Bill Fitch spends part of his days coaching Abby, his border collie who does some amazing tricks. Several times a week, he plays golf.

One can see the lawyers for the Los Angeles Clippers circling the above paragraph with a highlighter. Perhaps they'll be entering this article as Exhibit E to show Fitch is not trying to get another job.

But the lawyers might be discouraged to learn what Fitch does each night. At 6 p.m., the NBA games get under way on television at Fitch's home on Lake Conroe, about an hour north of Houston, where he lives with Joni Nelson, his partner of 20 years. For the next six hours, Fitch, who has two satellite dishes, watches as many games as he can and even charts plays.

``I'm an unemployed basketball coach, so I keep up with the league,'' said Fitch, 69, former head coach of the Cavaliers from 1970-79, the team's first nine seasons.

The Clippers beg to differ. They believe Fitch, whom they fired as head coach in 1998, is a retired coach. The distinction is important because the two sides are suing each other over the $4 million that was remaining on the final two years of Fitch's contract.

Language in the contract stipulates that the Clippers would be able to deduct 50 percent of Fitch's earnings during those two years for any kind of work he was able to obtain. But they don't believe Fitch made a legitimate effort to find work.

``He had an obligation to seek any other type of employment, and he didn't,'' said Clippers general counsel Bob Platt, noting Fitch has not used an agent to find any kind of coaching job and has not performed any work in an NBA-related media capacity.

The Clippers hold nothing back in court documents. Obviously, they've been paying close attention to Fitch's doings. It is noted that Fitch plays golf ``three days a week'' during the summer near a vacation home he owns in New Mexico.

``Fitch's conduct, in directing his energies to his leisure activities, and not using reasonable efforts to seek or accept any other employment, exhibits bad faith, through inactivity and sloth, depriving the Clippers the benefit of their bargain with Fitch,'' the Clippers argue in their lawsuit. ``Fitch has by his actions given the appearance that he is retired.''

Fitch said he ``could have gotten a job at McDonald's,'' which one supposes would have satisfied the contract. The Clippers then would have been able to deduct $2.57 per hour from the $4 million, assuming Fitch made the minimum wage of $5.15.

But Fitch said he only has had an interest in being an NBA head coach and insists that he has tried to land such a position. Fitch said teams haven't been standing in line for his services.

``The lockout season (of 1998-99) was a lost cause,'' said Fitch, whose 944-1,106 career mark ranks him fourth in NBA history in coaching wins and first in losses. ``Then you're looking at a guy who was 67 and had had a heart attack (in 1996) . . . Most of the teams were hiring ex-players. Nobody wanted a disciplinarian or somebody who would raise hell or throw chairs. That was all against me.''

Clippers lawyers no doubt will look for holes in that argument. They'll find other coaches in their late 60s who are going strong. They'll find coaches who have come back from heart attacks. And maybe they'll also look for chair throwers, although that list gets a bit short after Fitch and Bob Knight.

A fine start

Of course, Fitch was able to flourish after being fined $5,000 in his first season with the Cavs (that was big money in 1970-71 when Fitch made $33,000, although $3,000 of the fine eventually was returned) for hurling a chair across the court in disgust over an official's call. Fitch went on to lead the Cavs to the Eastern Conference finals in 1976. After leaving the Cavs, he led Boston to the NBA title in 1981. He took Houston to the NBA Finals in 1986. And during the 1990s, he coached longtime cellar dwellers New Jersey and the Clippers into the playoffs.

The actual chair that Fitch tossed is at the home of his mother, Lucy, 90, who lives across Lake Conroe. At Fitch's home, there is a commemorative chair he received shortly after the incident. It is inscribed, ``An Irishman that throws chairs as well as bull . . . ''

That chair sits in the upstairs room where Fitch watches all those games. The walls and tables are plastered with mementoes from Fitch's 25 years as an NBA head coach.

There are pictures of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish from his glory days with the Celtics. There are photos of Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, the two 7-footers who looked as if they would revolutionize the NBA when they began playing together in the mid-1980s. And there is plenty of Cavs memorabilia.

There are Cavs glasses that were supposed to have been filled with wine and handed to fans for the team's inaugural game until team officials learned they didn't have a liquor license. There's a big photo of the Richfield Coliseum from the ``Miracle of Richfield'' season of 1975-76, when the Cavs set what was then an NBA single-game attendance record. And there are several photos of Fitch with venerable Cavs broadcaster Joe Tait, who was hired in 1970 by the team upon the recommendation of Fitch, who had remembered his small-college broadcasts in the Midwest in the late-1950s.

When the Cavs travel to Houston, Tait routinely rents a car and meanders his way up to Fitch's home. The two, who met when Fitch was at Coe (Iowa) College and Tait was at Monmouth (Ill.) College, then will swap stories from their small-college days or from the early days of the Cavs.

``His nine years in Cleveland were outstanding,'' said Tait of Fitch, who compiled a 304-434 mark during that time. ``He started out with one of the worst teams in the history of the league. But he had a sense of humor and his people skills were so good that he was able to diffuse the media away from the shortcomings of the team and they focused instead on his one-liners and his jokes. And then he was able to build the team up.''

Disciplinarian

Fitch was an old-school coach who worked his players hard, but he found plenty of opportunities to mutter great lines. The most famous came when he was named to coach a Cavs team that would start 1-27. ``Just remember,'' he said. ``The name is Fitch, not Houdini.''

