
(Budd Bailey and Greg D. Tranter have written a book called "Buffalo Braves From A to Z," published by St. Johann Press. Early in the writing process, they wrote good-sized biographies of all 71 men who played a regular-season game for the Braves during their time in Buffalo from 1970 to 1978. Publishers weren't so enthusiastic about all of that material, so most (59) of the biographies were shortened to about 500 words. However, the authors hated to waste all of that material ... so they are presenting it here. It will appear three times a week. A bibliography is available upon request.)
Anyone who plays even one game in the National Basketball Association has to be a very good player. That’s certainly true for Bernie Harris, who had an excellent career in college. Yes, he only scored five points in the NBA – but that’s five more than most of us recorded. Besides, Bernie had a long and happy hoops career in a place not associated with basketball.
C. Bernard Harris was born on November 26, 1950, in Roanoke, Virginia. Bernie was an only child, and his father died when his son was at the age of 13. He stayed in that part of the state throughout his childhood, starting his education at an all-black school. He eventually enrolled in the integrated Northside High School in Roanoke. “I remember the first day, when you know... I think it was in 1965 or ‘66, they started to integrate schools, which meant that I was previously going to an all-black school,” Harris recalled. “We had to change and be bussed to this all white school. So...I can remember, like the first day, or the day before school started, I was crying like a baby, because I didn’t wanna go, I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know what I would be facing.”
Baseball was Harris’ first love, but as he kept growing, basketball became a better option. Information about Harris’ high school career is difficult to find. As a junior, a Danville, Va., newspaper referred to him as Bernard “Super-nard” Harris, who was one of the region’s top scorers – finishing the season at 25.3 points per game. (Bernie kept the nickname through college.) He had a 52-point game along the way. Harris came close to matching those numbers as a senior. “The first year I didn't like it so much, and I don’t know what happened but the second year, all of a sudden, I was a good player,” Harris told reporter Cesar Calvar. “What happened I don't know, but from one year to another I won more confidence and by the time I finished high school I was one of the best players in America.”
Therefore, it’s not surprising that he attracted the attention of colleges. After all, 6-foot-10 players who can score regularly tend to be in demand. Harris traveled across the entire width of the state of Virginia in order to find his basketball home for the next four years.
In 1968, the Richmond Professional Institute merged with the Medical College of Virginia. The resulting institution was called Virginia Commonwealth University, located in Richmond. VCU formed a basketball team that year and hired Benny Dees to coach it. Dees went 12-11 and 13-10 in two years – not bad under the circumstances. But after recruiting Harris and Jesse Dark, he moved on in 1970, and Chuck Noe was hired as his replacement.
Noe, who also was named the athletic director, had been a coach at such schools as Virginia Tech and South Carolina, but hadn’t had a job in the sport since 1964. The job for Noe was to get VCU on the college basketball map, one step at a time. He brought Harris in as a freshman in the fall of 1970 to help start that process. Bernie was allowed to play as a freshman since Virginia Commonwealth was an NAIA school at the time. Harris and the Rams finished a very credible 15-9 in that initial season under Noe, as the center-forward averaged 8.7 points per game.
There were more good times ahead for VCU, and for Harris. He and the Rams were remarkably consistent during the next three years. Bernie averaged 19.7, 19.5 and 19.2 points per game, and the team went 15-9, 15-4, and 15-5, Harris never shot less than 50 percent from the field, and averaged more than 10 rebounds per game in his final three years. Dark and Harris turned out to be a great one-two punch for the Rams during those years. Dark averaged 18 points per game, while Harris was at 17 points per game (1,379 points in his career). Bernie eventually was inducted into the VCU Hall of Fame in 2001.
By coincidence, we can pinpoint when Harris probably made his first trip to Buffalo. The Rams played Canisius in Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium on December 15, 1973. The Golden Griffins won that game, 103-96. In that final season, Virginia Commonwealth closed its schedule with an impressive 12 straight wins. After the season’s end, Harris was picked to be on an American team that played an exhibition tour in the Soviet Union.
The squad stopped in Finland on the way home, his first visit there. “The only thing was that we came here in June and the weather was really nice,” Harris said. “There was a lot of daylight and it was way better than in the Soviet Union. I remember once we went to a nightclub and when we entered there was still light, and when we came out at 3:00 AM it was light again. So, I had some good memories from Finland.”
