A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  Kerr is tired, but he is also having the time of his life. “I’m trying to enjoy every minute of this,” he said one morning. “Because I know nothing like this will ever happen again in my life. This is an ultimate, something that will only happen once.”

  While it has been fun, it has not been that easy for Kerr. After the Wildcats vaulted into the top five in the Great Alaska Shootout, then to No. 2 the third week in December after their victory at lowa, the spotlight began to shine brighter on Kerr than ever before. He had always been in demand locally—speaking at every school, Boy Scout, and civic function there ever was in Tucson, or so it seemed. And, he had always attracted attention from the western media because he was a good player, a good story, and an excellent interview.

  But now the attention went national. Kerr’s mail increased so much that, to his embarrassment, he was having trouble answering it. He got so many phone calls from fans, media, and well-wishers that he started having his roommate answer the phone most of the time. He was also still trying to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend, Margot Brennan, who had graduated from Arizona and moved to Los Angeles.

  The arrival of the national press, while flattering to Kerr, meant being asked repeatedly to relive his father’s assassination, since the story was not that familiar to people outside Arizona. If he had wanted to, Kerr could have told people he didn’t really want to talk about it—an understandable position to take—but he was too polite for that. Intellectually, he understood why the question was asked and so he patiently dealt with it. Over and over and over again.

  And then he would read the story, find the Huck Finn reference and head for the bathroom to get sick. It may have been boredom with the goody-good image that prompted the practical joke he played on Olson two days before New Year’s.

  The Wildcats were playing Duke in the final of the Fiesta Bowl, the tournament they host each Christmas. This was a much ballyhooed matchup. Both teams were unbeaten and Duke had just crushed Florida the night before in the opening round.

  Arizona played superbly, especially Sean Elliott, who lit Duke defensive specialist Billy King up for 31 points. The Blue Devils, who like to play a very physical man-to-man defense, were unhappy with the constant whistles from the Pacific 10 referees. Early in the second half, inbounding in front of the Arizona bench, Danny Ferry turned to no one in particular and said, “Boy, is this a home job.”

  Trainer Steve Condon answered Ferry, saying, “Oh, isn’t that just too bad.” Ferry thought the response had come from Olson and started yelling at him. Olson told Ferry to just play the game. There was another whistle. At that point Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski walked to center court and began shouting at Olson not to talk to his players during the game.

  “We’re supposed to be the professionals here,” Krzyzewski said to Olson, who walked up to talk to him. “You shouldn’t be talking to my players. That’s not professional.”

  “Come on, Mike,” Olson said. “That’s bullshit.”

  Kerr, standing a few feet away, was shocked. He had never heard Olson use profanity before. “I knew right then,” he said, “that this was really a big game. I knew it before, because it was the toughest game I ever played in physically, but after that I knew it was big. He didn’t even curse at Iowa.”

  The Wildcats went on to win, 91–85, extending their record to 12–0. After the game, Kerr spent close to ninety minutes in the locker room answering every question under the sun. Finally, he was pulled over to a phone to do a postgame radio show hosted by a friend of his, former Arizona Manager Todd Walsh. Near the end of the conversation Walsh asked Kerr if he had made any New Year’s resolutions yet.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, the whole team has made one,” Kerr said “We’ve resolved to work really hard to try to help Coach Olson kick this heroin habit of his because it’s really been getting us all down lately.”

  The notion of Olson, who is cleaner than squeaky clean, having a heroin problem might well have sent any number of Arizona fans who were en route home off the road. It undoubtedly had others fiddling with their radios—there was no way they had just heard Steve Kerr say that Lute Olson had a heroin habit.

  But that’s what they had heard. Kerr, for once, was a little embarrassed, thinking he had probably gone too far with this joke. “For the next couple of days I didn’t even look Coach Olson in the eye at practice,” he said. “I knew he must have heard about it, but he didn’t say anything. But then his wife told me that people thought it was pretty funny and I was relieved.”

  There was another side of Kerr that enjoyed the whole thing. “Yeah, I really did,” he said. “I just like the thought that maybe some people were saying, ‘Steve Kerr said that?’ It made me feel a little more normal.”

