John Wetzel (right) is the only graduate of Wilson Memorial to play in the NBA.
Born in Waynesboro, he went to Saint Francis in Staunton before heading to Fishersville for high school. A former assistant and head coach in the NBA, Wetzel and his wife Diane (left) split their time between Hawaii and Arizona. Wetzel turns 81 in October.
John Wetzel, a basketball star at Wilson Memorial High School in Augusta County in the early 1960s, was drafted out of Virginia Tech by the Los Angeles Lakers in the eighth round as the 75th overall pick in 1966.
Not only did rookie Wetzel, who missed the 1966-1967 season with a wrist injury, make the star-studded opening-night roster in 1967, but the native of Waynesboro was thrust into the starting lineup after an injury to a future Naismith Hall of Famer from West Virginia.
“A week or 10 days before the start of the season, Jerry West broke his hand,” Wetzel, 80, said in a telephone interview from his home in Hawaii. “He missed the first 12 games or so. Lo and behold, when he got hurt, they put me in the starting lineup. I started the first 10 or 12 games.”
The Lakers opened that season on Oct. 17, 1967, against the Chicago Bulls and won by two points in Wetzel’s first game in the NBA.
“I can’t remember too much about the game, but I was in the lineup,” the 6-foot-5 Wetzel said.
A shooting guard and small forward, Wetzel made three of six shots from the field and two of three from the foul line to finish with eight points in 20 minutes of play. Another future Hall of Famer with the Lakers, Washington, D.C. native Elgin Baylor, had 21 points and 13 rebounds in the win, according to basketballreference.com.
“Watching Jerry, he would play 42 minutes in one game and then 45 the next. He was in such good shape,” Wetzel said of West, who passed away last year. “Elgin was 6-foot-5 and one of the top rebounders in the league. They were terrific.”
Wetzel, who took classes at Virginia Tech and helped coach the freshman team while recovering from his wrist injury, played 38 games as a rookie and averaged 11.4 minutes and 3.7 points per contest with the Lakers in 1967-1968.
A few decades later, he would be joined by two other Augusta County high school products to play in the NBA: Dell Curry (Fort Defiance), another former Virginia Tech standout who played in The League from 1986-2002; and Cory Alexander (Waynesboro, Oak Hill), who played pro ball – including for several NBA teams and overseas – from 1995 to 2005.
Wetzel was taken by the Phoenix Suns in the expansion draft from the Lakers in 1968. But the Wilson graduate missed two seasons due to military service, including time in Vietnam.
He played for the Suns for two seasons, from 1970-1972, under coach Cotton Fitzsimmons. One of his teammates was Connie Hawkins, a native of Brooklyn who went into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.
“He was a different animal,” Wetzel said of Hawkins. “He was the advent of Julius Erving. He could move the ball around. He was a fine, fine offensive player.”
Wetzel then played for the Atlanta Hawks from 1972-1975, and one of his teammates was Pete (Pistol Pete) Maravich, who had played for his father, Press, at LSU.
“He was one of the best ballhandlers I have seen in the league. Atlanta brought me in (as a role player). Pete would play for 45 minutes, and I would play three minutes in a game. The next day at practice, Pete would play three minutes, and I would play 45,” said Wetzel, with a laugh. Maravich died in 1988 at the age of 40 of a rare heart defect.
(This reporter was among a group of youth and parents who made the trip from Harrisonburg in the early 1970s to see the Hawks play in Landover, Md., against the Washington Bullets. Maravich, Lou Hudson, Wetzel and other members of the Hawks signed autographs for the youth after the game).
Wetzel’s last season as a player in the NBA was with the Suns, who lost in the NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics in 1976. Wetzel played in two of the games in the Western Conference Finals against Golden State as the Suns won in seven games.
In his career, Wetzel played 357 NBA games and averaged 13.2 minutes and 3.4 points per contest. He had a career-high 22 points in a game for the Suns during the 1970-71 season.
Virginia roots
Wetzel was born in Waynesboro on Oct. 22, 1944, and grew up just outside of the city limits in Augusta County in a house that was built in 1941.
He went to school at Saint Francis in Staunton before entering high school at Wilson Memorial, where he led the basketball team to the state championship contest in his senior year.
“Our biggest rivals were Staunton (then R.E. Lee) and Waynesboro,” Wetzel recalled. “Waynesboro always beat us. Staunton always beat us. My senior year, we were 22-1 and the only game we lost was in the state finals at the VMI Fieldhouse to Haysi of Southwest Virginia” in Group AA.
Wetzel attracted a lot of attention from college programs. He got a call from Norfolk native Lefty Driesell, the future Hall of Famer who at the time was coaching Davidson in North Carolina. But Wetzel made in-person visits to just three schools: Virginia Tech, Virginia and VMI.
“There was something about Blacksburg. It fit my personality. It was a little bit more laid back,” he said. “At that time, Virginia was known as a party school. I really got along with the players in Blacksburg. The coaches were very good. Chuck Noe was the head coach when I signed, then he went to South Carolina. Bill Matthews recruited me – he had played for Chuck in the 1950s. He took over for two years at Tech. Guy Strong was my freshman coach. Howard Shannon was the coach at Tech my senior year. He had been at Kansas State with coach Tex Winters.”
