At Marquette, BLT Meant Butch Lee Time
3/29/2001 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 29, 2001
Jeff D'Alessio
The Sporting News
Butch Lee led Al McGuire's Marquette Warriors to the 1977 national championship. Lee, who gets back together with players from that team every five years, joined most of them again last month in Milwaukee for Al McGuire Night, a tribute to the late, great Marquette coach. The Most Outstanding Player of the 1977 Tournament, Lee lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he was born and now owns Sign-a-Rama, a company that makes signs.
TSN: Did you get a chance to speak with Coach McGuire before he passed away?
BL: Yeah, I spoke with him in October on the telephone. He didn't think he was going to make it past November, which he did. But he sounded the same. I remember every time I would speak with Al, he would say, "Butch, you were the best." I thought to myself that when he talked to Earl Tatum or Lloyd Walton, he would probably say, "Earl, you were the best" and "You know, Lloyd, you were the best." In my last conversation with him, he asked me if I knew who Bob Costas was. And I said, "Sure." And he said that Bob Costas had just called him from Australia. This was during the Olympics. And he said, "But Butch, your call was the best." So even until his last moment, he still had that same attitude.
TSN: Did you enjoy him as a broadcaster?
BL: Oh yeah. We had heard many of the terms that he used, but I guess that was all new for the rest of the country. As Dick Enberg said, Al just cut right to the chase. Al would say in one line what people usually need two paragraphs to say.
TSN: Got a favorite Al McGuire saying?
BL: He used to talk about Jerome Whitehead being an aircraft carrier. I liked that one.
TSN: What about "seashells and balloons"?
BL: I didn't understand that one. But that was one of his favorites.
TSN: Is he the one who came up with "BLT"?
BL: Yes. He wasn't the coach my last year, but I guess he figured he'd start off with me since I was one of his top players. He used to talk about BLT when he was commentating. And everyone was like, "What's BLT?" Butch Lee Time. Crunch time.
TSN: Was it ever not BLT?
BL: For the whole time I was at Marquette, it probably was BLT.
TSN: I read that when Coach McGuire came to visit you on a recruiting trip, he put his money in his sock because he thought someone might mug him. True or false?
BL: I don't know if that happened with me, but he recruited a lot of players from the inner cities. He said he wouldn't recruit anyone that had grass in front of their house. I grew up in Harlem in New York and for some outsider, it probably seemed like a scary place.
TSN: Coach McGuire announced during that 1977 championship season that he was hanging it up at the end of the season. Did you guys see that coming at all?
BL: No, no. It was a shock to everyone. We were in a restaurant in downtown Milwaukee. I think it was after class. We were waiting for him to show up and we saw our trainer come in and he was crying. We didn't know what to expect. We knew it was something serious, but we didn't know what. We had such great teams there, no one ever expected Al was going to leave the team. It was a shock. It all happened so fast.
TSN: Why'd he get out when he did?
BL: I don't know. I heard him joking one time, saying, "(CBS) made him an offer he couldn't refuse." It probably had to be to do it right at that time because we had such good teams.
TSN: How'd you guys react to the news?
BL: Not very well. We didn't lose too many games in Milwaukee and I think after that, we lost three in a row. It affected us pretty hard.
TSN: Did you want to win for him, send him out on top?
BL: I'm not sure. That's a great storyline, but that season, in the preseason, we were ranked the No. 1 team in the country. The year before, we finished (behind) that great Indiana team. So we had a great team and from the beginning of the season, we felt we could be the national champs. When Al announced his retirement, that threw us for a little spin, but we were still a top team, even though our record didn't show it because we lost those games.
TSN: In the NCAA Final Four book, they have pictures of all the championship teams, going all the way back to 1939. They're all pretty much the same boring poses -- guys in their uniforms either sitting on a bench or standing in a semi-circle with their arms at their sides. Then you come to Marquette's page, and there's a photo of you guys all gathered around a Rolls-Royce in different-colored tuxedoes. What's that all about?
BL: That was in a car museum we had over there in Milwaukee. We just had different types of team pictures for our yearbooks. That was one of the favorite ones. Another time, we were in different religious outfits. I remember I was dressed up like a monk.
TSN: How'd your title team get along?
BL: We had a great bunch of guys. As a matter of fact, when I went to Marquette, I really liked the guys on the team and that's what made me go there. At that time, I really didn't know a lot about Al McGuire. But I really liked the guys on the team -- Lloyd Walton, Bo Ellis, Earl Tatum. That's pretty much what attracted me to Marquette.
TSN: What are your most vivid tournament memories from '77?
BL: The one thing I remember is that we played Kansas State in the second game (a 67-66 Marquette win). We were losing by 10 points the whole game. And that sticks out in my mind as the hardest game I ever remember. So much was at stake and here we were, down by so many points.
TSN: After you beat North Carolina for the championship, Coach McGuire broke down on the bench. Had you ever seen that side of him before?
BL: No. There were a few seconds left on the clock. When he knew we were going to win the game, everyone saw Al got a little emotional. You'd never really seen him like that before. But it was a great moment.
TSN: Remember how you celebrated that night in Atlanta?
BL: No, I don't. But I'm sure we went out. We were a pretty rowdy bunch.
TSN: Do you watch much college basketball down there in Puerto Rico?
BL: I go to the holiday tournaments they have down here. I thought I might see (former Marquette assistant Rick) Majerus this year, but at the time, he was hurt and didn't make the trip. I spoke a little bit with Bobby Huggins of Cincinnati. I watch a lot of games.
TSN: Who do you enjoy watching?
BL: This guy, Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, he's probably the closest thing to John Wooden, getting to the Final Four so many times. That's incredible. I didn't put this together at the time, but Al probably would have done the same thing if we didn't have so many players go hardship. Imagine if you had guys like Larry McNeill and Jim Chones and Maurice Lucas. If they would have stayed around, Marquette probably would have won a lot more championships. We always had guys leaving for the pros.
TSN: How'd you get into the sign business?
BL: Actually, I had a nightclub for about eight years in Ponce. Caf? 149. But that took up too much time. I wanted something a little bit more relaxing and tranquilo.
TSN: What kind of nightclub are we talking about?
BL: We're talking about dancing, a lot of food, long lines. The people here like to drink and party, so I figured that was one way I could start making money, get settled and get to know the island. I wasn't a bartender, but I remember Al McGuire used to say being a bartender and being a taxicab driver are your masters and your Ph.D of life.
TSN: What kind of music were you listening to back in your Marquette days?
BL: Jazz. David Sanborn, Michael Franks, guys like that.
TSN: What did you watch on TV?
BL: Not Saturday Night Live because we were always playing on Saturday nights. I was always a big Perry Mason fan.
TSN: Got a favorite movie of all-time?
BL: I really liked It's A Wonderful Life. This is from Henry David Thoreau: "If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams," you will pretty much meet those dreams. That's what I liked about that movie, and I kind of feel like that, too.
E-mail Jeff at jdalessio@sportingnews.com.