  And why did Olson let Kerr get away with such outrage? “Because,” he said, “Steve is Steve.”

  Three days after the Duke/heroin game—having moved to No. 1 in the polls—Arizona’s unbeaten string ended. Still a little worn out emotionally and physically after Duke, the Wildcats went to The Pit and played a horrendous first half, falling behind New Mexico by 16 points. No shot would drop and, with the crowd going crazy, the Lobos played their best basketball of the year.

  Still, Arizona came back in the second half, chipping away at the lead, even though Kerr and Craig McMillan were ice-cold from outside. Finally, with the score 61–59, McMillan had an open three-pointer with fifteen seconds left. It wouldn’t drop and New Mexico hung on for the upset … barely.

  “I don’t see how we could have played much worse,” Kerr said, looking back. “None of us could make a shot except for Sean. I really don’t think they’re a very good team. We were just so bad the first ten minutes that we gave them a lot of confidence and then they hung on.”

  Olson wasn’t happy with the loss but figured if his team had to lose this was the right time: Arizona had won enough to get some national attention. Now, having been beaten, they would be removed from the glare of No. 1, at least for a while. Still, practice two days after the loss was the most intense of the season.

  “I feel sorry for Cal,” Kerr said that night. “They’re coming in here with a lousy team and we’re pissed off. We may beat them by 40.” He was close: the final was 79–41. The Wildcats kept on going from there, easily beating Stanford at home and both Oregons on the road. Then, with Ann Kerr watching, they struggled for a half against Southern California (leading by just 11) before humiliating the Trojans with a 27–2 burst to start the second half. That brought UCLA to town for a Sunday afternoon game.

  Even in its weakened condition, UCLA was still UCLA. The Bruins were also the defending Pac-10 champions and they had beaten Arizona twice in 1987. Olson wanted a big victory. That was apparent Saturday when he kept the team at practice for two and a half hours, considerably longer than usual. Kerr, who had just seen his mother off the day before, yawned all through practice.

  “The funny thing about UCLA is, except for Sean, they’re probably just as talented as us,” Kerr said after practice. “If they got as much out of their talent as Coach Olson gets out of ours, they would be very, very good.”

  Kerr’s point was well taken. Arizona was one of those special basketball teams where the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts. The backcourt of Kerr and McMillan wasn’t very quick. Anthony Cook, though improving rapidly, was an inconsistent offensive player, and Tom Tolbert was big and strong but not a one-on-one scorer.

  But it didn’t matter. In a sense, what made the Wildcats so good was their ability to recognize and understand their limitations. Other than Cook, whose game was still developing, all the Wildcats knew exactly what they could do and what they could not do. Kerr was a perfect example of this. One of the reasons he almost never turned the ball over was because he never tried to make the too-hard pass that a better athlete might attempt. McMillan and Tolbert were similar. Each had enough experience and had made enough mistakes to know their limits, to know what was impossible. Younger,
more gifted players often think nothing is impossible. They usually find out the truth the hard way.

  Other than Elliott, the Wildcats rarely did anything spectacular. But doing something stupid was even more unusual. When Olson went to his bench, he had talent that was more standard: good athletes who could be wonderful on one play, awful on the next. One reason why Kerr never came out with a game still in doubt was that Olson wanted someone on the court who could tell the other players “No!” when they started to get frisky. When Kerr said “no,” he always got an immediate response.

  UCLA came to Tucson on one of those days the local Chamber of Commerce would like to bottle. While the East and South were digging out from under snowstorms, the temperature was close to 70, the sun climbing high into the sky. Students in shirtsleeves played touch football outside the McKale Center before tip-off.

  Because basketball is a newfound obsession in the desert, the crowd at Arizona games is still more innocent than those back east or in the Midwest. It is still more of a family crowd since it’s only recently that tickets have become tough to get. Fathers take their sons instead of their bosses, everyone dresses in red, and there is a festiveness surrounding the games that one can’t find amidst the tension of the Big Ten, ACC, or Big East. Here, it is still sort of “neat” to be in the top ten.

