A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  First, Brown decided to move Kevin Pritchard to point guard. This was not a move he was comfortable with because Pritchard, a 6–3 sophomore, was not a point guard in any sense of the word. He was not a great ballhandler, he was not a natural leader, and all of his instincts were those of a scorer, not a creator.

  But Brown felt he had no choice. All season, he had hoped that one of the two junior-college point guards he had brought in—Otis Livingston and Lincoln Minor—would step forward. He even talked about putting Clint Normore, the ex-football player, on the point. Nothing worked. Often the Kansas offense looked like a sailboat with no rudder, just floating around in the ocean with no direction.

  “I made a mistake at the beginning of the season,” Brown said. “I forgot that it takes kids a while to really understand me, especially point guards. Kevin, at least, was used to me.”

  When Brown put Pritchard on the point, he did two other things: He moved Jeff Gueldner, a little-used but hard-nosed sophomore, into the starting lineup at Pritchard’s old spot. He also told Manning to help bring the ball upcourt at times and to help Pritchard call plays. If this team was going to sink, it was going to do so with Manning as the chief sailor.

  The new lineup made its debut at Oklahoma State on February 10. It worked—at least this time. Pritchard, who had been having shooting troubles, was 6-for-8 with 20 points. Manning had 23 points and nine rebounds. Gueldner only had 5 points but his presence on defense seemed to help at that end. KU won the game 78–68, its first Big Eight road victory of the season.

  Back home, the Jayhawks got even with Iowa State and with Nebraska, beating both teams convincingly. Against Iowa State, Manning was unconscious, scoring a career-high 39 points. Against Nebraska, he only had 21 but the defense, improving every game, held Nebraska to 48 points.

  It was shortly after that game that Brown and Manning had a run-in—not their first or their last, but possibly their most serious. During practice one afternoon, Normore and freshman center Mike Masucci exchanged some angry words and elbows. After practice, back in the locker room, the two of them were still angry. More words were exchanged and, finally, punches. The other players watched, letting their two teammates settle their differences. When Brown heard what had happened, he was furious—at Manning.

  Like everyone else, Manning had watched Masucci and Normore go at it. Brown felt he should have broken the fight up, that his sitting by and just being one of the guys was exactly the reason why he had never become the leader Brown insisted he had to be.

  “You are not one of the guys!” Brown screamed at Manning in his office two days before the Jayhawks were to play at Kansas State. “How many goddamn times do I have to tell you that?!”

  Manning had heard this speech a hundred times if he had heard it once. His tendency was to tune it out. He had grown weary of Brown’s yelling and felt that the whole team had grown weary of it. But now, Brown brought up David Thompson, and when he did, his voice turned from harsh to soft.

  Brown had coached David Thompson in the NBA, in Denver. Many who saw David Thompson play at North Carolina State still insist that, Michael Jordan or no Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson or no Magic Johnson, David Thompson was the most gifted basketball player ever. As in ever. Thompson was 6–4 but he could block anyone’s shot, as he proved in the Final Four in 1974 when he cleanly stuffed Bill Walton during N.C. State’s double-overtime victory over UCLA. Thompson could shoot, he could jump, he could ball-handle. He could do anything. He was a star among stars. But, more than anything else, David Thompson wanted to be one of the guys.

  “He never wanted the responsibility of being the best player,” Brown said. “David wanted to be one of the guys and people protected him. They made things easy for him. Whatever David wanted, he got. Everyone wanted to keep David happy.”

  Brown didn’t have to tell Manning the rest of the story. Thompson eventually became a cocaine addict, hurt a knee, and was out of basketball before he turned thirty. Today, he is clean and trying to get back into basketball. When people talk about talent wasted, the first name often brought up is David Thompson. Brown wasn’t really trying to tell Manning that he was going to end up like David Thompson. The analogy went only so far as the refusal to take responsibility for being the best player. “The best player has to be the leader, Danny,” Brown said. “It isn’t a matter of choice. By the time you’ve been in the NBA for two years, you’re going to have to be the leader on your team. You won’t have any choice.”