Strong played at Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky and coached at Kentucky Wesleyan, helping them become a Division II power. Shannon, who played in the NBA, led the Hokies to the postseason in 1966 (to the NIT with Wetzel) and 1967. Wetzel averaged 7.7 points per game as a sophomore, 14.3 as a junior and 18.5 as a senior at Virginia Tech. He went into the school’s Hall of Fame in 1985.
Back to Blacksburg
After his playing career, Wetzel returned to Virginia Tech to finish classes for his undergraduate degree.
That is where his coaching career began.
“I was the first coach of the women’s team, the first year they were a varsity program,” Wetzel said. “Before that they had a club team. Bill Matthews, he was the assistant athletic director then, he learned that I was coming to Blacksburg, and he called me and said, ‘I want you to coach the women.’ That was my interview.”
The Hokies, after two losses, posted their first win at Bridgewater College in December of 1976. Virginia Tech beat JMU at home, 56-46, on Feb. 19, 1977, but lost to the Dukes in Norfolk in the Virginia state tournament, 47-37, on March 3, 1977.
Wetzel, after one season at Tech, became an assistant coach with Phoenix of the NBA, and was there from 1979-1987.
“John MacLeod coached me my last year me with Phoenix, and he hired me after I got through at Tech,” Wetzel said. “I coached a minor league team in the state of Washington, and that league folded. The Suns were hiring a second assistant,” and Wetzel landed the spot.
He was then the head coach of the Suns during the 1987-1988 campaign and went 28-54 overall for a team that had been beset by drug problems the previous season.
“Coaching is harder (than playing) in the fact you have 12 or 13 guys you have to manage,” Wetzel said. “As a player you take care of number one – yourself.”
After he was let go, Wetzel was an assistant with the Portland Trailblazers, New Jersey Nets, Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings.
The last time Wetzel was in Virginia was in 2021, when he also went to Springfield, Mass., for the induction of Rick Adelman into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Wetzel and Adelman coached together in the NBA with Portland, Sacramento and Golden State. Wetzel’s last season in the NBA was the rookie year for LeBron James.
“John told me at the start of the season that this would be his last year,” Adelman told the Associated Press when Wetzel retired in 2004. “It is a tough day for me, but a good day for John. He is the ultimate professional. We had some great times, and I will miss him as a coach and friend.”
This fall, Wetzel and his wife, Diane, plan to visit Virginia after a stop in Kansas City, where he will connect with former U.S. military buddies. Wetzel met his wife, from California, when he was playing for the Lakers. They have two adult sons, and split time between Hawaii and Arizona.
“We bought a place in Hawaii in 1991. We began coming in 1986, then bought a condo on the beach in 1991,” he said. “We wanted to spend time here, we like the climate, we like the people. It has been a good experience. When I retired, we had the condo and a house in Tucson we had just moved into. We split our time – summer and winter in Hawaii and spring and fall in Arizona.”
It’s a long way from Fishersville, but thanks to basketball, Wetzel was able to travel the country and play and coach with several Hall of Famers.
Notes
The late Press Maravich, the father of Pete, was a college coach at several schools. He was the head coach from 1950-1952 at Davis & Elkins in West Virginia, and one of his players was Skip Hill, a former government teacher at Turner Ashby High School. Hill was a standout player at Davis & Elkins, graduated in 1952 and went into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2005. Hill’s wife taught at Dayton Elementary School.
Another Waynesboro and Virginia Tech basketball connection is Kenny Brooks, the former women’s coach for the Hokies (and JMU) who is now at the University of Kentucky. Wetzel said he would like to meet Brooks; Wetzel watched the Hokies on the ACC Network when Brooks was coaching at the school. Brooks played at Waynesboro High School and JMU.
Curry went into the Virginia Tech Hall of Fame in 1996, and Bill Matthews, the former player, coach and administrator, was inducted in 1993. Chuck Noe went in the Tech Hall in 2009; he played at Virginia and was an assistant with the Cavs, and the head coach at VMI and VCU. Noe coached hoops, football and baseball at Madison County High School in 1950-1951. After his coaching career, he was a radio sports host in Virginia; he passed in Richmond in 2003.
While an assistant coach with Portland, Wetzel and the staff worked out Curry before the NBA draft in 1986. “He made every shot. He had such a quick release,” noted Wetzel, who would later greet Curry when they faced each other in the NBA when Wetzel was coaching. Curry was a first-round pick of Utah.
David Driver is a Harrisonburg native who played baseball at Turner Ashby, Harrisonburg Legion Post 27, EMU (one light-hitting season) and for Clover Hill in the RCBL. He is the co-author of “From Tidewater to the Shenandoah: Snapshots from Virginia’s Rich Baseball Legacy,” which is available on the websites of Amazon and Barnes and Noble and at daytondavid.com. He was the sports editor of the Daily News-Record from 2019-21 and worked for the paper in the 1980s. He is also the author of “Hoop Dreams in Europe: American Basketball Players Building Careers Overseas,” which is available on Amazon. The inside design of the book was done by AFP.