  It is also sort of neat—and spine-tingling—when Kerr is introduced. When the crowd roars “Steeeeeevee Kerrrrrrrr” in answer to hearing his name, it gives you chills. Kerr almost blocks the sound of his own name out by now; he is a little embarrassed that he is singled out this way. “When I get older though, I’m sure I’ll love showing tapes of it all to my kids,” he said. “They’ll say to me, ‘Gee, Daddy, you must have been a great player,’ and I’ll say, ‘Yeah I was.’ Then I’ll put the tape away before the game starts so they won’t find out the truth.”

  Kerr is so popular here that freshman Matt Muelbach occasionally tells women that he is Steve Kerr, yes, the Steve Kerr, to try to impress them. “He says it works,” Kerr says, laughing. “Funny, it never worked all that well for me.”

  The game starts very well for Arizona today. A Kerr three-pointer—“Steeeeeve Kerrrrrrrr”—breaks a 6–6 tie and starts a 12–0 run. UCLA looks completely frazzled. Trevor Wilson, the Bruins’ best player, consistently gets himself open for good shots and clangs them off the rim so hard he’s fortunate that nothing breaks. The Arizona lead is 36–22 when Kerr hits a short bank shot with 5:36 left and it looks like a romp. But UCLA revives long enough to get within 45–34 at halftime.

  This is a potentially dangerous situation for Arizona. When you are playing a fragile but talented team, you are well advised to blow it out early before the players get any notions about an upset. When Elliott hits a three-pointer to make it 56–41 four minutes into the second half, all seems to be under control, but UCLA promptly rips off the next nine points. Olson calls time.

  Too late. The Bruins, suddenly unbothered by the raucous crowd, have found their stride and their range. Guards Jerome (Pooh) Richardson and Dave Immel are on a roll and Wilson has discovered that there is a net underneath the rim. When freshman Kevin Walker hits a three-pointer that seems to come from about the fourth row, UCLA leads 66–64 with 5:50 left.

  The crowd is in shock. This was supposed to be easy. UCLA is 7–9. The good guys are 17–1. This has become an interesting test for Arizona. Suddenly, the Wildcats are under pressure from a team they are supposed to handle, not a top ten team like Syracuse or Duke or a fired-up home team like New Mexico. If they lose, there will be a lot of questions. “What happened?” will definitely be the phrase of the week.

  Kerr, smart enough to recognize a crisis, gets the ball to Elliott, who hits a lean-in jumper that ties the score. Wilson throws up another clanger and Kerr, seeing an opening, surprises the Bruins by going straight to the basket. “I surprised them with my speed,” he said. “They didn’t think I had any. Actually, I just have very little.”

  Kerr gets fouled and hits both shots for a 68–66 lead with 4:23 left. Immel misses a short baseline jumper and Tolbert hits a spinning jumper from the low post to make it 70–66. Eighteen seconds later, McMillan puts in a jumper to make it 72–66.

  Wham! Arizona has run off eight straight points when it had to and four different players have scored. Pressure? What pressure? Any more questions, Bruins? The final is 86–74. Kerr has a typical Kerr game: 40 minutes, 13 points, 6 assists, 3 steals, and 2 turnovers—the last number matches his season high and gives him 20 for the season.

  Hazzard, after saying all the right things about Arizona, whines about the officiating, saying that Elliott gets star treatment. This is a symptom of Hazzard’s problem at UCLA. Someone else is always at fault when the Bruins lose.

  Kerr is just glad to have the game—and the week—over. After dinner with some friends, he trudges back to his apartment (already a mess only two days after his mother’s departure), opens some apple juice and turns on the television. “I’m too tired to even drink one beer,” he says.

  It is not easy for Kerr to get much rest when he is home. Besides the nonstop phone ringing, the door opens more often than the door in the ship cabin scene in A Night at the Opera. Kerr shakes his head. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think my life would ever get this hectic. But then sometimes when I think about it all ending soon, I get kind of sad. Next year, no matter what I do, play ball, coach, go to school, whatever, it won’t be like this.”

