Ties that bind
Hammond, McKinney treasure beginning of pro-lific partnership

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By Truman Reed

The Milwaukee Bucks can lay claim to having one of the most unique and longstanding backcourt combinations in league history in their corner.
 
Over four decades have passed since John Hammond and Billy McKinney began their partnership, but they're still exchanging assists, scoring points and providing leadership as effectively as they did back in the day, when basketball shorts were short and basketball diehards played the game all day long.
 
Hammond was introduced as the Bucks general manager back on April 11, 2008. A little less than two months later, when Hammond appointed McKinney as the team's director of scouting, he not only made a valuable hire, but reunited with one of his closest, must trusted friends.
 
After all, back in the early '70s, when careers in professional basketball were beyond their wildest dreams, Hammond and McKinney were Zee-Bees together.
 
The Zee-Bees, adapted from the Navy SeaBees of World War II, became the nickname of Zion-Benton Township High School, located in the city of Zion in the far northeastern corner of Illinois.
 
That was where the ball began bouncing for John Hammond and Billy McKinney. And that ball wasn't always a basketball.
 
"The earliest memories of my times with John would have to go way back," McKinney said. "First, I'd have to think about Little League Baseball.
 
"Second of all, I'd have to think about this club we were involved with, the Iwana Club, through Grace Missionary Baptist Church in Zion.
 
"In June, after I took the job with the Bucks, Brian Colbert, one of our childhood friends who still lives in the area and is a school superintendent in Racine, came up to visit. I happened to have a photo of us Brian, John and me at the 1965 Iwana Olympics. That was a priceless moment for us, having been childhood friends and high school teammates in baseball and basketball.
 
"John and I went out on a lot of double dates. We went out on a lot of dates just between us when we couldn't get dates."
 
McKinney realizes how blessed he and Hammond are today to be working together in the NBA. He values their hometown roots every bit as much.
 
"I think about us playing baseball together," McKinney said. "Those were some fun days. John and I both pitched, and when I wasn't pitching, I played the outfield. John and I had probably every pitch in the arsenal. We had the fastball, the knuckleball, the sidearm curve, the overhand curve, what we called the drop ball.
 
"We had some great times growing up. When I think back on it, we had a great childhood in our city. We were surrounded by great people who cared for us. We had a great park system. We spent our energy in positive ways. And we had a great friendship."
 
Hammond, who has spent the past few months in intense preparation for the 2009 NBA Draft alongside McKinney and the rest of the Bucks staff, echoed that sentiment.
 
"First of all, when I think about what Billy has meant to me, he's one of my best friends I've had in my lifetime," Hammond said. "That will always come before any business relationship."
 
Business was the farthest thing from both of their minds when they were teens growing up in Zion. They were products of an era that inspired the movie American Graffiti and the television show Happy Days.
 
"One of the traditions of growing up in our area at that time was called 'scooping the Loop,'" McKinney said. "You'd clean your car up on a Friday night and go up C Street in Waukegan, driving up and down, looking at the other cars and, of course, looking at girls who were driving up and down the strip.
 
"Then we'd go to a place in Kenosha afterwards called The Spot, a hamburger spot. We still go there to this day. John and I have done a lot of things together."
 
Many of their memories can be traced back to the basketball courts of Zion, where Hammond and McKinney became a backcourt tandem.
 
"John was a year older than me," McKinney said. "We had another player behind us who was a year younger. In John's senior year, the three of us were going to be competing for backcourt positions. As we always did in the summertime, we played basketball at Shiloh Park. That's where all the great pickup games were played."
 
The day began like many other summer days in the lives of John Hammond and Billy McKinney. But it would take a frightening twist that, in retrospect, would change their lives.
 
"John, on one particular day, had borrowed a friend's motorbike to come to the park," McKinney said. "After the pickup game, we were going to go watch some of the older players play in a summer league. John dropped me off on the motorbike at my house. I waited hours and hours for him to come back, and he never showed up."
 
