Forty Minutes of Hell

by Rus Bradburd

  Today’s Texas-Mexico border is radically different from the one Nolan Richardson grew up on. Juárez is now home to somewhere around two million people and a vast sprawl of poverty. The bridges that connect El Paso to Juárez are teeming with window-washers, accordion players, and trinket salesmen hustling like walk-ons at varsity tryouts. NAFTA’s “free trade” has damaged the already-troubled Mexican economy—half-built concrete structures sit uncompleted all over town. Post-9/11 security measures and a rash of violence have discouraged tourism, one of the few steady sources of cash. Hundreds of women have been murdered in Juárez during the last decade and the crimes remain unsolved. If there was ever a city that should have “Us Against the World” as its motto, it’s Juárez.

  The Mexican team accepted Richardson without hesitation, as though he had simply been stuck in traffic on the bridge for a few decades. Richardson’s squad featured players with both NCAA credentials and Mexican passports.

  The players who did not participate for Mexico, however, devastated the team before Richardson ever coached a game. Eduardo Najera had an impressive run during his nine years in the NBA, but Najera claimed he would not represent Mexico under the current leadership of the Olympic committee. Earl Watson, whose mother was born in Mexico, may have made a bigger impact for Richardson. Watson was a solid NBA point guard, and Richardson’s scrambling-and-trapping style would have been the perfect showcase for him. While Watson never officially declined, he didn’t join the team either.

  Nolan Richardson remains surprisingly fit for a man in his late sixties. He has a trim waist, muscular shoulders, and he’s thirty pounds lighter than when he prowled the sidelines at Arkansas. His hair has gone gray, and he’s let it grow out, along with a mustache that has evolved into a goatee. He leans forward when he walks, the way a young Mike Tyson did when he answered the bell.

  Richardson appeared to reverse the aging process at practice in Juárez, morphing into a younger man. He hopped out of the way to avoid a collision. Grabbing the ball, he demonstrated the correct way to jump-stop. He was quick to halt play and hammer home a point. Occasionally he laughed along with his team, sometimes even at mistakes, as if they all shared the same secret—it’s great to be back on the basketball court.

  The most impressive aspect of his coaching comeback was how Richardson ran his practice with his fluent border Spanish—and Spanglish. He switched back and forth as easily as he had traversed the border as a boy. It didn’t take him long to recall the words for “trap” and “fast break.”

  His “Forty Minutes of Hell” depended on a brutally fast pace. During the first week of training, nearly every player was bent over, hands to knees, and gasping for breath. “Qué pasa, hórale, muévanse!” Richardson said, but they couldn’t move at the pace he was demanding.

  Even after surrendering a layup, the Mexicans were required to racehorse the ball back down the court. “If you want to take the other team’s heart, no hay nada como hechar una canasta enseguida de la de ellos,” Richardson says. Scoring quickly after his own teams’ defensive breakdowns. Attacking the attacker. A Richardson trademark.

  The Mexican National Team would take the floor the last day of May 2007.

  It wasn’t at Bud Walton Arena. Instead, it was a meaningless exhibition game in a dank Juárez gym. Meaningless with one exception—it was Mexico’s first game with Nolan Richardson as coach. Ninety minutes before the match was to begin, the gym was jammed and the atmosphere was festive. Musicians, busking for pesos, set up outside the entrance. Inside, dozens of autograph-seekers and cell-phone-wielding photographers formed a queue, but the target wasn’t the players.

  A few minutes later, in a decaying locker room deep in the bowels of the building, Richardson gathered the red-white-and-green-clad players. “Vamos a empezar a half-court defense,” Richardson said, but as the game progressed, he’d turn up the pressure with his “Cuarenta minutos de infierno.”

  After a few brief reminders, the players rose to their feet.

  “Vámanos,” Richardson hollered, and the team gathered around him in a tight circle, every hand reaching forward. “This is a new beginning for us,” Richardson said, and the coach indeed looked new in his all-white attire. Clean, fresh, and young. Then he led the chant—“Uno, dos, tres…México!”

