A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  This was a time when it might have been easy for Manning to wish he had turned pro. That same day his mother, thinking aloud, would say, “Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing talking him into coming back.”

  Her son, however, had no doubts. “I’m not thrilled with everything that has happened. How could I be? But this has been a good year for me. I think I’ve grown up a lot. Before, when I needed my laundry done, I took it home and let my mother do it. Now, I do it myself. If I ran out of food, I just went home for dinner. I don’t do that anymore.

  “Is any of that a big deal? No. But this is like a transition year for me in terms of learning to grow up. I’m twenty-one, I can do almost everything there is to do legally but in a lot of ways I’m still a kid. This is a good way for me to start acting like an adult without doing it in a crash course on the road in the NBA.

  “If I had turned pro and then Archie had gotten hurt and I had looked at this team now, I would have felt terrible, like I’d left the guys in the lurch. The one thing that Coach Brown yelling all the time does is put us all in the same boat. We’ve shared a lot of suffering together and we’re very close. That’s what I think will get us through all of this now, that closeness.

  “I know I get tired of the yelling. It gets old, Coach Brown has taught me a lot in the last four years but on some things, philosophically, we’re just different. We clash at times.”

  Often when they clashed, the man caught in the middle was Ed Manning. On one side, he had his boss saying, “Why isn’t he tougher?” On the other, he had his son saying, “Why isn’t he ever satisfied?”

  “I understand both of them,” Ed said, diplomatically. “Larry’s like me, though. He sees the potential. Danny still doesn’t know how good he can be. Sometimes, during a game he stops concentrating or doesn’t go as hard as he can. That upsets you.”

  Most of the time, when Danny wanted to talk about something, he would talk to his mother. That was the way it had always been. But lately, he had been dropping by the house and waiting for his father to open up the conversation. Then, the frustration would come pouring out. “Why,” Danny would ask his father, “is Coach Brown always so negative?”

  Now, with Marshall and Branch gone, Manning will be asked to do even more, if that’s possible. “I’ve got a good feeling about this team though,” he said, as Band-Aid’s Court flickered off the air. “I just feel like something good has to happen to us. Maybe it will start at Iowa State. I’ve got a good feeling about that game. Of course, I’ve had a good feeling going up there the last three years and lost every time.”

  He smiled. “One thing I know for sure, though, it’s going to be great when their band plays ‘Here’s Johnny,’ and Coach Orr comes down the runway. Now that’s what I call fun.”

  January 13 … Ames, Iowa

  It is exactly zero degrees outside when the Jayhawks land in Des Moines the next day. The airport in Ames is so small that even their thirty-seat plane can’t land there. So, they must bus the sixty miles over from Des Moines.

  It has been seven years since Johnny Orr shocked the college basketball world by leaving Michigan to come out here to Iowa State. Orr had one of the top programs in the country at Michigan, but big money and long-term security lured him away. He has built a solid program at Iowa State and become a local folk hero.

  Brown is a big Johnny Orr fan. Unlike Kansas-Missouri, there is no animosity in this rivalry. In fact, Manning and Jeff Grayer, Iowa State’s best player, are good friends. The Kansas players enjoy playing in Hilton Coliseum, a shiny fourteen thousand-seat arena where the fans love their basketball and their Cyclones and trek through the cold and snow faithfully to watch them play.

  Iowa State is resurgent this season. In 1986, Orr reached the NCAA round of sixteen by upsetting Michigan in the second round, as sweet a victory as he had ever had. But in 1987, the Cyclones slumped to 13–15. Now, though, they are 13–2, a national surprise, and in addition to Grayer they have the surprise player of the season, 6–8 center Lafester Rhodes.

  As a junior, Rhodes scored 34 points—total—for the season. This year, he is averaging almost 20 points a game and, unbelievably, scored 52 points during Iowa State’s December upset of arch-rival Iowa. The Kansas coaches have with them a copy of Iowa’s scouting report for that game.

  In it, Assistant Coach Rudy Washington wrote, “They have three players who like to pop out to the top of the key to take the jump shot: #44 [Grayer], #25 [Elmer Robinson] and #5 [Rhodes]. I would recommend letting #5 do it.”

