Join Todd MacCulloch (MBHOF Class of '09) live with the Seattle Times to talk about his playing days at the University of Washington and in the NBA, his pinball career and much more in a live chat on Wednesday at 2:00 pm Manitoba time at seattletimes.com . A native of Winnipeg, Todd played college basketball at the University of Washington and became one of the top centers in school history. He was an all-Pac-10 First Team selection during his final two years at UW and in his final three seasons led the NCAA Divsion I in field-goal percentage (only the second player ever to accomplish the feat). MacCulloch was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the 1999 NBA draft and went on to play four seasons in the league, but was forced to forced to retire prematurely due to a genetic neuromuscular disorder that affected his feet. After retiring, he focused his attention on pinball, a game he has been passionate about from an early age . He currently ranks 113th in the world in the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) and will host this year's World Pinball Championship at his home on Bainbridge Island from June 8-10. Join the conversation Wednesday at 2pm at seattletimes.com. READ TRANSCRIPT...
Wednesday May 23, 2012
12:02 | Todd MacCulloch: Thank you for joining me for this chat. Hopefully we'll have a lot of fun with it. I welcome the questions.  |
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12:04 | Todd MacCulloch: I have High Speed 2: The Getaway. My favorite pinball machine of all time is probably Whitewater. It's been around a long time and it's kept its interest. I've lost count how many times I've played it (although there is a counter, so I should check). I love the depth of some of these games, and Whitewater took me about five years to get to the ending. I find them extremely interesting and challenging to get to the end of what has been programmed. In some games, it takes a long time, sometimes years. That one challenged me for a long time, and it's still unusual to get to the end of a game. But the thing about pinball is that it's fun whether you get to the end or you just play for fun. |
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12:06 | Todd MacCulloch: I watch a lot during the playoffs, so right now is a great time to be an NBA fan. I'm sort of torn with how well Oklahoma City is doing. I really like their youthful play, they're not figuring tradition in the way of the Lakers, they feel like it's their turn. I wish they were still representing Seattle, but I really like their style of play and their coach. And from what I've heard is Kevin Durant is a really great guy and it's nice to see him succeeding. |
12:06 | Todd MacCulloch: That being said, San Antonio looks pretty good, not having lost yet, with a nice mix of talent and youth, they look like they could be the team to beat. I think the winner of this series between San Antonio and Oklahoma City will be the eventual champion. |
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12:08 | Todd MacCulloch: I used to go to the roller skating rink a lot in junior high and wasn't chosen a lot for couples skates, so I ended up scrounging, looking for nickels and dimes trying to make a quarter so that my friends and I could play a game called Pinbot, a great game from 1986. We'd look for change enough to get a game going. And then I used to go to the bowling alley with a group from church and there were three kids in the group, and as soon as I could bolt as quickly as I could, I would run to the arcade and play a Pinbot. |
12:09 | Todd MacCulloch: I would keep playing pinball even when it was my turn to bowl, so they would get a little frustrated and would wonder why I was even bowling when it appeared all I wanted to do was play pinball. |
12:11 | Todd MacCulloch: And I'm from Winnipeg, which is the Slurpee capital of the world. So I would go to 7-Eleven and get my daily or bi-daily Slurpee and play a game of pinball. Even though I wasn't good at the game, I think pinball is designed to attack you or come at you from a lot of different senses. There's lights and bells and whistles and magnets and ramps, so I think it engages you in a different way than a virtual machine would or something that's a little more two-dimensional. I think the tactile feel and the kinetic energy is something that never changes. I've been playing for 20 years and it hasn't changed. It's an amusement park under glass is what I've heard it referred to. |
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12:12 | Todd MacCulloch: A little bit of fishing. I love to fish. My father does a lot of salmon fishing, so I like to get on the boat with my dad and my brother. A little bit of fly fishing, too. My dad's on Vancouver Island, so we do some fishing there. We also used to take an annual trip to Alaska, until my brother drove the rental car into the woods. That's another story. |
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12:13 | Todd MacCulloch: As we are doing this interview, I got a call from the Slurpee technician that the Slurpee machine is up and running. He's a Slurpee expert. He let me know that things are online, so when we're done here, we're going to crank up some Canadian Slurpee. |
12:13 | Todd MacCulloch: There's no air in this mixture, it's just all slush. Just sweet frozen cola. Get ready for a brain freeze. |
