Thank you, Al Attles. Your legacy will live on.

OAKLAND, Calif. – “Sit down next to me, son.”

I will always miss hearing Mr. Alvin Attles say those words.

I was a huge basketball fan since childhood who grew up about 40 miles away from Oracle Arena in San Jose. One of my childhood heroes was former Golden State Warriors star Sleepy Floyd. My father took me to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s last game at Oracle and I also saw Michael Jordan and Dominque Wilkins in their prime as a teen. And it’s inevitable as a hoop fan with the Warriors in your backyard, especially as an African American, that you knew the history of “The Destroyer,” Alvin Attles.

Attles was the longest-tenured employee in the NBA, having been affiliated with the Golden State Warriors franchise since 1960 until his death after a long illness at the age of 87 on Tuesday in his Oakland Hills home. The former HBCU North Carolina A&T star joined the Philadelphia Warriors as a fifth-round pick in 1960. With the Warriors, Attles starred at guard for 11 seasons, became the franchise’s first African American head coach and general manager and lastly served as a community ambassador.

Attles and then-Washington Bullets head coach K.C. Jones were the first Black head coaches to face each other in the NBA Finals in 1976. Attles also became the second African American coach to lead an NBA team to a title in 1975 and coached 13 seasons. Attles still has the Warriors franchise record for wins as a coach (557).

“How have I been with the Warriors for 60 years? As I like to say, they never caught up to me,” the always humble and humorous Attles told ESPN’s Andscape from his home in 2019. “But on the serious side, I’ve been very fortunate with everything being in the right place and the right time. There have been some other people who I would say deserved it, but they weren’t able to stay for whatever reason. I played with some outstanding players. I coached some outstanding players. And I just happened to be in the right place.

“I wasn’t a guy to make a lot of noise, I didn’t cause any problem, never got into any trouble with anybody. I just came to play, and back then those were the kind of players they wanted. They don’t want guys who make a lot of noise or whatever.”

Attles scored 17 points for the then-Philadelphia Warriors when Hall of Famer and close friend Wilt Chamberlain scored an NBA-record 100 points against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on March 2, 1962. Like Chamberlain, Attles is in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He was honored with the John R. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and named as a contributor in 2019.

One thing that Attles took a lot of pride in was his friendship with Chamberlain and playing in the legendary 100-point game with him.

“When Wilt scored 100, the announcer was saying on the loudspeaker, ‘That’s 80. … That’s 82,’ ” Attles told me in 2019. “And once he got close to 100, we weren’t only concerned about that, but the people doing the scorebook for the team, they would come by and say, ‘You know, Wilt … we’re getting close.’ But Wilt would never say, ‘Give me the ball.’ But we would say, ‘Give him the ball.’ ”

“The Knicks were out there trying to stop him. Everybody was trying to stop him. But what happened was by the time he did all this, they knew, ‘hey, you can’t stop him.’ The only way you’re going to stop him is keep him out of the game. Wilt Chamberlain and I once combined to score 117 points. That is a fact.”

In 2009, I left The Boston Globe to return back home to the San Francisco Bay Area to cover the NBA for Yahoo! Sports. Living in Oakland, it was only natural that I was covering a lot of Warriors and Sacramento Kings games. It just so happened that Golden State had a rookie by the name of Stephen Curry at that time. But at that time, I was actually more in awe of seeing Attles sitting on press row at every Warriors home game.

I made it a point to pay my respect to Attles at every game I attended at Oracle Arena during the 2009-2010 season and beyond, stopping by simply to say, “How are you doing Mr. Attles?” Often times, his son, Alvin Attles Jr., or his grandson were sitting next to him watching the Warriors. But there were games when he was sitting alone. And on those occasions when he was, he would bless me by saying, “Hey, sit down next to me, son.”

It was such an honor and joy to sit next to coach every single time. I’m sure Warriors vice-president of media relations Raymond Ridder probably was a little bothered that I left my coveted press seat open, but he also understood the gravity of sitting next to Mr. Attles. While the Warriors were playing, I would ask coach about the Black pioneers of the NBA like Earl Lloyd, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton and Chuck Cooper, playing with Wilt and playing against Bill Russell, what it meant to be one of the first African American head coaches and GMs of the NBA, coaching Rick Barry and more. When I did ask about the Warriors of that time, it was always a sun-is-shining opinion from Attles, never offering a bad word on anyone or the team.

Eventually, those beautiful moments led to a friendship with coach and his family. I was able to get quality time with coach away from the arena. And his family trusted me to talk to him about his legacy as he fought through health issues from his home or his beloved Buttercup Grill in Jack London Square. And for that, I thank the coach and the Attles family. There haven’t been many things that I have encountered over my 25 seasons covering the NBA more meaningful than quality time with Mr. Attles.

After the 2018-19 season, the Warriors moved across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Thankfully, the Warriors didn’t put Mr. Attles in a close seat that was far away from where the media resides now. But as his health concerns grew, seeing him at games in recent years was rare. The No. 16 jersey is still hanging from the rafters in the Chase Center, making his presence known at Warriors games.

While Mr. Attles’ days on this Earth are now over, his legacy with Warriors, the NBA, the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Bay Area and the game of basketball lives on forever. Thank you, coach.

“I’ve never been caught up with how many points I scored,” Attles told ESPN’s Andscape in 2019. I always thought about, am I doing the right thing? Where am I going? Whether it’s in school, whether it’s in college, whether it’s after college with the Warriors, I really cared about doing the right thing for other people.

“My legacy? Just do what I think is the right thing. That’s all I concern myself with.”