  He did it that night for fifty-two points. The Kansas assistants get a laugh out of this because it is the kind of thing that can happen to almost anyone. Who can explain how a 6–8 lefty with a funny-looking shot-put-type jump shot suddenly becomes unstoppable?

  The Jayhawks arrive at Hilton Coliseum for an 11 A.M. shootaround, a little sleepy after leaving campus at 7:30 A.M. The coaches prefer these one-day trips: get in, get out, get home. They will spend a few hours at a local motel this afternoon, then fly home right after the game.

  Brown is in an upbeat mood. He squeals with delight when he walks into his suite and finds a heart-shaped Jacuzzi in the bathroom. This doesn’t quite fit in here in Ames, especially with the Iowa Pastoral Conference headquartered in the motel.

  To win, Kansas will have to handle Iowa State’s press. Beat it and there will be lay-ups galore. Turn the ball over and the lay-ups will go the other way. Until now, Brown has said little about the loss of Branch, who has been officially declared ineligible. Before the game, in the locker room, without mentioning anybody’s name, he addresses the question.

  “You know last year we lost guys and we won twenty-five games,” he says. “And I guarantee you that team wasn’t as good as the one we’ve got in this room right now. I’m tellin’ you that’s the truth if you guys will just believe it. You guys know how to play, you know how to win.”

  Brown shrugs. “I get on you guys a lot. But you know I think basketball should be fun. You play it right and it is. So let’s just go out and do that. We’ve got a long trip back. Let’s enjoy it.”

  Before the game starts, they will definitely enjoy one thing: Orr’s entrance. If there is a better act in college basketball, no one has found it yet. It usually comes with no more than a minute left on the clock. Everyone else is on the floor when the band strikes up The Tonight Show theme. Orr comes down the runway and everyone comes to their feet. Orr waves, shakes his fists, blows kisses, the whole routine. If Iowa State really wants to blow the roof off some night, it will fly Ed McMahon in to stand at center court and say, “Heeeeere’s Johnnnny!”

  As it is, everyone loves Johnny. Brown, usually tight as three drums before tip-off, breaks up as Orr comes down to give him a pregame shake of the shoulders. The players all stop to watch, fully appreciating the moment.

  Unfortunately for Kansas, Orr’s entrance is not the climax of the evening. The Jayhawks, with Keith Harris starting in Branch’s place at center, struggle almost from the start. Manning and Newton are soaring, but everyone else is having trouble. The turnovers mount and so does the score. Up 28–21, the Cyclones go on a 10–0 run to build a 38–21 lead with four minutes left in the half. Kansas fights back to 42–31 at half.

  “Goddammit, we just should not be behind these guys by 18 [actually 17] at any point in the game!” Brown yells during the intermission. “It just shouldn’t happen. You know, we all sit around and talk about how tough we’re going to play and then we go out and don’t come close to doing it. I hate watching this shit, I really do.”

  The Jayhawks try to come back. They fall behind by 16, then rally to within 6 with more than 15 minutes left. But they can’t get closer. Even with Grayer quiet—15 points—Iowa State gets 20 points from Robinson, 19 from Rhodes, and 13 from guard Gary Thompkins. The Cyclones force 25 Kansas turnovers and coast to an 88–78 win.

  “We play like this,” Brown says when it’s over, “and it’s gonna be a long season.”

  As
always, Manning is the last one out of the locker room, having stayed to answer all the questions about all the problems. He is patient, but when he walks to the bus, he has a look on his face that says, “Where is the light and where does this tunnel end?”

  The Jayhawks are now 11–4.

  10

  WEEKEND WITH A BALD MAN

  January 15 … Clemson, South Carolina

  On October 27, 1986, college basketball lost one of its true characters. On that morning, Charles G. Driesell, the man known to one and all in his sport as Lefty, resigned as coach of the University of Maryland basketball team, walking out of Cole Field House with his wife on one side, his teenage daughter on the other, both pressed tight against him.