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12:16 | Todd MacCulloch: I think it's about relationships, like anything else. With Detlef Schrempf coming here, it lead the way for someone like Patrick Femerling. I think it helped with getting some Canadian guys here, getting to know Coach Romar. For me, Seattle is as much of a Canadian city. It helps that it's only a couple of hours up I-5. They don't have as much of a concept of us having igloos or something. I had some coaches who were recruiting me asking if there was a telephone in their hotel room. I think there is a lot of talent in Canada, and with there only being one NBA team there now, there has been some more exposure for the game. I think for UW, especially with British Columbia being so close, it's just establishing relationships. If someone has a good experience here, like I did, it could be a good opportunity for them to play at a high level and improve. |
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12:18 | Todd MacCulloch: I get to see them play on television quite a bit, and make it to a game or two a year. I think Coach Romar has done a great job with the guys that he's brought in and the defense they've been playing, the up-tempo basketball, the unselfishness, really putting in the effort on defense, even if the shots aren't falling. I like the culture that he's created there. He'd be the kind of guy I'd love to play for. |
12:19 | Todd MacCulloch: I had the basketball team come over in September to just have a team-building event, where we could watch the Huskies play Nebraska in football and play some pinball. Those guys are competitive, and in whatever they're doing, they want to win, so it was fun to expose them to a different game. And I think the coaches really had fun with that, having grown up in an era where pinball was more visible. Took them down memory lane. |
12:20 | Todd MacCulloch: I think Coach Romar was the best. I've loved Coach right from the start. But he told me, "Don't sleep on pinball." He just meant he was excited about the game and he understood, so I liked him even more after that. |
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12:21 | Todd MacCulloch: It was a lot of fun playing with Allen Iverson. He was high energy, and he really made the game a lot of fun. He played at a million miles an hour. It was fun trying to get out and fill a wing. It was hard to get out in front of him. I remember that we had a fast break when he was getting close to the scoring title, and I didn't know what he was going to do. But he threw it to me for a dunk. He had an infectious personality, and on the court, he had unbelievable desire to win games and power through situations. Just trying to match his effort on the court was usually enough to get us a win. |
12:22 | Todd MacCulloch: He would have the plane cracking up or the bus. Very likeable. Just a fun guy to have around. |
12:22 | Todd MacCulloch: He used to tell me that I didn't have bones in my hand, because of the way I caught the ball. It was a nice compliment. |
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12:24 | Todd MacCulloch: In college, I used to have some trouble with Tim Young at Stanford who was a seven-footer who was big and strong. And staying with the Stanford theme, I used to have a hard time with Mark Madsen, getting position on him. I just thought I needed to do better against these guys if I was going to get to the next level. I saw Mark Madsen get to the next level and win a championship, and with that same effort and tenacity, he was able to help win an NBA championship for the L.A. Lakers. |
12:26 | Todd MacCulloch: In the NBA, obviously Shaquille O'Neal comes to mind as someone who was difficult to match up with. He often got the better of our matchups. He was definitely the toughest and was just sort of overpowering with his strength and speed. And two of my coaches from my time with UW, Coach Hughes and Giacoletti were watching the Finals game and Shaq was getting pretty good post position and stepping into the key. And one coach turned to the other and said, "He's just letting him walk in there. He's not trying to stop him." And the other said, "He's Shaq. It's not like you can stop him." |
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12:28 | Todd MacCulloch: I never did. I thought that was a pretty incredible shot that he hit, and I wish we could replay it and have it go another way. We certainly had several chances to get a rebound and they did their job. Rip Hamilton turned out to be quite a player. Give him enough chances and he'll get it in. Fortunately for them, they started their play with enough time to get a rebound and get it in. But no, Rip Hamilton didn't get any wrath. |
12:29 | Todd MacCulloch: He was nice enough to never bring it up, but when I did bring it up, I told him he ruined my life. He handled it with class. :) |
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12:30 | Todd MacCulloch: Thank you for your compliment. I enjoy doing it, and I hope to do it again. The opportunity hasn't presented itself in the last few seasons, but it is a job that I enjoyed and I liked the people that I worked with. |
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12:32 | Todd MacCulloch: I think they're going to do just fine. It's always interesting when you lose guys like Ross and Wroten to the NBA. Who's going to step up and where are those points going to come from? It's never hard to get guys to take more shots. And I think Abdul Gaddy is going to take up some of the scoring responsibilities. They have enough depth to fill some of those big shoes. |
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12:33 | Todd MacCulloch: I think it's a great move, and as great a player as Steve Nash is, he's a better person. And I hope he can be the same sort of manager. He's extremely good with people, and I would think that any young Canadian basketball players would be happy to be a part of his team. I think the future is bright for Canada basketball, with him taking on a larger role. I have a lot of faith in his abilities to take Canada to the next level. |