  With the reborn Richardson guiding them, the undermanned Mexican team put on a valiant showing in Las Vegas in the summer of 2007, hoping to qualify for the Olympics for the first time in decades. They opened with an upset over bronze winner Puerto Rico, and it appeared as though Richardson might have to recall the Spanish expression for “Hollywood ending.”

  The Mexicans beat Venezuela later, but stumbled in games against Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, and Panama. In the end, Mexico did not win enough to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. Despite these disappointments, the Mexican team earned a measure of respect against the overstocked Americans—a monstrous team good enough for a Wheaties box, a team that had been winning by an average of 47 points. In his pregame talk, USA (and Duke) coach Mike Krzyzewski lectured his young squad on the historical importance of Nolan Richardson.

  Mexico converted time and again off fast breaks, often after made baskets, and in the third quarter Mexico pulled within a dozen. Richardson’s team would run 100 points on the Americans, the most the USA team allowed the entire tournament. That wasn’t nearly enough. In the end Mexico lost by 27 points.

  “Nolan Richardson was one of the best five coaches in the nation,” Don Haskins said shortly after the Mexican team was eliminated. “It’s terrible that he’s not coaching in college. I don’t even care about that black coach stuff,” he added. “All I know is he was one hell of a coach.”

  Don Haskins died in September of 2008. The funeral services were held at the Methodist church near downtown El Paso, where Richardson had hustled parking cars on Sundays during his college days. Within a week of Haskins’s death, Richardson’s first wife, Helen, who had been on dialysis for years, passed away as well.

  A few months later, Nolan Richardson was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in Kansas City. Other inductees included Charles Barkley, Danny Manning, and television commentators Dick Vitale and Billy Packer.

  Richardson and his wife, Rosario, arrived early, and were quickly surrounded by a crew of Razorback supporters and ex-players. Just then, there seemed to be some sort of disturbance; the Arkansas group turned back toward the street, with big eyes.

  Frank Broyles was getting out of an SUV.

  Broyles looks more like a basketball man than a football coach. He’s well over six feet, long-armed, and moves gracefully. For a man in his eighties, he looks fantastic. Broyles had no official responsibility to be at Richardson’s Hall of Fame night; he had retired from the university nearly a year earlier.

  Richardson helped Rose remove her red leather coat. She said something to him about the surprise guest. Richardson didn’t seem too worried, though. “Let’s just enjoy ourselves,” he told her.

  Several of Richardson’s players were there. Ken Biley. Scotty Thurman. Corliss Williamson. Clint McDaniel. So was his attorney in the lawsuit, John Walker. Former assistant coach Wayne Stehlik and longtime basketball secretary Terri Mercer were there, as was his old boss from the junior college, Sid Simpson, and Arkansas’s new AD, Jeff Long.

  The press conference was jammed, with close to five hundred fans and media in attendance. Each inductee was given five minutes to speak.

  Richardson is still a powerful public speaker and has an incredible sense of drama. His voice didn’t crescendo with the power of a storefront preacher this time. Instead, he sounded reflective. Richardson mentioned Ol’ Mama, Sid Simpson, and Don Haskins. His public talks often refer to his inevitable reckoning some day with Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. This time he brought up somebody else.

  “I noticed Frank Broyles is here,” Richardson said, “and I appreciate him coming.”

  The Arkansas faithful in attendance saw it as a profoun
d moment—Broyles took a small step; Richardson took one as well.

  Scotty Thurman was surprised but not shocked. “They both know they could have handled it differently,” he says. “People who have a lot of power play those battles. Deep down they don’t really like each other, but they respect each other.”

  When all the inductees had spoken, master of ceremonies Reggie Minton invited anyone who wanted to interview or congratulate the inductees to come forward. Lines quickly formed in front of each honoree. Frank Broyles, who was sitting at the very back, got in line to shake hands with Nolan Richardson.