  It was a sad sight, a sad scene, and a sad day. Driesell had been caught in the middle of one of college basketball’s great tragedies. Four months before his resignation, on June 19, Len Bias, who had just become the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft a day earlier, died moments after overdosing on cocaine, in a Maryland dormitory.

  Bias’s death was one of the most stunning things to happen in college sports in many years. He was an athlete so gifted, so strong, so full of life. He had been the heart and soul of Driesell’s program, a two-time All-American and ACC player of the year. When the Boston Celtics drafted him to eventually play alongside Larry Bird, his entire life was ahead of him. He would be rich, he would be famous, he would be a superstar.

  Instead, he was dead.

  Naturally, Bias’s death brought the Maryland program under microscopic scrutiny. It turned out that Bias had stopped going to class once his eligibility had been used up. The other two seniors in his class had also failed to graduate that spring. Several other players were academically ineligible.

  Driesell had made mistakes. He had put too much faith in his academic counselors and assistant coaches to keep a rein on the players and had not done enough checking on things himself. He had recruited some players who probably should not have been in college—though that didn’t make him unusual.

  But Driesell had not messed up as badly as Chancellor John Slaughter claimed he had. Remarkably, Slaughter contended that he had been “concerned” about the direction of the basketball program before Bias’s death. If so, then why had Driesell been given a new ten-year contract just seven months before Bias died?

  In any event, Driesell and Athletic Director Dick Dull were set up by Slaughter as the fall guys in the tragedy. If they were guilty, Slaughter was at least as guilty. He had been at Maryland for more than three years and showed up at most games to pal around with the jocks and the big-bucks contributors. If things had been so bad, where had Slaughter been before June 19?

  A lot of coaches would have wanted to leave Maryland. Why fight a chancellor who is out to get you, a tragedy that won’t go away, and a situation that is clearly untenable? Driesell, being Driesell, wanted to stay. His trademark in the ’80s had been, “Aaah can coach,” the product of a tirade in 1981 against detractors who thought maybe he couldn’t. He could coach and he wanted to prove it again. Slaughter wasn’t going to give him that chance.

  Driesell finally went, kicking and screaming, after lengthy negotiations which ended with Maryland agreeing to pay him for the balance of his contract while allowing him to keep his summer camp, his car, and the title of assistant athletic director. All for about $150,000 a year.

  A pretty good deal. What’s more, Driesell had to do almost nothing to earn his salary because Slaughter didn’t want him involved in the athletic program. The chancellor had hand-picked Bob Wade, a highly successful high school coach from Baltimore, to succeed Driesell. Wade had been recommended by Georgetown Coach John Thompson.

  To say that this galled Driesell is a giant understatement. He and Thompson had barely spoken since a 1980 Georgetown-Maryland game during which Thompson had called Driesell a motherfucker, screaming the word in front of several thousand people in the D.C. Armory. Much later, Thompson apologized for the incident. Driesell, asked if he accepted the apology, answered, “Of course I do. To err is human, to forgive is divine and I’m divine.”

  Thompson didn’t think having to apologize was so funny. And, since his team had beaten Driesell’s in that game and in the NCAA Tournament the following March, he saw no reason to play Maryland again. He canceled the series between the two schools and he and Driesell sniped at each other from afar. Now, Thompson had chosen Driesell’s successor, a man who, in the past, had made no bones about the fact that he didn’t want his high school players going to Maryland.

  Driesell’s new office was no more than one hundred feet from his old one. Yet he and Wade studiously avoided one another. It was not an easy season for either one of them. Maryland finished 9–17, going 0–15 against ACC opponents. That was certainly no fun for Wade. What was no fun for Driesell was picking up newspapers and reading about how Slaughter and Wade were “rebuilding” Maryland’s program with a new emphasis on academics.

  Driesell knew who Wade was recruiting. He knew there were a couple of players on his list who would have been inadmissible to Maryland when he was the coach. Slaughter was fooling people and Driesell couldn’t rebut anything Slaughter was saying because he was still under contract to Maryland.

  At the same time, Driesell was putting his life back together. He was hired by Jefferson-Pilot Sports to do TV commentary on their weekly ACC telecasts and he was in great demand as a speaker. That, combined with his camp and a little work at Maryland, kept him busy.