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12:36 | Todd MacCulloch: My mother used to be in a curling league, and I hear that there was a lot of fun to be had at the bonspiel (the name of a curling tournament). I find curling to be a lot of fun, and one of the few games that there used to be ashtrays within a few feet of the playing surface. Canadians take their curling very seriously. I used to babysit for a family where the father when he died, he had his ashes placed in a curling stone. And part of the ceremony was that he was curled down the ice. |
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12:39 | Todd MacCulloch: As of right now, it's a bilateral neuropathy, some nerve damage in the soles of my feet. I've found some success with fenzin treatment system in reducing the nerve pain. It hurts all the time; there's always pain in my feet. I find when I keep on a sport sandal, the nerve pain is reduced a little bit. So it all depends on how much I'm on my feet and what I'm doing. So for exercise now, I go to the pool and swim every day. It helps to alleviate some of the pain. During preseason workouts with Philadelphia, I felt like my sock had fallen down and rolled up in my archway. I was convinced, but I took off my shoe and my sock was on. That was the first symptom. |
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12:42 | Todd MacCulloch: I set the sensitivity low on my machines in general. Machines in my home don't see too much abuse, so it's fun to let people play a little bit. For the tournament, the tilts won't be as low. They'll be set at a higher sensitivity. In the first tournament I held here, I think we had to order a dozen tilt bobs, because my machines either didn't have them or had come off. I'm not too rough on them, and as long as people aren't throwing them around too much, they should be fine. |
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12:46 | Todd MacCulloch: I never played in the NBA with Steve Nash, but I did play in the Olympics with him and several summers with Team Canada. How do you get better than playing with Steve Nash? He's so unselfish and it's almost like he's taking half the shot for you by the way that he delivers the ball so you can do something with it. Part of my decision to go to Philadelphia was that Jason Kidd was there, and I knew that Steve knew him, so I asked him what Jason was like. And Steve told me that he was like playing with a way better version of me. And I thought that was a great compliment. We used to do a drill to warm up in practice, and the coach would ask us to put the ball in our strong hand, and most of us would put the ball in our right hand and dribble up the court. Then he would ask us to put the ball in our weak hand and most of us would put the ball in our left hand and dribble up the court. At that point, Jason Kidd would just let the ball bounce in front of him because he refused to admit he had a weak hand. Jason Kidd was as good with the left hand as the right. That was really a fun year. |
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12:49 | Todd MacCulloch: No. My brother-in-law has a hoop so at Thanksgiving or at barbeques, I might shoot a little on his rim, but I can't really jump. So I set shoot a little bit. One of the last times we were there, my nephew wanted to shoot in the driveway. I had to move my car, so I went to move it, and I saw my brother-in-law had his car parked on the grass, so I thought I would put my car there, too. But I didn't know where the soft spot on his grass was for the septic tank. So everybody looked out the window and wondered why I was tearing up my brother-in-law's lawn. I had some explaining to do. It turned into a bit of a gong show. I did love the game, and when the game is taken away from you, you realize how much you loved the game. I definitely wish I had another ten years to play. When you have the world's best job, you don't want to have that cut short for any reason. If I had stayed healthy, I probably would just be winding down about now. |
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12:51 | Todd MacCulloch: My wife grew up in Poulsbo, so we live close to where she grew up. I always thought I would end up on one of the islands around here, whether it was Vashon or Bainbridge or Mercer or San Juan. And Bainbridge seems like a great community, with excellent schools and a nice community of caring people. And very convenient to get to Seattle. It makes it easy to hop a ferry and be in a world-class city. Or you can just be on the island and stay away from it. |
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12:57 | Todd MacCulloch: It's the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) championships. 64 of the world's top players from 12 different countries will be competing in the tournament, here at my house. The two guys that run the IFPA are Josh and Zach Sharpe. A few years ago they started ranking pinball players based on data they have on existing tournaments. They started with several hundred people, and they've increased interest and now they have more than 13,000 people in over 30 countries. They've really increased participation. You never really hear people say, "Pinball, that's the worst game." Most people have some sort of attachment, and they're helping people reconnect. They decided to have this ranking system, and at the end of each year, if you're high enough in the rankings you get invited to this invitational tournament. This year it happens to be in Washington and here in Bainbridge. A couple of years ago I played in London. It's mostly produced in the United States but it's enjoyed in a lot countries. It's June 8-10. |
