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Dave Bing: And it would have been easy for me to make an excuse not to succeed because of the challenge, but I wanted to overcome that. And that has happened.

Chris Velardi: In fact, it's happened in pretty much everything Dave Bing has set out to do in his remarkable career. Glad you found the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast, I'm Chris Velardi, Director of Digital Engagement and Communications in 's Office of Alumni Engagement and a 1995 Syracuse grad. In the forward to Dave Bing's new memoir, Attacking the Rim, out November 17th from Triumph Books, NBC sportscaster, and Syracuse University trustee and alumnus, Mike Tirico points out that Bing could be introduced by a different title of a claim every day of the week. College All-American, Hall of Famer, founder and CEO of Michigan's largest steel company, mayor, life- changing mentor. Bing has embraced all of these roles with his signature drive. As he lays out in his memoir and shares with us in this Cuse Conversation, his philosophy of attacking the rim applies to much more than just basketball.

Dave Bing: Absolutely. Basketball was a mainstay in my life for a period of time, but beyond basketball, there were years when I was in the business arena. There were years when I was in the political arena and now they're years that I'm doing the foundation work on mentees. So it's been a lot of different areas for me to dip into and try to remember some of the important things that happen in each one of those careers.

Chris Velardi: Tell me a little about that philosophy of attacking the rim and why it proved successful for you no matter what arena you were in.

Dave Bing: Well, I think, attacking around the rim is about being aggressive in terms of what it is that you wanted to achieve. And all through my life, I've had challenges. Going back to childhood when I had an eye injury in an accident that is with me today, and it would have been easy for me to make an excuse not to succeed because of the challenge, but I wanted to overcome that and that has happened. When you look at the childhood and the area that I grew up in, in Washington DC, and compare that to what's happening in our country today, especially in urban America, it's not a big difference. I grew up at a time and a place where a lot of people in my community were challenged. And whether it was being Black, or whether it was being poor, whether it was having a subpar education system that you grew up in, all of those things was a challenge to me as I grew up. And as I see it today, when I fast forward, I see a lot of young men in particular, men of color, they have the same kind of challenges.

But if you succumb to those challenges, then there's no way to succeed. And I'm lucky that I had a two parent home, my dad was there and he worked hard to make sure that my mother, her responsibility was to take care of the home and raised the kids. And today is quite different because with so many broken homes, with so many fatherless homes, these young boys don't have much of a chance unless somebody comes to try to help them. Now, I had a lot of help growing up, even though my dad worked, I had surrogate dads if you will. My

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coaches in junior high and high school, the guys who were directors, the direct centers that I grew up in, some of the guys in the neighborhood that I grew up in, who were older than me, they were all my mentors.

And when I look back and see all the people that played a role in my life, mentoring was very important. And so that's what I've gravitated to make sure that I don't take for granted that these boys are going to be successful. They won't be successful unless there's somebody in their life that believes in them and supports them.

Chris Velardi: You gravitated to it, but it is something that you were doing long before it became your main mission. Obviously, the stories of and one we're interested here in Central New York, Derek Coleman of course, are two that you took under your wing. That obviously had an impact on you, knowing that you were able to provide that type of mentorship to them.

Dave Bing: No doubt about it. Derek and I have a very unique relationship in a positive way. And I met Derek because he was not a Detroit guy. And I was already done with my career when he moved from Alabama to come here, I knew his high school coach and his high school coach asked me, could I help this kid, he doesn't know his father, he's a big kid, he's growing, he needs somebody as a role model and I like for you to be that? And so when Derek and I met, it was funny because I was in my business and he was trying to figure out who I was and he had no idea. And as he saw people coming in and talking about basketball, he finally asked me the question, did you play? And I said, yeah, I played.

Chris Velardi: A little bit, I did all right.

Dave Bing: Who did you play for? Yeah, I played for the Pistons. And then I think he started doing a little research and he was a little embarrassed, but that was okay because I think our relationship was not built on basketball. It was built on two Black, young people that cared for each other. They wanted to make sure that there was an avenue for success. And obviously, he's done well. And we are still very close friends, but you got another one though, Todd Bergen is another one from Detroit and all of us are in contact with each other consistently. So there's a little Syracuse club here in the metropolitan Detroit area, where we get together so often and we reminisce and we talk about things that Syracuse did for us.

Chris Velardi: And those are, I can imagine, just amazing stories. One of the things that is a consistent theme through your life and certainly plays out in the book is that idea of relationships. When you first came to Syracuse, it was the relationships that you started to build with two pretty well known names here on campus that made you think, I think this could be a place for me.

Dave Bing: Yeah. Syracuse, when Fred Lewis became the coach and recruited me in my senior year in high school, there were no Black players at the university in terms

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of basketball. So the guys that he introduced to me were two Black football players, Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy and John Mackey, who was an All-American. And those are the two guys that recruited me and convinced me that Syracuse was a good place for me to come. When I looked at the history of Syracuse from a basketball perspective, it was obvious that they needed some talent. They had lost 27 games in a row over a two year period. So one of the things that was obvious to me early on is that with that kind of losing record, I wasn't going to play.