  Now, in his second year of exile, Driesell had grown quite comfortable. He still chafed when he read what great work Wade was doing, now winning a respectable number of games with a team made up largely of Driesell-recruited players. But he was learning, slowly, to put that behind him and enjoy his current role. At fifty-six, he was getting to spend time with his wife and family for the first time since he had gotten into coaching. And, everywhere he traveled, he had folk-hero status. Once, he had been the man in the ACC everyone loved to hate. Now, they just loved him.

  Why? Driesell is Everyman. He is big and bald and blunt and funny and charming and self-deprecating. He is vulnerable. People feel they can touch him in some way. He makes them comfortable. He is always friendly and never intimidating.

  What’s more, it has always been hard for Lefty. He built two programs, Davidson and Maryland, from ground zero to a spot just below the top. Somehow, he never quite got to the top. He won 524 games, but never made the Final Four. He made the ACC Tournament final six times before he finally won one. People identify with The Struggle Clearly, Lefty has struggled. In fact, he’s never stopped struggling.

  Being a television commentator doesn’t come naturally to him either. With his cornpone southern accent, Driesell is bound to strangle some words. For example, he cannot say the word “statistics.” Always, when he says it, the word comes out “sastistics.” Point this out to him and he will say, “Aah say it right. Sastistics. See, aah said it.”

  But he works at the job. He studies the teams he is going to be covering, calls the coaches to talk to them, and spends hours looking at tape. “I tried to get my wife to look with me,” he said. “But she just gets bored and leaves the room.”

  Lefty’s biggest problem as a commentator is a tendency to coach on the air. He says things, like, “Now Sam, don’t you put the ball on the floor. You do that, you gonna get stripped.” And, “Grayson, son, you gotta take that shot when you’re open.”

  But he can be funny, too: “Jerry, if you keep takin’ shots like that, Coach Ellis is gonna pull out all his hair and end up lookin’ like me.” And he can be insightful. Early in January, working a Clemson-Virginia game, he predicted that Virginia’s John Johnson would try to go the length of the floor with the ball for a winning basket with the score tied and five seconds left. Johnson did exactly that. Clemson Coach Cliff Ellis had figured Virginia would go to Mel Kennedy. He was wrong. Driesell was right. He could coach … Still.

  Now, on a balmy January weekend, Dries
ell was bound for Clemson. He was doing double-duty on this Saturday, working the Clemson–Wake Forest game Saturday afternoon, then being whisked by private plane to Chapel Hill to do Virginia–North Carolina that night.

  “I ain’t crazy about those little planes,” he said, settling into his seat en route to Clemson. “They say they’re safer than jets but when you’re bouncin’ around in one of ’em, it sure don’t feel safe.”

  Driesell is a nervous flyer anyway. It is an interesting phenomenon that many coaches, who have to fly all the time, are nervous flyers. Driesell can still remember a flight to New York on a recruiting trip years ago when all of a sudden the oxygen masks in the plane came down. The cabin was losing pressure.

  “I thought to myself, ‘My God, I’m gonna die and it ain’t even goin’ to see a good player.’ If it had been Moses, it would have been different. Moses was worth dyin’ for.”

  Moses Malone was the best player Driesell had ever signed at Maryland. But before he ever enrolled, he was enticed by agent Donald Dell and the Utah Stars of the old ABA into becoming the first high school player ever to turn pro. For years after that, Driesell would say at least several times a week, “You know, if I just had Moses …” He was still saying it long after Malone would have used up his eligibility.

  This flight, even with a change of planes in Charlotte, is routine, although the stewardess does insist on an autograph for her boyfriend. “You know,” she says, “you’re a whole lot cuter in person than you are on television.”

  “Oh really?” Lefty answers. “You might want to get your eyes checked.”

  Tell Lefty anything and the first two words out of his mouth are always, “Oh really?” They are his trademark. That and answering almost any question he is asked by saying, “Aah dunno, you know.”

  Once, when someone told Driesell he did this, he denied it categorically. A few minutes later, responding to the first question of a press conference, Lefty said, “Aah dunno, you know.”