Sophomore year…good things happen….
When players come to me, as they sometimes do, and ask what they need to work on, I tell them “everything”! A player has to work hard, especially on weaknesses, and working hard is generally no fun. Most take the advice as kind of insulting, because there must be something they do well, right? The good players, however, take it as a challenge and put in some work. The great players become obsessed with it, but they are few and far between. I just finished a book that my son-in-law, who is a scout for the Seattle Mariners and a graduate of Stanford in economics, gave me called “Talent is Over Rated”, by Geoff Colvin. I can save you the trouble of reading it by telling you that hard work is no fun. Top performers put in great amounts of deliberate practice, but that is not a fun time for them. And they are always wanting feedback, not a pat on the back.
When I came home to Phoenix from Lee College that first summer, I noticed two things right away. I had improved dramatically as a player and thus it became a lot harder to find competitive games around town. I used to go to Perry Park or Pierce Park and play with guys there at night, but quickly realized that those games were no longer interesting. I still went there to work on things, but never played there again. I knew the upcoming year was going to be a make or break for me at Lee. I still wanted badly to play NCAA D1, but there was no interest from anyone at that time. I also knew that if I didn’t land a basketball scholarship, I would have to do as my brother was doing- work my way through college- because my folks could not afford to pay my way. So, I worked hard on basketball in the summer.
Back at Lee in the Fall, the team had added some really good players- a couple of guys from New York and an all-state scoring point guard from Texas. The New York guys were really good, tough players, and playing time was going to be a battle. The new coach, Mike Hefley, ditched the Marine conditioning program in favor of a way more relaxed one. We basically just did open gyms. When the practices began, it became obvious that Coach Hefley was going to keep it simple. Coach MacCormick had no offense and no defense, and Coach Hefley did not radically alter that. He put us into a 1-3-1 set against man or zone and we just balled, and defensively we played man and 1-3-1 zone. I wasn’t going to say anything, because that didn’t work well the last time.
As the season started, and even though I had improved a ton since I first set foot on the campus, I was still not a starter and had games where I played sparingly. Our team was just above .500 and really sort of swimming upstream. When I flew home to Phoenix for the Christmas break, I had some serious doubts about my future in basketball. I decided to just keep plugging, keep working, because you just never know, right? This is advice I give to players today, because what happened next was truly startling. When I got back to Baytown for the second half of the season, and for reasons that I never knew, Coach Hefley had decided to insert me into the starting line-up. We were headed to play in the San Jacinto holiday tournament, which included some very powerful teams along with the hosts, who were the defending national champions. There were going to be a lot of college coaches there to scout this event, much like our Fiesta Bowl Junior College Shootout at MCC. Talk about make or break- this was it. Our team seemed to gel as we went through the bracket, winning the first two games against tough opponents. I was averaging over 20 points and over 12 rebounds a game in those first two. It was instantly life changing, as coaches began to talk to me. I was most impressed with Don Casey, assistant coach for Temple University. I sat up in the stands with him after the second game and, without saying anything about them, he made sure I saw his NIT champion watch and his NIT champion ring. Back in those days, winning the NIT was a huge deal. The NCAA tournament was way smaller than it is now, 32 teams got in, and the NIT was nearly as good, if not better some years. UCLA was dominating the NCAA tournament in those years, so they were getting all the watches and rings from that one, so it was nice to see some other school have something to show. Temple had won it the year before.
The next night, the championship game featured San Jacinto, of course, and us, which was a surprise. The game went right down to the wire, but they beat us by three points. What was good for me, though, was I had gone toe-to-toe with a first team All-American player, Bob Nash, and scored 25 points and had 14 rebounds. I was named all-tournament and when Coach Casey came by and congratulated me, he said he wanted me to visit Temple and become an Owl. Pretty heady stuff. The rest of the season went pretty much the same way for me and I started to be recruited by several D1’s. We had a good season, no brawls, no arrests, no murders, and Coach Hefley stayed with me the rest of the way. I had two games where I got more than 20 rebounds, ended up averaging 20.8 points a game, despite the first half of the season where I didn’t score much. I had to thank Lavoy Darden for the tips on rebounding. He ended up getting hurt and missing a good part of the season. Disappointingly, we lost in the conference semi-finals to Wharton County. I was named second team All-TJCAA, which I didn’t expect, but am still honored to this day, because Texas juco is no joke. Then the recruiting began in earnest.