  The next morning at breakfast, Richardson talked about his mixed emotions after both receiving a great honor and seeing Broyles. Richardson’s tone had mellowed again. He admitted that he had noticed Broyles waiting patiently at the back of the line and said that Broyles was complimentary and congratulatory when he finally got his turn.

  In February 2009, the school finally honored the 1994 NCAA title team—and coach. It marked the fifteenth anniversary of their championship and would be Richardson’s first time on campus since he was fired. The ten-year anniversary had come and gone without mention because of the ongoing lawsuit. Frank Broyles had retired a year earlier and been replaced by Jeff Long, who seemed genuinely interested in bringing Richardson back into the Razorback family.

  Northwest Arkansas had been rocked earlier in the month by vicious ice storms. Trees were torn out at their roots, buildings damaged, and power lines were dead all over the Ozarks. The lack of power had hit Madison County, just south of Fayetteville, especially hard. With no phone service or electricity functioning in this mountainous part of the state, a hundred workers were sent from Pennsylvania to assist the local electric cooperative in restoring power. Nearly a third of the conscripted workers from the North were African-American.

  Madison County is virtually all-white, and the ice storm exposed an archaic mindset that still lives on in Arkansas, only minutes from the state’s university.

  The Pennsylvania workers were harassed by gangs of white men driving around them, hollering racial epithets, waving Confederate flags and guns. The imported workers figured they’d better call the sheriff’s office—not in Madison County, though. They phoned nearby Washington County instead.

  Madison County was in the national news after Barack Obama was elected in November, as well. In Huntsville, the day after the election, the owners of the Faubus Motel removed the Stars and Stripes and raised the Confederate flag. American voters, the owners claimed, had turned their backs on the principles of our founding fathers. The motel was at one time owned by the former governor but no longer had any connection to the Faubus family.

  Even after the phone and power lines had been repaired, the mangled trees and busted branches remained all over northwest Arkansas.

  The Razorback basketball team had won just a single SEC game going into this final home contest. It was their worst season since joining the SEC.

  Ken Biley would have walked to the reunion from Kansas City, where he works for H&R Block. “I’ve had all kinds of excitement in my life,” says the surprise starter of the 1994 champs. “I’ve witnessed my wife giving birth to our kids. But my starting in that championship game, that honor did more for me than anyone could imagine.”

  Today, Biley still needs a few more classes for his college diploma. He’s continued to watch sports in the fifteen years since Arkansas won it all, especially championship games, looking for a story that would mirror his own. He has uncovered nothing even close. “This wasn’t a fourth down gamble in football,” Biley says. “This was the NCAA championship on national TV. What would the critics say about Nolan if we had lost the game?”

  The reunion weekend began with a Richardson staple—the team, along with wives, family, and friends, were invited to his home for a colossal barbecue. The players went out on the town afterward, but managed to be up the next day by nine a.m. for another typical Richardson event, a free basketball clinic at the Yvonne Richardson Community Center. The center, situated in Fayetteville’s tiny traditional black neighborhood south of downtown, was opened in Yvonne’s honor a few years after her death.

  The players from the 1994 team were the guest coaches, but for the first few minutes of the clinic, they sloughed about and yawned, arms crossed and shirts untucked. Former Razorback assistant Wayne Stehlik tried to bring the kids and coaches to life with a warm-up drill, a simple relay race for the youngsters. Even that couldn’t motivate the former NCAA champs, who were no longer subject to curfews to ensure a good night’s sleep.

  When the relay was just a minute old, Richardson appeared at the entrance. The parents noticed, then some of the campers—none of whom were born yet when Richardson led the Razorbacks to the title. A couple of his former players noticed, too.

  Corliss Williamson leaped into a basketball stance. “Hey, I want to win this!” he shouted to his team, pacing up and down his line, bending at the waist to attempt a chest bump with one kid.

  Clint McDaniel took Williamson’s cue and began pushing his young campers, too. “We’re not going to let them beat us!” McDaniel said. Then Ken Biley and the rest of the Razorbacks jumped in the kids’ faces, high-fiving, fist-bumping, and taunting the nearest competitors. When it was over, the winning line jumped up and down and exchanged hugs, as though they were champions as well. The clinic had undergone an astonishing transformation. Richardson hadn’t said a word.

