When Ron “Mack” McNabb received a phone call from Pittsburgh Basketball Club owner and founder John Giammarco in December, he thought the topic of conversation would be about normal basketball operations.
“I hadn’t talked to John in a while,” McNabb said. “I really wasn’t expecting him to call, thought he was going to ask me about a summer league.”
To McNabb’s surprise, Giammarco had more important news to share.
McNabb had been selected to be inducted into the Pittsburgh Basketball Club Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in March at Montour Heights Country Club.
“John told me I was inducted, and it was a great honor, a humbling experience,” McNabb said.
Each inductee was granted three to four minutes to give a short speech, and McNabb opened by thanking his parents.
He began with his late mother who had never missed a game of his, either as a player or a coach.
“She passed away six years ago, and she was probably my biggest fan,” McNabb said. “I know when I was inducted into the IUP and Alle-Kiski Valley halls of fame in 2014, she was there and beaming. So, I know she was smiling down on me that night.”
McNabb then thanked his father for providing the spark that would lead to McNabb’s eventual life’s work.
Coach Mack, as he prefers to be called, was a baseball fanatic until about the fifth grade. That’s when his father built a half court in the family’s backyard. McNabb began to fall in love with the game of basketball.
“I continued to play baseball up until my sophomore year of high school, but I just loved the fast-paced nature of basketball,” McNabb said. “I would play all the time in my backyard and, needless to say, by seventh grade, I was fully immersed in the sport.”
What really drew McNabb to the sport was that he could go outside and work out by himself anytime he wanted. He didn’t need anyone to throw a ball to him, didn’t need any ground balls hit to him; it was just him, a ball and the hoop.
From morning to dusk, sometimes even midnight after his dad installed a light, McNabb would work on his shooting, ball-handling, pretty much any aspect of the game he felt needed tending.
As he got older, McNabb was blessed to have good role models to look up to and guide him to be the best basketball player he could be.
His father took him as far as he knew how and eventually took McNabb to Tery Thomspon, who was coach of Knoch at the time.
“He took me under his wing and helped me develop the better aspects of the game,” McNabb said. “Things like a better shooting touch, working with my off hand, and it all helped me develop into the player I became.”
When McNabb made it to the Valley varsity team, assistant coach Jim Elias helped McNabb become an all-around point guard, playing solidly offensively and defensively.
“Jimmy and I would watch film together and he would point out different things,” McNabb said. “He helped with my decision making, my ball-handling. When he was pointing things out in the film room that’s when it hit me, that I would like to be a coach someday.”
Before he eventually made it to the coaching ranks, McNabb enjoyed a successful playing career at Valley and IUP.
As a freshman, McNabb played at Ridge Avenue Junior High School, but would make his way over to the Valley varsity games to watch players like B.B. Flenory, JimJim Hughely and Roger Galo play.
In his sophomore year, McNabb became a varsity starter two or three games into the season and with teammates like Billy Varner, Lance Ballard, Pryor and Cliff Guy the Vikings went on to win 21 games but failed to make the playoffs.
“Fox Chapel won the state championship that year and beat us both times we played them,” McNabb said. “But I felt that if they were the best team in the state, we were the second best.”
Two years later, in 1979, Valley ended up winning a state championship spearheaded by McNabb, Varner, Gosby “Goose” Pryor and Chipper Harris.
Even though the Vikings lost 50-48 against Burrell in the WPIAL championship at Civic Arena, they continued to practice and were ready when they got the call that they were headed to the state playoffs.
The Vikings defeated Altoona, which had 7-foot-1 Rickey Tunstall and 6-8 Louie Smith; then went on to beat South Hills Catholic; Schenley, 74-45 in front of the largest crowd ever at IUP; then the Vikings took down Beaver Falls in the Western Finals before beating Allentown-Allen, 72-66, at Civic Arena to claim the state crown.
McNabb set the all-time assists record that stands today.
“My guys made it easy for me,” he said. “When you got them the ball, there was a high probability they were going to score.”
After high school, McNabb attended IUP and finished third all-time in points and fourth all-time in assists with 340. He held the records for steals and assists in a game, even posting the two top assist games in school history, handing out 13 in a game in 1979 and 12 in a 1980 contest.
“I have since fallen further in the all-time points list and those records have since fallen, but records are made to be broken,” McNabb said.