Maybe Fitch never made it to the NBA Finals with the Cavs, but he cherishes his memories in Cleveland as much as he does with any other team. Perhaps more. When Fitch was named one of the NBA's 10 best coaches of all-time during 50th-anniversary celebrations at the 1997 All-Star Game at Gund Arena, he was asked what type of commemorative jacket he wanted.

``They thought I was going to say Boston,'' said Fitch, named NBA Coach of the Year with the Cavs in 1975-76 and with the Celtics in 1979-80. ``I said, `No, give me Cleveland.' I wanted the wine and gold colors . . . I loved the fans in Cleveland. They ended up being the best for all we went through. To me, when we beat Washington (in the first round of the 1976 playoffs), that was the championship. We would have won it all if (center Jim) Chones hadn't have broken his foot (on the eve of the Eastern final against Boston).''

Fitch remains closer to members of the ``Miracle of Richfield'' team than perhaps any other group of players that he coached. Fitch sees many of them when he regularly returns to Cleveland during summers for a charity golf tournament held by Cavs owner Gordon Gund. He flew to Cleveland in December 1999 to be on hand when guard Austin Carr was named one of the top five players in team history.

``Bill came from a military background, and was a disciplinarian,'' remembers Carr, a Cav from 1971-80. ``That carried over to his coaching style. But I think that galvanized us during the `Miracle of Richfield' year. We all hated how hard he made us work, but we were all together on it, and it made us better.''

When Cavs from the 1970s get together, invariably the topic turns to how hard Fitch worked them. Once, after playing a very poor afternoon game at Chicago, the players figured they would be heading home after the plane touched down that evening in Cleveland. They figured wrong.

``He took us to Baldwin-Wallace, where we used to practice in this gym that was so dark that it was like a dungeon,'' said Chones, who was with the Cavs from 1974-79. ``We had a 4 1/2-hour practice. I remember (forward) Jim Brewer saying, `We ain't mules.' ''

Carr and Chones weren't always smiling during Fitch's workouts. But, as time went on, both realized that Fitch's emphasis on defense and precision running of plays made them better. Bird soon found out the same in Boston.

``I remember seeing Larry Bird in a Marriott right after Bill went to the Celtics (in 1979),'' Chones said. ``He said to me, `How in the hell did you play for Fitch all of those years?' Well, when Bird retired, he said the best coach he ever played for was Bill Fitch.''

His disciples

Bird, who coached Indiana from 1997-2000, went on to become one of many NBA head coaches that Fitch helped groom. Currently, there are six NBA head coaches -- Rick Carlisle, Don Chaney, John Lucas, Phil Jackson, Rudy Tomjanovich and Lenny Wilkens -- who once played for or served as an assistant under Fitch.

Lucas, in his first season heading the Cavs, gives a lot of credit to Fitch for helping get him on a path that eventually would lead to coaching. In 1985-86, Fitch was coaching the Rockets and Lucas was his point guard. Lucas was coming off a second stint in drug rehabilitation, so Fitch kept what he called a ``tight leash'' on him.

``He wouldn't let me go anywhere,'' Lucas said. ``He'd make me sit in his room with the coaches after games until 4 a.m., and we'd eat pizza while we were watching films. He taught me the game of basketball. He told me that I could be a good coach in this league.''

Unfortunately for Lucas, Fitch couldn't watch him 24 hours a day, and his drug problems eventually resurfaced. Fitch waived Lucas in March 1986 and ordered him into a third rehabilitation, which worked.

``Bill Fitch saved my life,'' Lucas said. ``He knew that life was much more important than the game of basketball.''

Time well-spent

To this day, Fitch is still helping people. He is actively involved with Parents Against Cancer, a Houston charity that has raised more than $1 million for the Texas Children's Hospital since being formed four years ago.

Fitch has helped raise funds through auctions, golf benefits and other events. Each season, he makes arrangements for one of the hospital's patients to serve as an honorary ball boy or ball girl at a Rockets game.

``We had a 10-year-old boy this year who has bone cancer,'' Fitch said. ``He was on crutches, and we took him down there. He met (Cuttino) Mobley, (Steve) Francis and (Maurice) Taylor. It was just the happiest day for him. One of these times I want to use John when the Cavs come in.''

Aside from his annual trip for Parents Against Cancer, Fitch only travels to the Compaq Center a few times a season to see NBA games in person. He usually selects games that feature the Rockets facing a coach he helped groom. He's planning next week to see Detroit, coached by Carlisle.

Fitch watches the bulk of his games on his satellite dishes. Some games he'll tape and later review. He'll take notes on how teams are adjusting to new rules. He'll call out upcoming plays from his armchair.

``He almost always knows exactly what teams are going to do at the end of a game (when going for a last-second shot),'' Nelson said.

Fitch is also pretty good at coaching Abby. She can fetch as well as any dog and catch balls in mid-air as well as any center fielder. Abby has one specialty that must be seen to be fully appreciated.

Fitch gets outs a pitching wedge and drops several tennis balls on the floor. He then whacks balls to Abby, who snags them from about 6-feet away.

``If Bill could have trained players like he trained that dog, he never would have lost a game,'' Tait said.

Clippers officials might be wondering just how much time Fitch has spent in recent years training his dog. Abby has yet to surface in court documents. But there's still time since Platt predicts the case won't go to trial until late next year.