About Al Brightman

(September 22, 1923 – June 10, 1992) was a professional basketball & baseball player and coach.

Born in Eureka, California, he played collegiately for the California State University, Long Beach, and was drafted by the Cleveland Indians out of Wilson High School in Long Beach, Ca.

 

 

He played for the Boston Celtics during the 1946–47 BAA season for 58 games. He became the first Celtic to score 20 points in a regular season game. Brightman served as a player-coach for the Seattle Athletics of the Pacific Coast Professional Basketball League during the 1947–48 season.[1]

 

 

He later coached Seattle University from 1948 to 1956, leading the Chieftains to 4 NCAA Appearances and 1 NIT appearance. He had a coaching winning percentage of .726. He went on to coach the San Francisco Saints of the American Basketball League in part of 1961-1962 and the Anaheim Amigos of the American Basketball Association in the 1967-68 season.

  • Brightman was 24 with an already impressive resume, when he was hired by Seattle U in 1948 to coach baseball and basketball.

 

  • He was an all-state basketball and baseball player at Wilson High in Long Beach, Calif., then averaged 25 points for Morris Harvey College before joining the Navy during World War II.

 

  • After the war, Brightman might have played professional baseball, as he was the top catching prospect in the Cleveland Indians organization. He suffered a shoulder injury throwing balls from home plate over the outfield fences.

 

  • His baseball career derailed, he joined the first Boston Celtics team in 1946, finishing second on the team in scoring and becoming the first Celtic to score 20 points in a game.

 

  • He left the Celtics after a season to become player/coach of the Seattle Athletics in the Pacific Coast Professional Basketball League. When that league went defunct in 1948, Seattle U hired him.

 

  • Al Brightman was as big as it got in Seattle sports in the 1950s.

 

  • He was a big man with a big personality, loved by players, fans, and the media.

 

  • He turned Seattle U into a national powerhouse, helped bring down the Harlem Globetrotters, and with 180 coaching victories at age 32, the possibilities seemed endless.
  • Brightman’s baseball teams were successful, but it was basketball that put the school on the sporting map. Brightman was ahead of his time, eschewing the methodical pace used by most teams, and having his team play at an ultra-fast tempo.

 

  • In 1952, Seattle U went to Madison Square Garden and defeated New York University 102-100, the first college game in which each team scored at least 100 points.

 

  • “Brightman wouldn’t let us call timeouts,” Johnny O’Brien said recently. “He said, ‘We’re going to run other teams out of the building.’ And we neverhad a scouting report. He did his scouting reports two minutes into the game.”

 

  • Brightman’s best move was his most unorthodox. Early in Johnny O’Brien’s career, Seattle U was losing at halftime to Western Washington, and Brightman moved Johnny to center, where he faced players much taller.

 

  • “We outscored them 60-17 in the second half and I scored 27 points,” said Johnny, a three-time All-American and the first college player to score 1,000 points in a season. “I was a center from that point on.”

 

  • Marveled Harney: “How did Brightman know to put Johnny O’Brien in the post?”

 

  • Perhaps Brightman’s greatest victory came in 1952 when the Chieftains (now the Redhawks) defeated the Harlem Globetrotters 84-81 with Johnny O’Brien scoring 43 points. It ranks among the great games in Seattle sports history.

 

  • Brightman’s magnanimous personality and famous connections made it easy to find jobs.

 

  • His friends included actor and former Celtics teammate Chuck Connors, tennis star Bobby Riggs (“they met in the Navy where they hustled ping-pong games,” said Al’s son Ed), baseball Hall of Famer Bob Lemon and Hall of Fame basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.  “(Tarkanian) said he paid to watch Al coach, not to watch the game,” said Ed Brightman, 61, who played baseball for a season at Seattle U.

 

  • Immediately after leaving Seattle U, Al Brightman became a local TV celebrity, doing everything from giving sports reports to preparing his favorite recipes. He moved to the L.A. area where he sold cars, got a degree in English at Long Beach State, and became a high school teacher and coach for several years.

 

  • He also coached in the American Basketball League before it went defunct in 1962, then spent a half season coaching the Anaheim Amigos in the ABA in 1967.

 

  • In 2008, Seattle University inducted Brightman into its Hall of Fame. For those who played for him, it should have been sooner.

 

  • “I just thought Brightman was the greatest,” Harney said. “You would run through a wall for him because of his personality, his competitiveness and his congeniality. I can’t say enough about him. He has had a fabulous impact on my life.”

 

  • O’Brien recently pondered the irony that Brightman could have had a career like Wooden, who won the first of his 10 NCAA titles eight years after his altercations with Brightman.

 

  • “I think Brightman deserves more credit than was ever afforded to him,” said Johnny O’Brien. “Maybe that’s because he got in a scuffle with a legend. But Brightman was the guy who put it together (at Seattle U). He was a marvelous guy.

 

  • “He was a dominating, positive influence on the people he worked with. That’s about the best way I can describe him.”

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