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Griz legend: Ken McKenzie

Mslacat

Mslacat

Well-known member
This is for the old coots among us:

TE0206_mckenzie3c_080206.jpg


Hoops Hall calls – 32 years later

Parentheses are most often used today to help form a hackneyed smiley face at the end of a chatty email. It’s quite the contrary for a 56-year-old Port Coquitlam man, whose illustrious basketball career came to a dismal dead stop right before the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and, because of that, is largely defined by a simple set of brackets following his name.

On the Canada Basketball website, he’s the final player noted on the roster of that year’s national team, which was inducted last July into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame. It reads: Ken McKenzie (injured).

Smiley face not applicable.

“The day before we were to go to the Olympics, we had an exhibition game against the Americans in Plattsburgh, New York,” McKenzie told The Tri-City News last week, not long after being informed he’s one of 10 individuals set for induction next spring in the Basketball B.C. Hall of Fame. “With five minutes to go, I blew out my knee. That was it. I was 25 years old... had a wife and two kids. I knew that was the end of basketball for me.”

Lars Hansen, himself a star centre who succeeded McKenzie at Centennial high school, helped Canada finish a sturdy fourth at those Olympics, behind the U.S., Yugoslavia and Russia. The showing remains tied for second-best with the 1984 Los Angeles unit for a Canadian men’s basketball team at the Olympics, both behind only the silver-medal feat the 1936 edition accomplished in Germany.

“To this day, I believe Canada would have won a medal in Montreal if Ken McKenzie hadn’t been injured just before we left,” Hansen said.

McKenzie attended the original Port Moody High, which burned down in 1969 and forced him to transfer to Centennial his senior year. Surprisingly, his teams at PoMo and Centennial never qualified for the B.C. high school provincial tournament.

“The Valley back then only had three berths, and we finished fourth three years in a row,” McKenzie explained.

Still, there was no denying McKenzie’s individual talent. He was blossoming into a deftly skilled, six-foot-nine post and had a scholarship offer from the University of California-Berkley before he eventually settled on the University of Montana, where he would go on to become two-time MVP of the Big Sky Conference.

“I didn’t really have the grades to go to Berkley,” McKenzie explained. “I wasn’t a great [high school] student. It was the ’60s, remember. Our parents were happy we just went to school at all. Anybody who got above a C+ [average] was considered a geek back then.”

Alex Devlin, McKenzie’s national squad teammate and current teacher and senior girls basketball coach at Port Moody Secondary School, said McKenzie was simply a natural.

“In high school, [coaches] knew he was a good athlete but he really took off in college,” Devlin said, concurring with Hansen that if the ’76 Canadian team had a healthy McKenzie it would have garnered “at least bronze” at the Olympics. “He put you in the game. He legitimized you as a team because of his rebounding, especially on the defensive end. And he could outlet the ball any which way... underhand, overhand, sidearm. He was that good.”

Perhaps McKenzie’s biggest university hardwood thrill was leading the unheralded Montana Grizzlies into the NCAA tournament’s first round of the Sweet 16 versus the top-ranked UCLA Bruins. McKenzie poured in 22 points and snared 12 rebounds as the Grizzlies battled to only a three-point defeat, 67-64, to the behemoth Bruins, who boasted future NBA players Marques Johnson and Richard Washington, along with legendary coach John Wooden. UCLA went on to win the tournament.

“They kept trying to press us and we just kept fast-breaking them... lay-up after lay-up,” McKenzie recalled. “We were a good, solid team that had been playing together four years. We were fundamentally strong, and they took us lightly.”

McKenzie didn’t so much as blink busting chops under the boards with Bruin king-pins Washington and Johnson.

“I’d already been playing internationally for four years,” said McKenzie, a Canadian national team member from 1972-76. “I’d played against some of the top players [in the world]. Intimidation wasn’t a factor at all for me.”

Devlin said McKenzie was paid possibly his biggest tribute following the UCLA clash.