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12:59 | Todd MacCulloch: That's a tough one. I'll get on the court with Jon Brockman, he can be my foreman. Gotta have Detlef Schrempf. He can handle the ball. We'll just have big boy ball...throw Christian Welp there and James Edwards. Christian Welp can score and block shots. |
1:00 | Todd MacCulloch: Let's take Brandon Roy as our sixth man. So we have a ball handler and an all-around great player. |
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1:01 | Todd MacCulloch: I would love to. My daughter's four and my son is two, so you'll have to wait awhile. But I'd love to see them be Huskies. We saw a Husky dog walking down the street, and Dylan said, "Go Huskies!" So we have him pretty conditioned. |
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1:02 | Todd MacCulloch: I think he does have a chance to play in the NBA. He's got an NBA body, and he's got great strength, and he runs the floor really well. He's got a good feel for the game. I think with his athleticism at that size, he definitely has a chance to play at the next level. |
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1:03 | Todd MacCulloch: Unfortunately, I appreciate the sentiment, but it's not open to the public. It's by invitation only. |
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1:06 | Todd MacCulloch: The Chappelle Show was interesting. I have a comedian friend who lives in New York and he's friends with Dave Chappelle. The show wasn't on the air yet, and he said, my friend Dave Chappelle has this show that's going to be on Comedy Central and he's written this script with you in it. I thought, I love Dave Chappelle, he's hilarious. So they sent me the script and I wasn't sure I was OK with it. I kind of said, thank you for the interest but I don't think I want to be a part of it. But they went ahead and used my image and did the skit without me being a part of it. |
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1:07 | Todd MacCulloch: Not in the near future, but as my kids grow up and as they start to play on teams, I'll likely get involved with helping coach their teams. But probably not until they get to an age where they start playing on teams. |
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1:08 | Todd MacCulloch: Yes, I do. Thank you for the compliment, and you don't miss from outside of five feet if you don't shoot outside of five feet. I tried to keep my percentages high and shoot as close to the hoop as I could. I do think that the Sixers have a chance against the Celtics. A lot of their players are multi-talented and can handle the ball and pass the ball, and defensively it helps them match up against a lot of different players. |
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1:11 | Todd MacCulloch: I don't sign a lot of autographs any more, but the next time you see me at Staples, whether it be the arena or the office supply store, go ahead and ask me. I don't think I've ever signed an autograph as a pinballer -- most players are more interested in the game than in watching as sports. |
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1:13 | Todd MacCulloch: The one that I remember is when we went to Boston and clinched the Eastern Conference championship in Boston in Game 6. There weren't a lot of our friends and family who went. The only one I knew about was my father had made the trip. So I asked management if I could take my father on the team plane, and it was OK'd. So I got to take the flight back with my teammates and my father celebrating the championship. It was a great moment getting to share that with my dad. |
1:13 | Bob Wickwire, Times: Todd has time for a few more questions. |
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1:16 | Todd MacCulloch: Wing Dome. At the time, I didn't appreciate wings. I thought they were too much work for not enough meat. A lot of my friends liked the really spicy stuff, and I wasn't much for spicy. So my friends would get the six-alarm stuff, and I went to Jack-in-the-Box and get a couple of cheeseburgers and then pick up a Slurpee and meet them back at Wing Dome. At the time, I think I had about six dollars in my bank account, and my friends bet me to lick the tray clean for 50 bucks. And I did it, and it burned for days. And they wouldn't let me drink my Slurpee for five minutes afterwards, which is torture in and of itself. |
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1:19 | Todd MacCulloch: I do keep in touch with a number of Huskies that I played with, probably closest is Chris Thompson, and I also stay in touch with Chris Walcott, Grant Leap, Donald Watts from time to time. I still talk to Dan Dickau, Patrick Femerling, Jason Hartman and Alex Lopez. I had a nice conversation with Mark Sanford not too long ago. Those are some of the guys I still talk to. |
1:21 | Todd MacCulloch: My best moment was probably the Oregon game at home when I had the go-ahead bucket with maybe only five seconds left, and then Kenya Wilkins ran the length of the court and in order to keep him from making the shot, I had to block the shot. And then I started high-knee running down the court, and people said I hadn't run that fast during the game. Or ever. I was quite ecstatic. |
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1:22 | Todd MacCulloch: Shorties Bar on Second and Bell in Belltown is great, as well as the Seattle Pinball Museum on Maynard Street and Full Tilt ice cream in Ballard. And Add a Ball in Ballard as well. Those are some good spots. |
1:23 | Todd MacCulloch: Thanks very much for the questions. Go Huskies, and keep that silver ball rolling. |
1:23 | Bob Wickwire, Times: Thanks for your participation and a big thanks to Todd for taking time to chat today on seattletimes.com. |
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