  Manning and Brown talked for a while that day. Brown told him not to worry about his statistics, that if he was only the second player chosen in the NBA draft instead of the first he would still be a very wealthy young man. Manning told Brown he thought a little less yelling would be positive for the team. Each listened to the other. When it was over both felt better.

  “I’ll tell you what, Danny,” Brown finally said. “I don’t want to yell so much. You get on the guys sometimes when they mess up in practice and I won’t have to do it. Do it your own way, but do it.”

  Manning nodded. Later, he told his teammates, “In the end, we can only be as good as you guys are. Not one of us in this room can win by ourselves.”

  Two nights later, Kansas went to Kansas State and shocked the Wildcats, 64–63. Manning, double- and triple-teamed all night, only had 18 points. But Milt Newton had 14, Gueldner had 10, and Pritchard had 12 (and 6 assists), including the three-pointer with twenty-nine seconds left that won the game. The Jayhawks had won five straight, they were 17–8, and they had stopped making phone calls to the NIT.

  Two days later, with a display of superb defense, they jumped to a 23–8 lead on Duke. But the Blue Devils came back, forced overtime and won the game 74–70, even though Manning scored 31 points and had 12 rebounds. The loss was a bitterly disappointing one. Duke had beaten Kansas twice during Manning’s sophomore year, once in the preseason NIT final and then in the Final Four. That was the game in which Manning only scored 4 points and Marshall tore up his knee for the first time. Now, Duke had come into Allen Field House and come from way behind to steal a victory.

  Yet, amidst the disappointment, there was hope. Kansas’s defense had made life miserable for the Blue Devils. Only Duke’s defense, as good as any in the country, had kept it in the game. And in the overtime, Quin Snyder, the long-struggling point guard, had stepped forward, hitting two big shots, including a three-pointer, to finish with 21 points.

  That was why Brown felt very little fear as his team prepared to play Oklahoma. Duke didn’t have as much sheer talent as Oklahoma but it played just as hard, and the Jayhawks had proved they could match that intensity. The feeling that his team would go out and play just as hard as Oklahoma made Brown feel good.

  “This team is playing as hard right now as any I’ve ever coached,” he said. “Since Danny and I had our talk, he’s been great. He’s done everything I could possibly ask. It’s funny, all season long Ed [Manning] has been on me to get on Danny more. He’s been worried whether Danny was going to be mature enough to handle the pros next year. Now, I think he feels like he’s taken that step forward. Right now, we all feel good about the way this season is turning out. A month ago, we were all miserable.”

  Manning had a chance to make a little history in this game. He needed 28 points to break the Big Eight scoring record set by Wayman Tisdale during his three years at Oklahoma. Tisdale had left after his junior year and had a much higher points-per-game average than Manning, but a record was a record—and Manning had a chance to break it on Tisdale’s home floor.

  Naturally, when the Jayhawks walked into the Lloyd Noble Arena that night the first sign they saw read, “Hey Danny, Wayman did it in three.”

  “Nothing but class in this place,” Buford murmured, looking at the sign.

  Actually, Oklahoma had offered to stop the game and present Manning with the ball if he broke the record. Brown had turned down the invitation because “their fans will probably be booing the whole time anyway.”r />
  Oklahoma’s fans were a strange group. This was a team ranked No. 4 in the country. It had a record coming into this game of 24–2 and it had been destroying teams all season long. The opponent tonight was a bitter rival that came in led by the best player in the country. Yet the Lloyd Noble Center was nowhere near being sold out. There were 9,785 people in the arena—one thousand shy of a sellout. This is, after all, football country. That the Sooners were as good as they were, yet largely ignored, was evidence of that. That the fans who did come spent most of the game sitting on their hands was further evidence of that. Undoubtedly they were all waiting for spring football to start.

  Brown honestly thought the setup for his team was pretty close to perfect. “Nobody in the world expects us to win this game,” he told the players. “Whenever you play these guys you’re always in the game, no matter what the score is. They’re going to take bad shots. You’ll make mistakes, but don’t get frustrated. So will they.

  “These guys aren’t any better than Duke. Remember, when we get to the NCAA Tournament we aren’t going to play anybody any better than Duke or these guys and you’ll see tonight that we can play with both these teams.”