“John Wooden said after that game, ‘We underestimated their big guy [McKenzie],” Devlin recalled. “Coming from John Wooden, that’s a pretty enormous compliment.”

Ex-Point Grey prep sharp-shooter Howard Kelsey played his first Canadian national team game with McKenzie, and watched in amazement as the latter dominated at the highest international level. Kelsey nominated McKenzie for the Basketball B.C. Hall and even garnered a letter from McKenzie’s famed university coach Jud Heathcoate –– who went on to coach Magic Johnson and Michigan State to an NCAA Div. 1 championship in 1979 –– to support the ballot.

“I felt it was long overdue,” Kelsey said. “I don’t know why it took so long to happen. It’s a no-brainer. Ken and Lars were the best centres in Canada all-time, I believe.”

After graduating from Montana, McKenzie was chosen in the ‘75 NBA draft by the Seattle Supersonics, who nabbed him in the eighth round (138th overall). Rather than taking a run at pro –– a realistic possibility with the American Basketball Association (ABA) and NBA then on the cusp of merging –– McKenzie elected to retain his amateur status for the Olympics and played one season in France.

After the ‘76 Games and his knee shot, McKenzie returned home and followed in his dad’s boots by becoming a railroad engineer, which he was for 29 years before recently retiring. He now contentedly lives in PoCo.

Prior to this year, 48 individuals have been elected into the Basketball B.C. Hall of Fame since its inception in 2003. The humble McKenzie, who’ll be formally honoured at an April 26 banquet in Burnaby, hardly minded waiting his just turn.

“I was privileged to know I was elected,” he said.

And to know sheer hard luck 32 years ago didn’t render him forgotten.
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http://www.bclocalnews.com/sports/15333541.html
 
It's always fun to read about people having successful lives after their athletic careers are ended. I was one of those who enjoyed watching Ken play, lo, those many years ago.
 
Good read. Although I was too young to remember him, I remember the team. What an upset that could/should have been.

Thanks cat. :thumb:
 
We listened to the game on the radio in a Missoula bar. The crowd went from dead silent to explosive noise depending upon the play. UCLA was perhaps the greatest dynasty ever in college BB, and these Montana upstarts came within minuites of upsetting them.

It has to be one of the top 5 games I ever experienced, and I can't think of the other 4.

At the end we didn't know whether to be happy or sad.
 
Canadian Hall of Fame, But not UM???

Somethings not right.

"Sugar" Ray Richardson, Heathcoat are in. What about the whole team. I will venture to say we will never make the sweet 16 again or play the team the likes of UCLA, at the time, to a three point game.

As I recall, it was a one point game and the Griz missed a layup, then UCLA scored. I was very young, but thats how I remember it.
 
no way a montana team challenges a ucla unless one player has the game of his life, and that was eric hays. he might have accouted for half our points that night. just couldn't miss.

headline next day read: "big sky almost falls on ucla."

you have to wonder what the score might of been if a skinny freshman guard who started for us but scored no points had instead been the player he would become as a junior and senior--micheal ray, of course.

you also have to wonder what the result would have been if those opposing uniforms had read "boise state" instead of "ucla."
 
OK, I remember that game. I was in Missoula and I THINK I watched it on TV. Maybe it was reruns. Anyway here is how I remember it. It is true that every thing Eric Hays threw up went in, in the first half, UNTIL right before the buzzer he blew an uncontested layup. AAARRRUUGG. I think he also made most of his shots in the second half. He was amazing. I know Mckenzie played great, the whole team did, but for some reason I have never been able to shake this mental image of the shot he took from the corner, right near the end of the game that hit the rim and bounced, I swear, 3-4 times on the rim and fell out. I think those 2 points would have either put the griz up by one or tied it or something like that. It has tortured me ever since. Well, in a minor way. Anybody else remember that shot? Or have I imagined the whole thing.
 
