Bill Fitch, Cavaliers first coach who won an NBA title with Celtics, dies at 89

Bill Fitch, the Cavaliers’ first coach who directed the 1975-76 “Miracle of Richfield team in the expansion franchise’s sixth season, died Wednesday night at the age of 89.

Fitch was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019, when he was also chosen for the inaugural class of the Cavs’ Wall of Honor.

In 25 years as an NBA coach, Fitch posted a 944-1,106 regular-season record (.460) and turned the Cavs, Boston Celtics, Houston Rockets, New Jersey Nets, and Los Angeles Clippers into playoff teams. Fitch led Boston to the NBA title in 1980-81.

Fitch was a two-time NBA coach of the year and chosen as one of the top 10 coaches in league history in 1996-97, when the league celebrated its 50th anniversary.

He received in 2013 the National Basketball Coaches Association’s Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, named for the coach who won two league championships with the Detroit Pistons.

But it began in Cleveland. Appointed by then-owner Nick Mileti in 1970, Fitch remains the longest-tenured coach in franchise history. In nine seasons, Fitch went 304-434 (.412) with the Cavs as they went to the playoffs three times from 1976-78. The highlight of that came in 1976, when the Cavs captured their first division title and beat Washington in seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals before falling to the Boston Celtics in six games.

The Cavs issued a statement on Fitch’s passing Thursday.

“Coach Fitch earned the love and respect of his Cavaliers players as he embedded a high standard of accountability and a belief system that he felt was a reflection of the team’s motto as a ‘group of daring, fearless men, whose life's pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds,’ something that continues to be greatly valued by those he coached and worked with on and off the court,” the statement said. “Coach Fitch was a great friend and trusted mentor and teacher to so many across the entire basketball community, while his impact on the game, and the lives of those he touched, spanned multiple generations.

When he came to Cleveland in 2019, then-Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle campaigned for Fitch’s Hall of Fame selection and said he’d spent $150,000 for a granite bench to honor Fitch outside the Springfield, Massachusetts, shrine.

Carlisle called Fitch’s accomplishments “staggering” and said the state of the teams he took over was the most accurate indicator of Fitch’s coaching skills.

“The one thing Bill Fitch has done that no other coach has done is take five jobs with teams that were either beginning expansion franchises, deep lottery teams, and he brought those teams to a significantly higher level,” Carlisle said before a Feb. 2, 2019 game at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. “The average winning percentage of teams he took over was 27 percent. His career mark ended up being 46 percent. You’ve got to look at the win differential. That’s really the big key.

“Many of the great coaches in history, if they had the choice, were unwilling to take over teams where they knew there was going to be a lot of losing and stuff like that. And Bill consistently took on those challenges and he was a master. I think only him and Larry Brown have taken five teams from lottery to significantly higher heights and of course Larry is in the Hall of Fame.”

Fitch had a sense of humor, too. When Fitch waived Carlisle from a New Jersey Nets team that finished 17-65 and offered him a coaching position, he said to Carlisle, "How does it feel to know that you weren't good enough to make this team?"

Fitch was awarded the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, and then-NBA Commissioner David Stern asked the first question in the press conference.

"Would you like your fines back?" Stern said.

"You couldn't afford to give them all back to me," Fitch replied.

Though Fitch lost more games than he won, he spent a majority of his career taking over either expansion teams (Cavaliers) or teams trying to reverse losing seasons (Celtics, Rockets, Nets). Fitch was a fixer and a teacher. Almost all of his teams improved after he took over.

Boston won 29 games in 1978-79 before Fitch became coach in Larry Bird’s rookie season and won 61 games, a 32-game turnaround that was a league record until 1989-90 (Spurs).

"Coming off of a 29-win season in 1979, the Celtics had experienced the two worst seasons in the team’s history," the Celtics said in a statement. "But a promising rookie named Larry Bird was set to arrive, and Red Auerbach knew the franchise was at a critical crossroads. He decided to hire Bill Fitch as the head coach, and as was so often the case, Red made the right call. Fitch’s deep knowledge of the game, toughness, and dry wit made him a perfect fit for Boston and the Celtics."

The 1986 Houston Rockets, led by twin towers Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon, reached the 1986 Finals, upsetting the Pat Riley-coached Los Angeles Lakers in the West finals during LA’s run of three championships in four years.

Fitch lived in Conroe, Texas outside Houston.

Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Cavs at www.beaconjournal.com/cavs. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Longtime NBA coach Bill Fitch, who won title with Celtics, dies at 89