  The one problem going in is Gueldner. He twisted an ankle in practice and, after testing it in pregame, tells Brown he can’t play on it. Normore will start in his place.

  “The only thing I ask of you,” Brown says in conclusion, “is that you walk out there thinking you’re going to win.”

  Kansas didn’t win. But it came close. Manning was, as was now the norm, brilliant. Pritchard and Newton played well and so did Scooter Barry coming off the bench. But Oklahoma’s inside combination of Harvey Grant and Stacey King was a little too good on this night. King scored 22 points, Grant scored 17, and Mookie Blaylock, the lightning-quick guard, had 19 points and caused at least half of the Jayhawks’ 24 turnovers.

  With 4:42 left in the game, Manning hit a turnaround twelve-foot jumper that closed the lead to 75–72. The PA announcer told the crowd that with that basket, Manning had become the Big Eight’s all-time leading scorer. The fans booed lustily, easily their most animated reaction of the evening. Brown’s prediction had been right.

  The Jayhawks hung in until the final minute. A Newton three-pointer made it 83–80 with 1:59 left, but eleven seconds later Manning fouled out—finishing with 30 points and 11 rebounds—and that was all for KU. The final was 95–87.

  Brown was not unhappy with his team. But he felt they could have won the game. “If you guys play a little smarter, take care of the ball after you get a rebound, we win,” he said.

  In the press conference, Brown couldn’t resist a swipe at the officials. “Danny plays inside all the time, goes to the basket constantly, and he takes four free throws,” he complained. “I don’t understand it. I don’t like to bitch but every other coach in this league does it so tonight I will too.”

  Manning, overrun by writers who want to talk about the record, shrugs it off. “Tonight, it doesn’t mean anything because we lost,” he said. “But in a few years when I look back I think it probably will.”

  As he walks out of the locker room, Manning isn’t as down as he often is after a loss. “We’re not that far away,” he says softly. “We may still be a good team before this is all over.”

  February 25 … Beaumont, Texas

  If you are looking to get off the beaten path of college basketball, this is the place to come. They love football and oil down here but lately there hasn’t been very much of either. Surprisingly, though, they have always played pretty good basketball.

  Lamar University is located eighty miles east of Houston and forty-five miles from the Gulf of Mexico. It has slightly more than fourteen thousand students—average age twenty-four—and a basketball tradition that is largely unknown yet fairly illustrious.

  Billy Tubbs played and coached here; Pat Foster, now the Houston coach, followed him and continued to have success. In Tubbs’s last three seasons and in all six of Foster’s seasons, Lamar made either the NCAA or the NIT. In 1980, Tubbs’s last season, the Cardinals reached the round of sixteen. When Foster left in 1986 and Lamar needed a new coach, no one in college basketball could have known who the school was going to hire. When the word went out who the new coach was, basketball people shook their heads in amazement.

  The new coach at Lamar was Tom Abatemarco. To the casual follower of the sport, the name Tom Abatemarco means nothing. To those inside the sport, Abatemarco is a legend in his own time.

  He has been an assistant coach at six different schools. At Iona, working for Jim Valvano, he was largely responsible for the recruitment of Jeff Ruland, a player every big-time program in the country wanted. Abatemarco drove to Ruland’s house each morning that winter and, knowing that contact with him was against the rules, would leave a note on his car windshield each morning, telling Ruland how much he could do for Iona and how much Iona could do for him.

  From Iona, Abatemarco went to Davidson, Maryland, and Virginia Tech before finally landing at N.C. State back with Valvano. It was there that he wrote to Chris Washburn over two hundred times while the Wolfpack was recruiting the 6–11 center. Once again, Abatemarco got his man—even though Washburn ended up making more impact at State as a stereo thief than as a player.

  Abatemarco is the ultimate recruiter. Unlike most of his peers, he loves it. He loves to talk to teenagers on the phone at night—“Why not, he thinks just like them,” Valvano often says—and he will do just about anything to get a player. One of his favorite tricks while at State was to howl like a wolf into the telephone to let a player know just how much the Wolfpack wanted him.