  College basketball is a business—that’s a refrain repeated any time a coach is fired. If it is indeed true, then firing Nolan Richardson was a bad business decision. The Razorbacks have never been the same. Seven years after Richardson’s removal, it’s nearly impossible to conclude that Broyles’s judgment was correct, since the Razorbacks have never come close to approaching his success.

  With the current Arkansas team struggling, Nolan nostalgia gripped the state, and the reunion of the 1994 champs allowed Razorback fans a brief glimpse of their past glory—and an opportunity to reconsider what had transpired with their iconic coach.

  “It was a sad day for the University of Arkansas,” former chancellor John White says, in retrospect. “Nolan Richardson is just an absolute icon. He’s not only an asset for the University of Arkansas, he’s an asset for this nation. I just hated that it came to that kind of conclusion.” White wasn’t alone in his sentiments, and the weekend festivities would go a long way toward building trust between Richardson and the school.

  There’s also the “What if?” factor. Richardson’s infamous press conference in 2002 began with the sports information director reading an encouraging letter from the parents of a recruit. The recruit was Andre Iguodala, who never enrolled at Arkansas because of Richardson’s removal. Iguodala went to Arizona instead, then was the ninth pick in the NBA draft, made the All-Rookie team, and became an NBA All-Star. Joe Johnson was the only player of Richardson’s ever to rise to that status in the NBA. Razorback fans could only speculate how good they might have been with Richardson coaching Iguodala.

  The reunion banquet had the glitz and glamour of the Grammy Awards. The posh hall was packed with a crowd of nearly a thousand people who’d paid a hundred dollars each. Full-size color photos decorated the walls. Souvenirs from the title run were being hawked at the door. If Arkansas had at one time been viewed as backward, you wouldn’t have known it this night. The expenditures would have made a Wall Street CEO blush.

  Each player was given a minute to speak. Richardson was last, and praised some of the most obscure players effusively. Just before he was finished, he said, “I’m the only coach in America who was fired and still stayed in town.” It was his way of saying both that he still loved Arkansas and that his firing was unjust.

  One of the first things anyone entering Bud Walton Arena sees in the main lobby is a seven-foot cutout of Nolan Richardson, in a trophy case with a plaque that reads, “Arguably the most popular coach in any sport in Razorback history.”

  Two entire trophy cases c
ommemorate “The Nolan Richardson Era.” Another one is devoted to the 1994 NCAA title team. Just to the side is a miniature theater, where you can push a button and learn about the Razorbacks. Above the entrance, a sign proclaims: THE NOLAN RICHARDSON THEATER. On the side is a plaque dedicating the theater to Yvonne Richardson. All of these displays were built before Richardson was dumped in 2002, and all of them have remained, even through the contentious lawsuit.

  Ralph Brewster, Richardson’s first great player from Bowie, has little remorse about his own career. Brewster’s impulse—to go along with what was best for his coach, instead of what might have been best for himself—is an indicator of the charisma of his coach, he says. Today he is proud of his role in Richardson’s life. “Nolan will stand the test of history,” Brewster says. “A lot of changes in the view of Nolan are going to come with time. He is an original who spoke the truth and stood on righteousness.”

  The leading scorer in Arkansas history, Todd Day, concurs about the test of time. “Nolan Richardson is the greatest African-American coach in history,” he said days before Richardson came back to campus.

  The 2009 SEC season had been a disaster for second-year coach John Pelphrey. The only league game Arkansas won leading up to the reunion was the day after Richardson had privately addressed Pelphrey’s Razorbacks.

  The Georgia game was a return to the best days and a chance for the fans to remember. Richardson addressed the crowd of 19,724 at halftime, and their reaction was deafening. “If a Phantom fighter jet had flown through Bud Walton [Arena] right then,” Wally Hall wrote, “it would not have been seen or heard.” There was still plenty of history that Richardson could invoke that made Razorback fans happy.