  Just then, Kerr’s face appears on the television screen. “Who is that,” Kerr asks, pointing a finger, “Huck Finn?” The TV Kerr is explaining to the camera that Coach Olson probably won’t be very happy that the game was such a struggle.

  Seconds later, Olson appears, saying, “It was good for us to have to struggle.”

  “Wrong again,” Kerr murmurs.

  Olson continues: “I thought we were a little bit winded in the second half. We need to be more careful about using our bench.”

  “Or maybe more careful about not practicing for two-and-a-half hours the day before a game,” Kerr says to the TV and laughs.

  The phone rings for the tenth time in an hour. It is a friend calling to kid him about his erroneous soothsaying on TV. “Yeah, yeah,” Kerr says. “Nobody’s perfect, you know.”

  Not even Steeeeeeve Kerrrrrr. But don’t try to tell that to anyone in Tucson.

  11

  COLD, COLDER, COLDEST

  January 25 … Pittsburgh

  They are expecting snow here any minute but it is water that has Paul Evans concerned. Evans awakened this morning to find his basement flooded. “Sewer’s backed up,” he said. “I hope it isn’t an omen.”

  Like most coaches, Evans is superstitious. The opponent tonight is Providence, a team that is wobbling. Playing at home, the Panthers should have little trouble with the Friars, who are a shadow of the team that stunned college basketball by reaching the Final Four in 1987. Rick Pitino has left to coach the New York Knicks and, in addition to seniors Billy Donovan and Pop Lewis, he has taken his magic wand with him.

  In his place is his top assistant, Gordon Chiesa. Already, promising sophomore center Marty Conlin has quit the team and, even though the Friars did upset Georgetown, they are struggling. Naturally, Evans is worried. “The way our team is, they’re apt to come in here just figuring showing up is enough, he said. “I’m a lot more comfortable when we’re playing a ranked team. Then I know they’ll come to play.”

  Since the loss to Georgetown that opened the Big East season, Pitt has come to play pretty consistently—which doesn’t mean that the road has been a smooth one for Evans.

  He was gratified and somewhat surprised by the reaction he got to his comment after the Georgetown game that John Thompson had run roughshod over the school administration. “I’ve got a bunch of letters from people, a lot of them Georgetown people, saying they agreed with what I said. They seem to think that there’s more to a college than winning basketball games.”

  There was mor
e controversy waiting for Evans ten days after Georgetown. After victories over St. John’s, Duquesne, and Connecticut, the Panthers hosted Villanova. This brought Rollie Massimino to town, Evans’s off-season antagonist. Neither coach was looking for a confrontation, yet one occurred.

  A few days before the game, Evans was quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News as saying, among other things, that Massimino had “fallen in love with himself” after winning the national championship in 1985 and had alienated many of his friends in the process.

  Massimino was enraged. Evans insisted that he thought he was talking off the record. Either way, the comments were ill timed, to say the least. Pitt won the game easily, but when it was over, the coaches didn’t shake hands. Massimino said he looked for Evans but Evans had left. Evans said Massimino never looked for him. Either way, there were headlines … again.

  A week later, Pitt went to Oklahoma for a national TV game. For twenty minutes, the freshman guards couldn’t handle the Oklahoma press. The deficit was 14. But the Panthers rallied in the second half, getting the ball to Lane and Smith inside. They lost, 84–81, but Evans was pleased. On the road, against a top team, his team could easily have folded—but had not. They were 13–2.

  “There are a lot of good signs with this team right now,” Evans said. “They’re finally beginning to show some maturity.”

  Evans’s reference was not to the four freshmen—Sean Miller, Jason Matthews, Darelle Porter, and Bobby Martin—who were playing extensively. It was to the three talented veterans: Charles Smith, Demetrius Gore, and Jerome Lane. All had been recruited by Evans’s predecessor, Roy Chipman, and even after a season and a half under Evans, they still lacked discipline and toughness. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t. When it wasn’t, they clashed with their coach, who didn’t think his team could come anywhere near its potential until the three older players grew up.