  Abatemarco was the perfect foil for Valvano. Whenever State, at Abatemarco’s urging, signed a player who turned out to be more suspect than prospect, Valvano would just roll his eyes and say, “You know T-man.” Next to Abatemarco, Valvano came off as low-key. They were a perfect combination.

  Lost occasionally in all the stories and jokes about Abatemarco was the fact that the guy was, in fact, one hell of a recruiter. In 1983 when State was guard-desperate after winning the national championship, he convinced Valvano to bring in a junior college guard from Texas for a visit. The guard’s name was Spud Webb.

  When Spud arrived at the airport in Raleigh, he went right to the baggage carousel, somehow missing Valvano and Abatemarco, who were waiting for him at the gate. When the two coaches finally went downstairs they found him waiting for his bags. Looking at the baby-faced, five-foot-seven-inch, 145-pound Webb, Valvano turned to Abatemarco and said, “If that’s Spud, you’re fired.”

  It was Spud, Abatemarco wasn’t fired, and Webb went on to be a star for them (and the Atlanta Hawks). By the spring of 1986, Abatemarco had been with Valvano at State for four years and there was no reason to believe he would go anywhere else. He was making good money, he had the V-man (V-man and T-man—get it?) at his side and all was right with the world. And then he took the Lamar job.

  “I know everyone in the world thought I would stay with V the rest of my life, but I didn’t want to do that,” Abatemarco is saying in the rat-a-tat, rapid-fire way he talks, the words gushing out. “See, I always thought I could coach. I know no one else thought I could but I could. At least I wanted to find out. So, they have a pretty good program here, they’ve got some tradition, the money is, you know, not that bad, so I come.”

  Abatemarco stops for a second to catch his breath. He is sitting in the living room of his house a few hours before his team is going to play New Orleans. This is a vital game for Lamar. The Cardinals are 18–8, a major improvement from the 14–15 record of Abatemarco’s first year. Abatemarco just wants to get into postseason play. The new league Lamar is in, the American South, does not have an automatic NCAA bid. That may mean that all four teams in the league with winning records will be NIT candidates. “We need to win twenty to get into the NIT,” he says. “And we need to get into the NIT because last year when we didn’t make postseason it was the first time in ni
ne years and holy shit, were people pissed.

  “See, the problem here is that they don’t really understand the real world in college basketball. They think, like, Lamar is a big deal. Hey, we’ve got a real nice new building. Montagne Center seats ten thousand, it’s only four years old, it’s nice. But we almost never sell it out. There’s interest here but it’s not the ACC. Or the Big East or any of those leagues. But the people here don’t understand that. They think this is, like, the best job in the country or something.”

  He stops for a moment as his three-year-old daughter, Tracy, toddles in. Tracy loves going to games because the Cardinal mascot always comes over to talk to her. “I’m glad I took this job, I really am, because I think I’ve proven to people I can coach. That was important to me.

  “But you know what?” He lowers his voice and leans forward. “I gotta get out of here.”

  Strange thing about southeast Texas. It’s a whole lot different from Long Island, where Abatemarco grew up, or, for that matter, Raleigh. Recently, a Raleigh newspaperman had put together a story on ex-Valvano assistants who had gone on to head-coaching jobs. When he asked Abatemarco about Lamar, Abatemarco had told him that he liked the job but he missed Raleigh. “All the Italian food down here is canned,” he joked. He also said that basketball fans in Texas didn’t know the sport quite the way the ones in North Carolina did.

  Well, he might as well have said the mayor of Beaumont’s wife had fleas. The folks here were ticked—especially the proprietors of the local Italian restaurants. Abatemarco responded with a letter to all the local newspapers explaining his comments. That soothed matters a little but didn’t change the basic problem: Boys from New York don’t fit in down here unless their record is about 25–2. Abatemarco was 18–8. Not good enough, Yankee.

  Driving to the game, Abatemarco stops at a 7—Eleven for his good luck cup of coffee. He is as superstitious as any coach, maybe even more so. He is also excited about the team he will have a year from now. “If I can take it down here one more year, I can have a great team,” he says. “Wait till you see this guy Adrian Carwell. He’s a transfer from SMU. The guy is huge. Boy, could we be good in a year.”