Before he became a Big 5 legend as a coach, Fran Dunphy was a Hall of Fame player at La Salle

Fran Dunphy is a legend in Philadelphia.

Remembered primarily for his illustrious head coaching career, one which spanned 30 years, 580 wins and 17 NCAA Tournament berths between stops at Penn and Temple, Dunphy, the winningest coach in Big 5 history, and Philly basketball are synonymous with each other.

A less-known fact is that Dunphy’s Big 5 roots trace back well before he was hired as Penn’s head coach in 1989. That’s because Dunphy was also a standout player at La Salle from 1967-70. On Saturday, La Salle will induct Dunphy, along with three others, into the school’s Hall of Athletes.

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“It was a good career, but it wasn’t anything spectacular,” Dunphy, who also spent four years as an assistant coach at La Salle, said, humbly downplaying his achievements. “I didn’t score a multitude of career points for La Salle to honor me over somebody else.”

Larry Cannon, one of Dunphy’s Explorers teammates who later played in the NBA and ABA, respectfully disagrees.

“Coach Dunphy was a terrific player that just put his head down and worked hard,” Cannon said. “Fran was an all-around athlete.”

A star baseball and football player in high school at Malvern Prep, Dunphy began playing on La Salle’s basketball team as a sophomore in the 1967-1968 season under head coach Jim Harding. That team included three future professional players in Cannon, Bernie Williams, and Rollie “Fatty” Taylor. Dunphy played sparingly.

His junior campaign, with new head coach and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Tom Gola at the helm, was one of the most successful seasons in La Salle history. Ken Durrett, who went on to be the No. 4 pick in the 1971 NBA draft, joined the future-pro trio. Dunphy was the sixth-man on the team, the “first perimeter player off of the bench,” according to Cannon. The Explorers lost only one game that season (23-1) and finished No. 2 in the final AP poll behind UCLA and Lew Alcindor, who would later change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“He was a very dependable type of player [off-the-bench],” Cannon said. “You knew he wasn’t going to make any careless mistakes and he really valued possession of the ball.”

Despite La Salle’s dominance in 1968-1969, the Explorers were unable to compete in postseason play due to a two-year NCAA probation for “fostering illegal campus jobs and threatening to dispossess scholarship players.”

“The regular season was everything to us,” Dunphy said.

Dunphy would elevate from complementary bench player as a sophomore and junior to a star as a senior.

“It just wasn’t my turn in my sophomore or junior years,” Dunphy said. “But it was my turn as a senior and I tried to make the best of it.”

In his final season as an Explorer, Dunphy averaged 19 points, five rebounds and four assists per game. Although La Salle (14-12) didn’t enjoy the same success as the previous campaign, Dunphy filled a sizable hole left by the departures of Cannon, Taylor, and Williams. He was named the “Most Valuable Player” of the annual Quaker City basketball tournament.

Dunphy admits that he didn’t envision himself embarking on a lifetime of coaching during his playing days at La Salle. But playing with, and against, future professional players, Dunphy gained invaluable lessons when it came to basketball.

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“I think that he has always been a student of the game, always paying attention to what was going on,” Cannon said.

For his remarks scheduled for Saturday, Dunphy said he will discuss the impact of Gola and his Explorers teammates on his career.

“I hope I was a good teammate whether I was playing four or forty minutes,” Dunphy said. “We all need to be great teammates and I hope I was a good one.

“I owe a lot to La Salle … and I am grateful that they are giving me this honor,” Dunphy said. “But the reality is, I owe much more to them than they owe to me.”