Hall of Fame: Armand Nettles (Newport Harbor)

Richard Dunn

Notorious for game-winning shots, Armand Nettles of Newport Harbor

High was a long-range sharpshooter before his time.

“If we had the three-point line, I probably would’ve doubled my

scoring average, because 80% of my baskets came from beyond what would be

the three-point mark,” said Nettles, a two-time Sunset League Player of

the Year in basketball and All-CIF Southern Section pick as a junior in

1950-51, when Coach Ralph Reed’s Sailors went 15-3 and won a share of the

league championship.

Nettles, however, enjoyed his best moments on the court in his 20s on

a semipro team in Alaska, where he had been stationed in the U.S. Army

Air Corps.

“We would fly everywhere. It was really a great team,” Nettles said of

the semipro squad that featured a handful of former collegiate

All-Americans, including 6-foot-7 Jack Seemanof Toledo.

In addition to the semipro team, Nettles, a 6-4 forward, played on the

service squad and a church league, in which he was the MVP.

“I must have played 150 games in one year, and did it for three years

in a row,” Nettles said. “That’s when I was really in my prime, when I

was about 25, 26 and 27. I was really in shape and had more fun. The

military was like a hobby for me. It gave me a chance to play on all

those teams.”

One of Nettles’ teammates on the Alaskan semipro team, which would

frequently fly down to play sponsored teams in the Pacific Northwest, was

a high school basketball coach with good connections. One day, he told

Nettles he could get him a college scholarship anywhere in the country.

Nettles, who had no intention of going back to college because he

didn’t like school much, didn’t think his teammate was serious, so

Nettles picked Kentucky, which, at the time, was the top program in the

nation under legendary former coach Adolph Rupp.

“I was just kidding, but he picks up the phone and calls Adolph Rupp

and they start talking for about 30 minutes. He actually knew who Adolph

Rupp was,” Nettles said. “It was just a joke for me ... Rupp wrote me a

letter and told me to send transcripts of my grades.”

The recruiting process ended there.

In fact, Nettles earlier had a scholarship offer to attend Seattle

University if he made the traveling squad, which he felt was a slam dunk

considering how well he performed in a weekend tryout playing against,

among others, future Seattle star and Naismith Hall of Famer Elgin

Baylor.

“I was young. And I didn’t want to sit on the bench,” Nettles said.

“They had Elgin Baylor and two guards returning from the year before and

all these high school hotshots coming in, so I thought I’d be on the

bench.

“But, when I look back, in hindsight I realize how stupid I was. I

could have gotten an education and sat on the bench and watched Elgin

Baylor play every night on a team that went to the NCAA title game (in

1958). I could’ve played on a great team, plus gotten an education.”

After a stellar cage career at Newport, Nettles played at Orange Coast

College for one year, then was drafted in the service during the Korean

War conflict and didn’t play basketball for three years. That’s when a

friend told him about Seattle U.

At Newport Harbor, Nettles was the only Orange County player to earn

All-CIF recognition his junior year in 1950-51, and, as a freshman,

helped the Tars’ Bee team capture the league championship.

The first Newport varsity player to score 30 points in a game, Nettles

averaged over 14 points per game his junior and senior years -- a high

average at the time.

“He played in an era I call 7AY -- seven years after George Yardley,”

Nettles’ brother, Bob, said. “Armand always wanted the ball. When the

chips were down, he always made the game-winning shots.”

Once, in a 45-44 barnburner over Santa Ana in ‘51, Armand Nettles

canned two free throws with no time left on the clock to provide the host

Sailors with a celebrated Sunset League win.

“I would love to shoot the long shots,” said Nettles, the latest

honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame.

Nettles, whose family moved to Newport Beach from Oklahoma when he was

6, attended Newport Grammar School, before Newport Harbor.

A retired navy hospital corpsman who spent over 20 years in the

military and earned the nickname ‘Doc’ Nettles in Vietnam, Nettles spent

the last 18 years of his career working in Palm Springs for media magnate

Walter Annenberg.

Nettles took care of his bedridden mother for a few years, before she

died on Feb. 1, 1999, and has since been fulfilling a lifelong dream of

traveling the country in an RV.

He often visits his son in Seattle and is currently staying at a

cousin’s countryside bed and breakfast in Kansas, where he plans to stay

until May, then go see Yellowstone National Park for the first time on

his way to Seattle.