McKinney sensed that something had gone awry.
 
"Anybody who knows John knows that you're going to get a phone call if he's going to be a minute late," McKinney said. "So we called his house. No answer. We figured maybe he'd run off with his girlfriend at the time, and being 16 or 17 years old, you could understand that."
 
The next morning, though, brought a rude awakening for McKinney.
 
"The next day, when we saw the paper, we found out that John had gotten hit by a car," McKinney recalled. "So when I think about how life could have changed, I thought, 'If I had been on that bike with John 5 minutes later, I might not be here today having this conversation.'"
 
Hammond has similar reflections.
 
"If not for Billy, I wouldn't be standing here today," Hammond said. "And maybe, because of John Hammond, Billy would not have been what he was.

"What happened was a friend of mine came over to my house on his little Honda 125. It wasn't even my bike. I took it for a ride over to a playground where some guys were playing. Billy jumped on the bike, and I dropped him off at his house. And just a few blocks from his house, I was hit by a car.

"I've thought about that so many times, especially watching him during his career at Northwestern, watching him during his career in the NBA as a player. I thought, 'If that had happened a few blocks earlier, Billy never would have been what he was as a player in college and in the NBA."Both parties are grateful the accident did not have more serious repercussions than it did.
 
"John lived through it, thank goodness," McKinney said. "But the accident kind of cleared up what was going to happen in our backcourt, unfortunately. Brian and I ended up starting, and to this day, I'm still not convinced that it might have been John and I in the backcourt, or it could have been John and Brian very easily. John was always so competitive. We played thousands of pickup games, and John was always that way."
 
Hammond and McKinney went their separate ways after high school ... for a few years.
 
Hammond attended and earned a bachelor's degree from Greenville (Ill.) College, where he lettered twice in basketball and served as a student assistant coach.
 
McKinney ventured down the road to Evanston, where he attended and graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in education. Along the way, the 6-foot, 170-pound point guard was named second-team all-Big Ten Conference as a freshman, sophomore and junior before earning first-team accolades as a senior.
 
McKinney also became the Wildcats' all-time leading scorer with 1,900 points after averaging 15.8 ppg as a freshman, 18.2 as a sophomore, 19.7 as a junior and 20.6 as a senior.
 
McKinney was selected in the sixth round of the 1977 NBA Draft by the Phoenix Suns. He went on to play seven seasons with the Kansas City Kings, Utah Jazz, Denver Nuggets, San Diego Clippers and Chicago Bulls, totaling 3,823 points (8 ppg) and 1,661 assists (3.5 apg).
 
Hammond monitored the NBA career of his boyhood friend as closely as he could, and his "scouting report" on him went well beyond the numbers.
 
"I think Billy, as an NBA player, was given an opportunity because of the person that he was and the work ethic that he had," Hammond said. "That's great to get you in the door, but you don't play seven or eight years in the NBA unless you can play.
 
"Billy was a much better ballhandler than people realize. He was a much better passer than people realize, and he was a very, very good shooter. He shot an amazingly high percentage for a point guard, and he was an excellent free-throw shooter."
 
None of those McKinney qualities left the greatest impression on Hammond, though.
 
"First and foremost, he was tough as nails," Hammond said. "I can remember when I was on the road as a college coach, by chance being in the same town where Billy was playing and having a chance to see his games. There were all these big, physical guys playing out there against this little point guard. You'd see a big guy driving the middle and say, 'Billy, don't take that charge!' as he'd take the hit."
 
Hammond was pursuing a career in college coaching at the time, and he occasionally crossed paths with McKinney while in transit. 
 
"I went through airports a great deal back then, and NBA teams were flying commercial in those days," Hammond said. "It wasn't that uncommon back then to walk through an aiport and see an NBA team.
 
"I can remember on a couple of different occasions, and one in particular, where I was walking through an airport and I saw one of the Denver Nuggets players, so I thought, 'Hey, Billy's here.'
 
