George Gillett Jr., owner of Gillett Evernham Motorsports, speaks to the media prior to the start of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Checker Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway on Nov. 11, 2007 in Avondale, Arizona.
“When we were in the East or Midwest, the call would come by 11 p.m. or midnight. I was waiting for the call that night and it didn’t come, so I went to bed. At 2 a.m. the phone rang, and it was a grown man who was sobbing: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. … we beat you tonight.’ It was Red Klotz, the player-coach of our opponent, who had played for the old Baltimore Bullets in the NBA. He was a specialist in the two-hand set shot.”
By now, Gillett Jr. seemed ready to dribble a basketball around his conference room.
“I said: “Red, what happened!?’ ” he continued. “He said, ‘George, you won’t believe it. You guys had a one-point lead with a few seconds left and I put myself in to make sure no one would do anything dumb and you’d win. But somebody threw me the ball. I was almost at midcourt and I just reacted. I let fly a two-hand set shot. Swish. We beat you by one.
“Red later said that ‘fans looked at us that night like we had just killed Santa Claus,’ but I think the Globetrotters won their next 8,829 straight. I can still hear Red sobbing. I told him: ‘Red, that’s fabulous.’ And then we had a press conference – and we got much, much more publicity out of the loss than any of our wins.”
In Gillett Jr.’s view, this wasn’t a loss. It was a public-relations bonanza that had wonderfully fallen out of the sky, his wheels of opportunity in high gear at 2 o’clock in the morning.
Top photo: Canadiens owner George Gillett Jr. cheers with team mascot Youppi! before Montreal’s Bell Centre game against the Carolina Hurricanes on Oct. 13, 2007.