1. Horace Albert Brightman was an American professional basketball player and coach.
33 Facts About Al Brightman
1. 2.
Al Brightman was the head coach of the Seattle Redhawks from 1948 to 1956.
3.
Al Brightman unexpectedly left his role following an altercation with UCLA Bruins coach John Wooden during a 1956 game and struggled to return to the collegiate ranks.
4.
Al Brightman had brief stints as a head coach in the American Basketball League and the American Basketball Association during the 1960s before retiring permanently from coaching.
5.
Al Brightman spent the rest of his life as an apartment manager until his death in 1992.
6.
Al Brightman attended Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach, California.
7.
Al Brightman averaged a city-record 22.7 points per game and was selected as the California Interscholastic Federation Player of the Year in 1941.
8.
Al Brightman had a short stint playing baseball as a catcher with the Cleveland Indians organisation as a 17-year-old before his career was ended when he injured his shoulder.
9.
Al Brightman averaged 9.8 points per game and was the first Celtics player to score 20 points in a regular season game.
10.
Al Brightman relocated to Seattle with his wife after making a visit there to see his parents.
11.
Al Brightman joined the Seattle Athletics of the Pacific Coast Professional Basketball League as a player-coach.
12.
Al Brightman was the team's leading scorer and only All-League selection; the league went defunct in 1948.
13.
From 1950 to 1952, Al Brightman played for the Madigan Generals, an independent semiprofessional basketball team.
14.
Al Brightman saw an improvement when he recruited the O'Brien twins, Johnny and Eddie, after playing them in a semiprofessional baseball game in Wichita, Kansas, in 1950.
15.
Al Brightman was ahead of his time by eschewing the methodical pace used by most collegiate teams and encouraging his players to perform at an ultra-fast tempo.
16.
Al Brightman did not create scouting reports about his opponents.
17.
Al Brightman's teams made four appearances in the NCAA tournament and one in the National Invitation Tournament.
18.
Three days later, Al Brightman abruptly resigned from his $8,000 per year role as Seattle's head basketball and baseball coach.
19.
Al Brightman denied any link to his incident with Wooden but instead indicated that he had secured a deal to coach a semiprofessional baseball team in Canada.
20.
Elgin Baylor, who was to join the Chieftains the following season, alleged that Al Brightman was drunk during the game and forced to resign.
21.
Al Brightman applied for coaching positions at other colleges but was overlooked because he had failed to obtain a college degree.
22.
Al Brightman was hired as a television host on Channel 13 in Seattle six weeks after leaving Seattle University and became a local television celebrity.
23.
Al Brightman started on weekday afternoon shows before being moved to early morning programming including hosting a pre-dawn cooking show titled Al's Cellar Cafe.
24.
Al Brightman left the job by late 1956 and moved to Long Beach, California, to run a restaurant and then worked at a Douglas Aircraft Company plant.
25.
Al Brightman unsuccessfully applied for the head coaching position of the Washington State Cougars in 1958 but was beaten by his former Madigan Generals teammate, Marv Harshman.
26.
The loss motivated Al Brightman to attain a bachelor's degree in English from Long Beach State University.
27.
Al Brightman coached basketball at Garden Grove High School and sold automobiles to make an income while earning his degree.
28.
Al Brightman returned to Long Beach the following season to coach the Long Beach Chiefs before the ABL folded at the end of 1962.
29.
Al Brightman coached high school and Amateur Athletic Union basketball until 1967.
30.
Al Brightman was a longtime operator of a California resort owned by Chuck Connors who was his teammate on the Boston Celtics.
31.
Al Brightman relocated to Maitland, Florida, in 1971 and worked for a property management business for two years.
32.
Al Brightman moved to Portland, Oregon, and spent the remainder of his working life managing apartment houses.
33.
Al Brightman was inducted into the Seattle University Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011.