"I went up and asked the player what gate they were at, I got over there, and I saw Billy. He must have had like seven stitches in his lower lip, and his nose was cracked, and the whole thing, but that's because he was fearless, absolutely fearless, despite being the size of player that he was."
 
One of the greatest assists McKinney ever directed toward Hammond came years after they played the backcourt together.
 
"If not for Billy McKinney, I would not be standing here today in the NBA," Hammond said. "I'd been a college coach for 10 years. After Billy's playing days, he'd moved into the front office and gotten the general manager's job with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He gave me a call and said, 'I'd like you to come and work with me in the NBA.'
 
"So I left college and came to the NBA, and he gave me that opportunity initially. I left him shortly thereafter and became a coach in the NBA. Then he gave me the opportunity again to come to Detroit, and getting that opportunity initially through Billy gave me the opportunity to stay on with Doug Collins and to come back and work with Joe Dumars in the front office. That got me the opportunity to be working here (in Milwaukee) today."
 
McKinney remembers wasting little time offering Hammond the chance to join him in the NBA.
 
"John was a person that I knew, with a team in front of me that had to be built from the ground up, who could bring the kind of organizational skills that we needed, along with his contacts with the college coaches, and they way he could evaluate players we were looking to bring into our organization," McKinney said. "So he joined me in Minnesota, and we've been thick as thieves for the better part of 46 years now."
 
McKinney finds one thing rather remarkable about his association with Hammond.
 
"I've known John for 46 years, and what's remarkable about it is that for 46 years, we've never had a harsh word," McKinney said. "You know anytime you have any kind of friendship or close relationship, you're probably going to have a few tense words, but he and I have both understood one thing, whether it's personal or professional.
 
"From a professional standpoint, we always know what it takes to get the job done. We know about professionalism. We know about supporting one another. He knows that I have his back, and he's had mine. When John told me in a professional situation that I needed to look at another way of handling it, I knew I was getting advice from someone who really cared and understood; it wasn't just somebody with an agenda. And likewise now.
 
"So our relationship has stood the test of time, and it's really fabulous to be working with him in this capacity and working with the Bucks."
 
If Hammond were ever asked to choose whom he would most want in a foxhole with him, or whom he would want to accompany into battle, McKinney would be at or near the top of the list.
 
"I do agree with that," Hammond said. "I would say, too, that having him in a foxhole with me is good terminology. That's on the personal side.
 
"On the business side, Billy is here because of who and what he's been in this business. He knows that. He's been a general manager of two NBA teams. He's been in the NBA his entire working life. The experiences that he's had in different organizations, and the personal relationship that we have ... there could not be a better fit than Billy McKinney being here with us."
 
So Hammond returned the assist that McKinney had handed him 20 years ago, and McKinney gathered it in wholeheartedly. He has taken the ball and made the most of his opportunity.
 
"When John called me with the opportunity to come and work here, he said, 'You know, Billy, with your experience, you could come in somewhere on a higher level, so I'm going to let you think about this for a day or so whether you'll accept this position as our director of scouting,'' McKinney recalled. "I called him back the next day and said, 'John, I'm on board.  Job titles have never meant anything to me. It's the opportunity to work with you, to do something special in Milwaukee, and to be helping you, as you did for me, early in my career as an executive.'"
 
And McKinney has enjoyed building something special with his boyhood friend, just a few miles up the road from where they grew up together.
 
"One of the things we both know, being from the Midwest, is that people here really appreciate players who are committed to what they're doing," McKinney said. "For us, having grown up htere and identifying talent, we know that's an important ingredient to bring in -- not just having talent, but having guys who the fans can identify with.
 
"After watching them play, those fans can go home and say, 'You know what? Those guys might not have won tonight, but they played hard. They played together.' We know there's a lot of value in that, and those are the kind of players we are going to try to bring in to represent the city and the state."
 
Yes, wherever the basketball careers of John Hammond and Billy McKinney have taken them, whether they've been together or miles apart, "we" has always been the operative word in their partnership.