McNabb beat the two other point guards already on the IUP roster to become the starting point guard as a freshman.
What McNabb really took away from his time at IUP were the highlights of his time there and the relationships he built with his teammates.
McNabb remembers IUP playing Penn State, Pitt and Duquesne every year, and one game against Duquesne is embedded in McNabb’s memory: the night he played against B.B. Flenory his freshman year.
“He was the Dukes’ starting point guard that night,” McNabb said. “I remember telling him before the game that I wouldn’t have been on that court that night if it weren’t for him.”
When he was a high school freshman, McNabb looked up to Flenory and would play him in one-on-one occasionally. The results were pretty messy.
“He would beat the snot out of me both physically and on the scoreboard,” McNabb said. “He would beat me 15-0 nearly every time. I remember one time I came home with a cut lip and my mom was concerned, but I said it wasn’t anything. My dad would say, ‘You keep going down’. And it wasn’t until I was older that I realized what he meant.”
McNabb’s father understood that Flenory was toughening up his son, was pushing him to the best of his abilities and was helping a young McNabb take his game to the next level.
“I saw some improvement,” McNabb said. “I mean, I never beat him, but when I was able to cut the deficits to 15-4 and 15-5, those were small victories in my mind.”
After his playing career, McNabb got right into coaching, first as a seventh grade coach for a year before taking over as the Valley varsity coach at 23 years old in 1984.
The Vikings had won just two games the previous season, but in his first campaign, McNabb finished with a 16-6 record and was named coach of the year.
“It shocked me because I was so young, and there were so many great coaches out there at the time,” McNabb said.
He coached at Valley until 1986, then took the Burrell job in 1990 and coached the Bucs until 2004. In that time, he was named the Valley News Dispatch’s coach of the year a couple of times. McNabb then finished his high school coaching career with an eight-year stint (2012-20) at Knoch where he was named coach of the year three times.
When all was said and done, McNabb believed he compiled a 317-220 record.
“I should know the numbers, but I don’t because I never got into coaching for wins and losses,” McNabb said. “I got in to coaching because of my love for the game and my wanting to pass on my knowledge and to build relationships with the kids.”
McNabb also gives his wife credit for being by his side no matter the outcome during his coaching career. He spent a lot of time in the gym and watching film, but she was always extremely supportive.
“When I lost a game, I was miserable and she would put up with me,” McNabb said. “If we won, I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited. But she was always there for me.”
During his coaching career, McNabb would work with a couple of players on the side, help them develop their game the way McNabb was mentored when he was a young player. Other kids would see this and would ask to join.
“It was after my stint as Burrell head coach, and I was an assistant at Plum, when I said to my wife, hey, I really enjoy doing this,” McNabb said.
From the start, McNabb didn’t have a name for it. People would come to him and he would put them through 90 minutes to two-hour workouts and it got to the point where McNabb was down at the Pittsburgh Legends at the Pittsburgh Mills Mall where he had a court and he came up with the Pittsburgh Basketball Academy name.
Said McNabb: “My gym now is located up in Freeport, and I’m fortunate enough that I work with a lot of beginners, a lot of high school kids, college players and it’s a way for me to stay close to the game and a way for me to give back.”
McNabb works with young players, high school and college players and has even had players who went on to play professional basketball overseas walk through the doors of his academy.
Players like Nolan Cressler who went to Vanderbilt and played over in Croatia for two or three years. His brother Drew, who was a 1,000-point scorer in college, was in the gym all the time.
Anthony Dallier went to Yale and played in Germany for three years, Dom Robb played at Niagara then played in Portugal for four or five years, and Dylan Grazier, who McNabb started working with when he was in sixth grade, ended up the fourth all-time leading scorer at La Roche University with 1,384 points and all-time leader in 3-point field goals with 237.
“I was fortunate enough to work with players like that. When some of these high school kids come in and they’re able to work with players of that caliber, it motivates them to take their game or work ethic to the next level,” McNabb said.
McNabb is retired, having been a sixth-grade math teacher for 34 years at Knoch while he was coaching. He continues to coach at the Pittsburgh Basketball Academy, which fills the need within him to teach.
“It gives me time to reach out to the youth and give back to the game that I love and gave me so much,” said McNabb.