Harris probably wasn’t sure about his chances at a professional career, considered his school wasn’t exactly a major powerhouse. Still, he must have perked up when Dark was drafted (and eventually signed) by the New York Knicks in the 1974 NBA draft. Two rounds later, Harris was picked by the Buffalo Braves. The best player in that fourth round turned out to be Mickey Johnson, a forward who spent 12 seasons in the NBA. Meanwhile, Harris also went in the fifth round to the Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association. “Like any young player getting drafted, I was excited,” Harris told blogger Chris Kowalczyk.
Harris decided to go with the Braves, perhaps because he saw an opportunity. Buffalo’s top pick, Tom McMillen, opted to spend his first season in Europe as a Rhodes Scholar. The Braves’ third choice, Kim Hughes, played in Italy. That meant Harris was the top pick in training camp that year. Sure enough, he grabbed a spot on the roster. It’s difficult to make much of an impression as the 12th man on a roster. But at 6-foot-10 and 200 pounds, memories of him center on the fact that he was really, really skinny. He also probably was earning the minimum salary for rookies at the time. “The money they paid in NBA was OK then, but it was not what it is like now,” Harris remembered. “It is crazy now, you can be like one year in the NBA and you can be set for your life if you use it right.”
At least it didn’t take long for Harris to play in an actual NBA game. He came in at the end of the Braves’ 111-91 win over the Knicks on October 24, 1974. Bernie played one minute, and grabbed one rebound to get on the stat sheet. That started a pattern for Harris. He played four minutes on October 29 against Golden State, and three minutes on November 3 in Los Angeles. In the latter game, he scored his first point. On December 12 against Houston, Harris scored the first field goal of his career. Finally on January 12 in a win over Boston, Bernie scored the last basket of his NBA career.
He was waived on January 20. Jim Washington had been acquired by the Braves on January 8, so the Braves probably ran out of roster room for Bernie. Harris’ final numbers were rather microscopic – 5 points (2 for 11 shooting from the field), 8 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist. Still, he had been on an NBA roster for more than three months, which is more than most fourth round picks of the era could say. Harris was invited back by the Braves for training camp that fall, but didn’t make the team.
“Getting waived was hard, but I felt that if I had enough talent to make it that far, then I would find my place in the game somewhere,” Harris said.
The center-forward did plenty of traveling in the years after that. He played in the Continental Basketball Association in America, as well as in Switzerland, Germany and Israel. Bernie popped up in a league in the Phillipines in 1979, playing for the Crispa Redmanzers. The next year his agent called him and said, “How would you like to go somewhere where there are a lot of pretty girls and make some money?” Harris was interested when told the offer came from Finland. He started by playing for NMKY Turku. "When I came, at that time there were only four black people in Turku,” Harris said to Calvar.
Bernie won a title in Turku, and eventually played for a couple of other teams in Finland - even coaching a national team of teen-agers at one point. Harris was still playing regularly at Finland’s top division of play at the age of 47 – and filled in on the roster of a team he was coaching at the age of 52. Along the way, he picked up the nickname of Benkku – as a teammate couldn’t say “Bernard.” “I had a lot of fun here,” he said to Calvar. “Probably the nightlife I think was one of the best things. I used to like to go out and have fun and stuff like that. But also being known made a lot easier for me to do the things I wanted to do.
“For example I wrote a book about basketball, I had several TV shows on nutrition, doping and anti-doping in sports. ... I work a lot with schools and young kids who want to become basketball players. Even the president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, who used to live like me in Salo and used to be an avid rollerblader, wrote something for me about rollerblading and exercising.”
It’s been an unexpected trip from Virginia to Finland. Would he do it all over again?
“That’s a good question because it is always easier to look behind and think how would it be,” he said to Calvar. “You never know where life is going to take you. Wherever it takes you, I think you have to try to make the best out of it, whether it’s at home or here. Who knows what my life would have been in the States in the same period of time? Obviously I didn’t choose this path; life chose this path for me. I am not always happy of course, nobody is. I just expect to make the best that I can and hopefully to make it a little bit better for my daughter.”
(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)
Commentaires