Temple was at the top of my list, because they were the first and most impressive school that I spoke to. You are allowed five official visits, but it has been my experience at MCC that most guys don’t get past the first or second one before committing. I could have taken five, but the first one I scheduled was to Temple. I flew to Philadelphia and it was an awesome environment for basketball. If you were a student of the game, which I was, it was almost overwhelming. Temple was part of the Big Five, which included, and still includes Villanova, La Salle, Penn, and St. Joseph’s. All the Big Five games back then were played in the Palestra, which is an old arena on Penn’s campus. Coach Casey took me over to see it right away and it just oozed history and basketball. There is a plaque in the lobby that about sums it up for me when it comes to basketball. It reads: “To win the game is great…to play the game is greater…but to love the game is the greatest of all”. Like I said earlier, most guys don’t love it like that. That’s why they don’t put in the deliberate practice.
After seeing the Palestra, I was pretty sure that Temple was it for me. Then some things happened that created doubt. First, Coach Casey took me over to see the legendary head coach of Temple, Harry Litwack. I went into his office and, as I did, Coach Casey disappeared. The office was large, but very dark. There was a light on at Coach Litwack’s desk and he was just out of the beam in the dark. It was like a scene from the Godfather. I heard a voice telling me to come over and sit down, and when I did, Coach Litwack leaned forward into the light. He was old, probably like me now. He was stern and serious, obviously not wanting small talk. He said “Coach Casey says you’re a player, but you’re going to have to prove that to me.” And with that the meeting ended. Coach Casey re-appeared and off we went to meet some of the returning players. Philadelphia kids are tough, arguably the toughest city kids in basketball anywhere. Temple’s team was mostly Philly guys, so some guy from Arizona? Good God, Coach- Arizona? That’s kind of what I felt from them. That night, they took me to the premier of some movie called M*A*S*H. I had never heard of the book or the movie. It turned out to be pretty good. Then we went to a hamburger joint near the campus. Temple sits in one of the roughest parts of Philadelphia and it would not be a good idea to be lost there, but before I knew what happened, they had all filtered out and left me alone. I was able to find my way back to the dorms and they were pretty impressed with that. An Arizona kid. I guess they were checking my toughness. But those things- Coach Litwack and the Philly kids reluctance to accept me, plus the sheer distance from Arizona that Temple was, all gave me pause to think and not sign right away.
A player and his girl friend gave me a ride to the airport when it was time to go back to Baytown. I never saw Coach Litwack again and Coach Casey said his goodbye at the university. He would go on to be the head coach there and be an NBA head coach for two different teams. In those days, there was no TSA checkpoint, so the player and his girl were walking me to my gate. The girlfriend suddenly exclaimed “there’s Muhammad Ali!’ And she was right- coming at us was the champ and his wife and a couple of little kids. Surprisingly, there was no entourage or posse or media or anything. Ali had been stripped of his title by the boxing federation for refusing to report for the military draft. This was during the Viet Nam War, and the country was as fractured as we find it today. To older, white Americans, Ali was a draft dodger. To young people like us, he was the champ who stood up for his beliefs. I would have happily just stood there and watch him walk by, but the girl instantly ran over to him. We followed, wondering if this was not going to go well. It was the opposite- the champ stopped and spent time with people he didn’t know. He was in his prime physically, was gracious, asked us questions, and thanked us when we told him he would always be the champ. Since we weren’t expecting this to happen, we had no paper for an autograph and cell phones didn’t exist, so we had no camera. It was an incredible moment that is still burned in my memory. He was so kind to us.
Next...the Cowboys...
