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Frank Furtado (1931-2021): Seattle SuperSonics Long Time Trainer Passed Away
ChillyDawg
Member Posts: 1,469
Sonics Forever https://www.sonicsforever.com/blog/frank-furtado-the-cornerstone-of-the-sonics
SPU Falcons: Catching Up With Frank Furtado (2016) https://spufalcons.com/news/2016/7/29/16_gen_July29.aspx
Seattle Times (click for full article) https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/this-one-really-hurts-longtime-sonics-trainer-frank-furtado-dies-at-90/
SPU Falcons: Catching Up With Frank Furtado (2016) https://spufalcons.com/news/2016/7/29/16_gen_July29.aspx
Seattle Times (click for full article) https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/this-one-really-hurts-longtime-sonics-trainer-frank-furtado-dies-at-90/
‘This one really hurts’: Longtime Sonics trainer Frank Furtado dies at 90
Frank Furtado, the longtime NBA trainer who spent more than three decades with the Seattle Sonics, died Saturday at the age of 90.
Furtado’s death was confirmed by his daughter Cherie Furtado.
“He was so giving and loving and hardworking,” Furtado’s grandson Robbie said. “Everybody seemed to know him and everyone always had something good to say about him. He worked so hard to make sure everyone had what they needed. And that’s what he loved.
“When I think of him, he was a great storyteller. … He loved sailing. He loved boats. He loved gardening. He loved sharing stories with people. He would talk to you for three hours if you let him.”
Furtado is survived by his wife Sarah; children Michelle, Cherie, Frank III; grandchildren Robbie, Jessica and Lexie; and great grandson Matias.
Ten years later, NBA great and Sonics coach Bill Russell asked Furtado if he would be the team’s trainer. Sarah joined the Sonics four years earlier in 1970 as an executive assistant and spent 26 years with the franchise.
“He loved teaching and he loved being a coach, but the wrestling program was closing,” Cherie Furtado said. “I remember him saying, I’m sure I’ll probably never get another offer to work in the NBA, but I can always go back to teaching. It was not an easy decision because he was really passionate about being a coach and a teacher.
“Being a trainer in ’74 is not like it is today. … I remember he had to stop by the corner grocery store every day to buy ice because there were no ice machines where they practiced at that time.”
Furtado, who won two NBA trainer of the year awards, retired in 2000 and remained with the Sonics as an assistant trainer until the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008.
On Feb. 23, 2001, the Sonics named their practice facility “The Furtado Center” in honor of Frank and Sarah.
“Frank was that rock that was around basically from the beginning until the end,” said Hall of Famer Jack Sikma, who played nine years (1977-86) with the Sonics. “He’s going to be missed. He lived life the right way.”
“He was really my guy,” Payton said. “He really took care of me. If it wasn’t for him, I would have missed a lot of games. He was respected by all of us. He demanded respect. He made us do the things we had to do. We had to get in for treatments. He was the one always figuring out what kind of treatment we need.”
During his 13-year Sonics tenure, Payton suffered through an assortment of injuries, including a chronic back ailment. However, he started 993 of 999 games in Seattle.
“One time when my back was really bad, Frank went and found a guy in Wyoming and got a (hyperbaric) chamber where he had me sit in there,” Payton said. “At the time, things like that were a little crazy. But if Big Daddy said do it, you did it. … He was the one he found that chair that I used to sit in all the time.”
Frank Furtado, the longtime NBA trainer who spent more than three decades with the Seattle Sonics, died Saturday at the age of 90.
Furtado’s death was confirmed by his daughter Cherie Furtado.
“He was so giving and loving and hardworking,” Furtado’s grandson Robbie said. “Everybody seemed to know him and everyone always had something good to say about him. He worked so hard to make sure everyone had what they needed. And that’s what he loved.
“When I think of him, he was a great storyteller. … He loved sailing. He loved boats. He loved gardening. He loved sharing stories with people. He would talk to you for three hours if you let him.”
Furtado is survived by his wife Sarah; children Michelle, Cherie, Frank III; grandchildren Robbie, Jessica and Lexie; and great grandson Matias.
Ten years later, NBA great and Sonics coach Bill Russell asked Furtado if he would be the team’s trainer. Sarah joined the Sonics four years earlier in 1970 as an executive assistant and spent 26 years with the franchise.
