you know, I also watched Nate Thurmond, though I watched these guys a lot, you know, I didn't emulate them because I didn't never think I was going to be that good anyway.

"So I did not look at basketball as a means, I looked at just what my parents pushed us toward, which was education. And so I played basketball, but I wasn't allowed to play basketball from the jump. I was allowed to play basketball once my grades were at a point where they felt that I was a student versus an athlete. And so I really wound up, not playing on an organized team until I was, you know, sophomore, junior [in high school].

"The reason that I even got known [as a basketball player] was the fact that someone got hurt and I was the next the next alternate from South Carolina that got to play in the South Carolina all-star game for [high school] basketball. So I got to go down to Columbia [South Carolina] and where they had those games. And I thought the all-star game was mostly a showcase for now what they call the Historical Black Colleges. But then it was all, you know, those black colleges, the only colleges you really was going to in those days [as a basketball player].

"There were [black basketball] players that had gone to white schools as an athlete, probably back in the day, I don't know. But I just know in my era, the ACC [Atlantic Coastal Conference], which was where I was from, I was from [South] Carolina. So you got Georgia Tech, South Carolina, you got North Carolina, you got Duke, you got all those eight ACC schools.

"Well, they weren't recruiting. They wanted you to go to a junior college. And then if you did well at junior college, then they already had you signed. Nobody knew that because they would say, well, if you go to this college, you will move up. It's like going to a farm. It was just like really. They treated junior college like they do the [NBA] G League now.

"It was an entry-level for you to go to a Division-1 white college. The things that they were trying to make sure that you were positive, you know, that they felt like they needed to control all of that. And so that's what we went through, that era where everything was more or less controlled as to whether you were going to have an opportunity to go play at a Division-1 school. 

"And so the fact that I just didn't think that that was right. So I wasn't going. I said, no, I'm not going to go [to a junior college]. I'm either going to go to an all-black school or I'm going to go to a Division-1 school."

Clifford Ray would go on to play three seasons of NCAA men’s basketball for the Oklahoma Sooners from 1968 to 1971.