Evan Massey is a retired Galesburg High School girls basketball coach, one of the most successful in Illinois history. He writes local history features and a weekly Time Capsule column for WGIL.
If you are a basketball fan, you know about Michael Jordan. To many, Jordan is considered the all-time GOAT when it comes to basketball. He won five regular season MVPs, six finals MVPs, and six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls. While most have known about Michael, few probably know about Michael’s connection to Knox College in Galesburg.
Coach Sam Berry
In 1918, Knox College hired a graduate of Madison HS (Wis) and Lawrence University to be the Knox athletic director, head football coach, head basketball coach, head baseball coach, head track coach, and biology professor.
In his four years at Knox, Berry’s ’19 football team was a perfect 8-0, his basketball teams won two conference titles and won .64% of their games, track won the conference all four years, and baseball had two undefeated teams.
Berry’s success at Knox landed him a job at the University of Iowa in 1922. While at Iowa, as head basketball coach, his ’23 and ’26 teams won the Big Ten titles. He also served as assistant football coach and defensive coordinator. The Hawkeye football squad won the Big Ten title in ’22, and would not win another Big Ten title until ’56.
In 1929, Sam Berry moved to Los Angeles to coach at the University of Southern California. During his time at USC, he served as head basketball coach, head baseball coach, and assistant coach in football. His 1940 basketball team went to the Final Four before losing to Phog Allen’s Kansas team. As defensive coordinator for the football team, they won three National Titles. As baseball coach, his team was the ’48 National Champions.
So as a coach, he won a National Championship in two sports and went to the Final Four in the third sport.
In basketball, he was a major influence in the adoption of the 10-second rule, the center line (over and back), and eliminating the center jump after made free throws and baskets.
In 1929, he was the author of one of the major basketball coaching resources. He wrote the book, “Basketball: Individual Play and Team Play.” By 1950, the LA Times described that Coach Berry and Coach Phog Allen were the major influencers in shaping the sport of basketball.
Berry’s USC basketball teams included four players who would go on to become great coaches: Jack Gardner (two Final Fours at Utah), Bill Sharman (NBA title with the Lakers, ABA title with Utah), Alex Hannum (two NBA titles with the 76ers), and Tex Winter (two Final Fours at Kansas State, nine NBA titles as an assistant with Phil Jackson in Chicago and Los Angeles). Berry, Gardner, Hannum, Sharman, and Winter are all in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The NBA has also established the Tex Winter Assistant Coach Lifetime Impact Award.
Much of Sam Berry’s success is attributed to his innovative offense that he called the Center Option Offense. Today we know this offense as the Triangle Offense.
Berry’s former player, Tex Winter, became the guru of the Triangle Offense as both a college and pro coach. Coach Berry’s offense became the foundation for the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan’s six NBA championships, and Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers’ three NBA championships from 2000-2002. Berry’s Triangle Offense was so important to those championships that the Lakers’ 2002 championship rings had a series of triangles on the face of the ring.
So it is fair to say that Michael Jordan’s and Kobe Bryant’s great championship runs started back in 1918 at Knox College, as Coach Sam Berry developed his coaching philosophy and strategy, and formulated the Triangle Offense.
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