“He loved teaching and he loved being a coach, but the wrestling program was closing,” Cherie Furtado said. “I remember him saying, I’m sure I’ll probably never get another offer to work in the NBA, but I can always go back to teaching. It was not an easy decision because he was really passionate about being a coach and a teacher.
“Being a trainer in ’74 is not like it is today. … I remember he had to stop by the corner grocery store every day to buy ice because there were no ice machines where they practiced at that time.”
Furtado, who won two NBA trainer of the year awards, retired in 2000 and remained with the Sonics as an assistant trainer until the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008.
On Feb. 23, 2001, the Sonics named their practice facility “The Furtado Center” in honor of Frank and Sarah.
“Frank was that rock that was around basically from the beginning until the end,” said Hall of Famer Jack Sikma, who played nine years (1977-86) with the Sonics. “He’s going to be missed. He lived life the right way.”
“He was really my guy,” Payton said. “He really took care of me. If it wasn’t for him, I would have missed a lot of games. He was respected by all of us. He demanded respect. He made us do the things we had to do. We had to get in for treatments. He was the one always figuring out what kind of treatment we need.”
During his 13-year Sonics tenure, Payton suffered through an assortment of injuries, including a chronic back ailment. However, he started 993 of 999 games in Seattle.
“One time when my back was really bad, Frank went and found a guy in Wyoming and got a (hyperbaric) chamber where he had me sit in there,” Payton said. “At the time, things like that were a little crazy. But if Big Daddy said do it, you did it. … He was the one he found that chair that I used to sit in all the time.”
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SPU Falcons (click for full article) https://spufalcons.com/news/2021/12/7/21_gen_Dec7.aspx
From the wrestling mat to the basketball court, Frank Furtado was a man of a thousand stories.
One of them was about a Seattle Pacific wrestler who was down 14-2 early on, then got an escape and a takedown in the final seconds to win his bout against an opponent from the crosstown rival Washington Huskies.
"The coaches from each team had to carry the guys off. They couldn't walk," Furtado recalled during a 2016 interview. "It brings tears to be because that's one of those moments when you see two fellas who had extended themselves completely."
Another of them was about the "daily doubles" his Falcon wrestlers would do, going upstairs, downstairs, and through Brougham Pavilion.
"It was one of the big things the guys hated and I loved," he said, laughing. "I kept a chart of how many laps you made If you didn't' make more than two (in three minutes) you were in trouble."
Yet another was from his time as the trainer and traveling secretary with the Seattle SuperSonics, recalling the lowest of lows after losing Game 7 of the 1978 NBA Finals to the Washington Bullets, to the highest of highs just one year later when they beat those same Bullets in five games.
"I sat in the locker room afterward, and nobody moved for more than two hours," Furtado said of the Game 7 defeat. "It was like the president had died right in front of us. At the start of (the next) season, there was this ripple like, 'We've got it this year. We have it.'"
Give him a couple of minutes or a couple of hours, and Furtado had a story to share.
His own life story, intertwined with Seattle Pacific from the mid-1960s through the mid 1970s, ended last Saturday, Dec. 4, when he passed away in Seattle at the age of 90.
An announcement on services has not yet been made.
Furtado graduated from then-Seattle Pacific College in 1960, then went on to George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, where he earned his master's in exercise science. While he was there, he coached wrestling and basketball.
But Furtado was more than just a coach. He also was a teacher, and one of the classes he taught was athletic training, as he shared his knowledge of the many medical and nursing skill he learned in the Navy as a medic during the Korean War in the 1950s.
When the wrestling program was discontinued after the 1974 season, Furtado had to decide what was next.
"Next" became the head trainer position with the Sonics. Furtado started with the team in 1974 when legendary Bill Russell was the coach and general manager.
Furtado stayed in that capacity for the next 26 season, retiring in 2000. But new trainer Mike Shimenski asked Furtado to stay on for a couple seasons as his assistant.
Those "couple seasons" lasted until 2008 when the team relocated to Oklahoma City.
Furtado also was the trainer for the North American Soccer League version of the Seattle Sounders in the 1970s – and, naturally, that job also produced its share of stories.
"My wife said, 'All summer long, you came home with an English accent,'" Furtado said, as the players on those teams were primarily from Great Britain.
Furtado is survived by Sarah, to whom he was married for 68 years, three children, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
And of course, he is survived by all of those anecdotes.
"When I think of him, he was a great storyteller," his grandson Robbie said in a story published on Tuesday by Seattle Times reporter Percy Allen. "He would talk to you for three hours if you let him."