I had a chance to see the game in Pullman. If my memory serves correctly, that was the game where Eric Hays fell out of bounds after taking a shot or something. He was bouncing back up just as one of the refs was throwing his arms back while making some sort of call, and he caught Hays right in the face with an elbow. Hays went back down, and was down for a while. But then he bounced back up, and continued to have a whale of a game. At least that's my recollection. Maybe it was some other game, but I think it was the UCLA game. If someone remembers it differently, please correct me--that was more than thirty years ago.
 
You're right Grizbob about Hays being floored by the ref.

I remember watching the second half of the game on TV back home in Billings. I was just a snot nose teenager but I was glued to the set - the whole block was in our front living room once word got out about how well the Griz were doing.
 
If I remember correctly of the Griz UCLA game there was a very questionable referee call towards the end of the game, & of course the call went against the Griz!!! Anyone else remember this? I think it really changed the outcome of the game!!!
 
100%GRIZ said:
If I remember correctly of the Griz UCLA game there was a very questionable referee call towards the end of the game, & of course the call went against the Griz!!! Anyone else remember this? I think it really changed the outcome of the game!!!
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I kind of remember the same thing. A charging foul against Hays or not a charging call against UCLA. I think it was against Hays and the basket didn't count.

Up until the Nevada win a couple years ago, the UCLA game was always mention when we would make it to the NCAA playoffs.
 
It's interesting seeing that photo of white-haired McKenzie above. Back then, he had bushy red hair and a red Fu Manchu mustache, if I remember right. Made him look a little more menacing -- and a few inches taller -- than he looks today...
 
SEAKGriz said:
OK, I remember that game. I was in Missoula and I THINK I watched it on TV. Maybe it was reruns. Anyway here is how I remember it. It is true that every thing Eric Hays threw up went in, in the first half, UNTIL right before the buzzer he blew an uncontested layup. AAARRRUUGG. I think he also made most of his shots in the second half. He was amazing. I know Mckenzie played great, the whole team did, but for some reason I have never been able to shake this mental image of the shot he took from the corner, right near the end of the game that hit the rim and bounced, I swear, 3-4 times on the rim and fell out. I think those 2 points would have either put the griz up by one or tied it or something like that. It has tortured me ever since. Well, in a minor way. Anybody else remember that shot? Or have I imagined the whole thing.
Click to expand...

Computer has a gremlin- sorry
 
SEAKGriz said:
OK, I remember that game. I was in Missoula and I THINK I watched it on TV. Maybe it was reruns. Anyway here is how I remember it. It is true that every thing Eric Hays threw up went in, in the first half, UNTIL right before the buzzer he blew an uncontested layup. AAARRRUUGG. I think he also made most of his shots in the second half. He was amazing. I know Mckenzie played great, the whole team did, but for some reason I have never been able to shake this mental image of the shot he took from the corner, right near the end of the game that hit the rim and bounced, I swear, 3-4 times on the rim and fell out. I think those 2 points would have either put the griz up by one or tied it or something like that. It has tortured me ever since. Well, in a minor way. Anybody else remember that shot? Or have I imagined the whole thing.
Click to expand...

I do remember this part, because I was listening to it on the radio and dad was upstairs watching it on TV. The radio broadcast was about 4 minutes ahead of the TV feed. So radio listeners knew what was happing on the radio before those watching on TV saw it.

Yes, the shot bounce 3 times- OUCH
 
I watched that UCLA game. The refs were bound and determined that the GRIZ were not going to beat UCLA PERIOD I will say that it was the most exciting GRIZ BB game I have ever watched.... Hayes and McKenzie were in a different zone.
 
I to watched the game and felt that UCLA got some very favorable calls in crunch time that basically sealed a UCLA win. I did yell at the TV screen. In a post game comment Wooden said that they were very fortunate to get the win. You can read several conclusions into that but I felt by his body language that they got some breaks at the end that should have been no calls at the least.
 
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