And I had never been to Syracuse or upstate New York, and Syracuse was the last school that I visited. And with a new coach coming in, with an uptempo kind of game, I thought it was a good match for me. So I made the decision to come to Syracuse and that's one of the best decisions that I think I've made in my life.

Chris Velardi: And when you were here, you got to know a guy who, some of us may be familiar with named Boeheim, who hasn't left.

Dave Bing: No, Jim, our freshmen team was pretty unique. Fred, our coach did a nice job of recruiting some pretty good players. My roommate, my freshman year was Frank Nicoletti, who was an All-American high school player out of Weehawken, New Jersey. And then Sam Penceal out of Boys High in New York had already committed to Syracuse. Then you had Rex Trowbridge and Dick Ableman out of the upstate area. And there was a guy from Long Island, Norman Goldsmiths, who was an outstanding high school player. But the other guy that was going to be very incremental in our upcoming season was a guy who was a transfer from West , Chuck Richards, and Chuck was about 6'8", 6'9", but he had to sit out a year because he transferred.

And back then as freshmen, you had to play freshmen basketball, doesn't matter how good you were, you had to play freshmen, you couldn't play varsity. And that freshmen team was the turnaround in Syracuse basketball because our freshmen team was better than the varsity team. And so there were games that students would come and watch the freshmen game and when the varsity played, they left, and that was an embarrassment, I think, to the varsity team. But that was the beginning of the change. And as we became sophomores, the program started to turn around. And by our senior year, we were positioned to make a record for scoring 100 points, a game at the collegiate level, no other team had ever achieved that. And we missed that by just a few points in the last game that we played.

Chris Velardi: Yeah. And it's amazing to think about how you describe it as that freshmen team being a turning point for Syracuse basketball and the fact that the guy who's coaching today was a part of that freshman team. I don't think it's any small coincidence. Is it?

Dave Bing: Not at all. Jim was an outstanding high school player, but there were no more scholarships available when he wanted to come to Syracuse. So he came as a

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walk on, and without a scholarship. And we lost one of the players from the freshmen team who flunked out Frank Penceal. And so there was now a scholarship available for Boeheim in the sophomore year. So I run with Frank Nicoletti my freshman year, and then Jimmy and I were roommates sophomore and junior years. And so we really formed a really great friendship and a relationship that's still ongoing today. And I'm so happy and proud for him in terms of what he's achieved and how he's taken a program and made it one of the top 10 programs in the country.

Chris Velardi: He's often referred to as, he could be the mayor in Syracuse, you were the mayor in Detroit. And that's one of those things that it sounded like as I read your telling of it, was not part of the plan. It wasn't the rim you were going to attack, but it became the thing that the city that you fell so much in love with needed. What was that experience like at such a difficult time for the country and particularly for the City of Detroit?

Dave Bing: Yeah. When I came to Detroit, after Syracuse, I didn't know much about the city other than the fact that Motown was a big thing and the automotive industry was huge, but I didn't know much about the city until I got here. And being selected the second player in the draft in '66, everybody should be elated about being drafted that high. But the problem that I had was that the number one draft shorts was from the University of Michigan, right around the corner from Detroit. Detroit wanted Cazzie and I understood that. I thought for sure, I was going to go to New York because when you think about Syracuse alumni, for example, I mean, New York City, that's a huge alumni place for Syracuse graduates. So I wasn't very comfortable.

Chris Velardi: The Pistons wanted Cazzie and you wanted to go to New York?

Dave Bing: Absolutely. It didn't work out that way and because of that I'm in Detroit and it's my home now and I'm glad it worked out that way. In New York, I'm sure my life would have been quite different, but Detroit, with all of the challenges that it's had over the years, when it came time for me to make a decision after basketball and after business, politics never really entered my mind. And because of the issues that we've been going through in the city with our young mayor, I got drawn into politics. It's not something that I wanted to do, but it was something that was needed at that point in time because people had lost faith and trust in the mayor and city government. And those things are earned over time. And I think the years that I was here doing the things that I did outside of basketball, I had earned the respect of a lot of people in the business community and the community at large.

So when it was time to try to make a change and figure out who was going to be the next mayor to replace Kilpatrick, I sat on a committee looking and interviewing people who we thought would be the next mayor. And it all came back to, okay, this guy's good, this guy's okay, but we think you should think about this. And ultimately, after a couple of months, I was convinced that

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Detroit needed somebody like me to go into the office and help the city to regain its prominence.

Chris Velardi: And treat it, you said politics wasn't what you were looking to do, but this wasn't about politics, this was about rebuilding and relationships and really taking a hard look at some of the things that just had to get done.

Dave Bing: Yeah, well, because I've always been involved in the community, especially with young people, but because I had a 28 year career in business, I knew every CEO in this metropolitan area, as well as all the political people. And the business community was the driver for me, because a lot of the business community said, we're not going to reinvest in Detroit until we get somebody we can trust in the mayor's office. And we think you are the guy, we can work with you, we can support you. And if you decide to take this job, it's thankless. I had built up a lot of Goodwill over my years here in the city, as an athlete, as a business person, as a community activist, et cetera. So it was a big risk for me because politicians, I mean, you're lucky, if you get 51% of the people to support you, that other 49, they are a problem. And so I'm saying to myself, okay, is this something I really want to do?

And it wasn't what I wanted to do, but it was necessary. So the opportunity to take that position was strong enough for me to say, this is more important than me. I need to do this for the people here in this city. And as long as I get support and help, I think I can be a success

Chris Velardi: As people hear your story and read your telling of it, what do you want them to come away with? What's a driving message that you hope people take away from this?

Dave Bing: I think the message is that regardless of how tough things are, how many challenges one may have in front of them, if you don't attack the challenge, there's no way that you're going to make the changes that are necessary. Coming out of high school, I could have gone to almost any major college in the country, I was a high school, All-American one of the top five players in the country, but Syracuse was a challenge. They needed to turn a program around and I could have been a catalyst to help do that. So rather than take a back seat and say, no, I don't want to do this, it's too hard. I took that challenge and I attacked it. And the same thing is true from a business perspective, people told me early on when I was challenged to start my business, why are you doing this? You got a good reputation, you've made some money as an athlete, to go into the automotive business is one hell of a challenge. You sure you want to do that? What I answered was, yes, I'm ready to do this.

Syracuse helped me academically and prepared me to go into a second career. So many ex players think that they should be a coach or they're going to be a scout or whatever the case. I never looked at myself as a coach or a scout. If anything, in basketball, it would have been general manager, but they had no

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Black general managers in the NBA. So I wasn't so naive to think, okay, I can be a general manager. So I prepared myself all those years as a player, trying to figure out what I wanted to do as my second career, and as an NBA player, I was done at 34, so I'm still a pretty young guy.

Chris Velardi: That's it, you could have kept going, you could have kept playing. And there was no doubt about that.

Dave Bing: Yeah. I could have played another two or three years in my opinion, without embarrassing myself, but I didn't do that. When I left, I knew it was the right time and the right thing to do. I wasn't ready to be a business owner, so I had to prepare myself by getting exposed to the arena that I was going to go into as an automotive supplier.

Chris Velardi: I do want to point out, as I read the book, I thought the one place where you didn't attack the rim, and it was the smartest approach, was when you took that first job in the business. You didn't say, I'm ready to be a salesman, I'm ready to get out there. You wanted to learn first, you hung back and took it all in before you attacked.

Dave Bing: Yeah. It took me two years in the business getting exposed to what it was all about before I thought I was ready to try to run a business. Once again, the education background and the preparation of trying to get ready to run a business was very important. And a lot of people will have this dream, will have this idea, but aren't prepared to do it. And fortunately, because I made decent money as a player, I had money to invest into the business. And the tough thing for Black businesses in particular is that we don't bring financial equity to the table for a lot of different reasons. My seven years that I worked in the bank was all part of my process. I wanted to meet the right people, decision makers, so that when it was time for me to go into the business, there were people that knew me, that have confidence in me that would say, there's not a lot of risk in this guy.

He's putting his own money in, he's done the necessary things to be ready for this, so we will support him. And all of that worked out pretty well for me. So after 28 years as an entrepreneur, I was ready to enjoy life until somebody said, well, we've got another job for you.

Chris Velardi: And as you put it out several times, you're not one to sit back and just soak it in. You got to be doing. Final thing I want to ask you. And again, I appreciate spending some time with you and having this conversation. But when you look at the orange family and being orange and being a part of this, obviously it's something that stays with you from the first time you step on campus forever. What does it mean to you to be a part of this greater orange family?

Dave Bing: Well, it's very unique, there's absolutely no doubt about it. And it goes beyond basketball. There are a lot of alumni that were not basketball players that I have

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relationships with. And Syracuse provided me the opportunity to learn, to get an exposure that I never had because I grew up in DC, in the inner city. And from kindergarten to 12th grade, there was nobody who didn't look like me. And when I go to Syracuse with 14,000 undergraduate students, and they were about a hundred, that looked like me. So all of a sudden I got exposed to a new world and I made friends, not just all in a sport's arena, but in the general population. And some of my best friends today were people that I met at Syracuse. So it's had a tremendous impact on my life and how I look at things and things that I want to support and people that I want to support.

It's just so happens that we got president elect Joe Biden, where there's a Syracuse connection. And when I was mayor, Joe and I met on more than one occasion and talked about what Syracuse meant to us, and now that he's going to be our next president, I'm looking forward to that because he was instrumental with the Obama team to help me when I was in office. Detroit would have been very difficult if the Obama administration had not come in and help me and help this city. And our city is on its way back, we got a tough fight, but I look at that Syracuse connection and say that there's a history here, that's very positive. And I'm so happy that he's going to be our next president.

Chris Velardi: We've got a link in the description of this podcast today, Bing's new memoir, Attacking the Rim from Triumph Books. And we of course, thank him for spending a little time and sharing some stories with us. We truly hope you're enjoying the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast. We've got some great guests lined up over the next few weeks. Please subscribe, share, leave us a review. You can find the podcast on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Music, Google Play, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Chris Velardi, stay safe, stay well and go orange.

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