College hoops' "what could have been"

      Let's rewrite history and suppose Willis Reed and Elvin Hayes -- future NBA stars, Hall of Famers, both from north-central/east Louisiana -- had played basketball for LSU in the 1960s.
      Or pick a future star -- say, Robert Parish, Louis Dunbar, Larry Wright, Calvin Natt, Joe Dumars, Rick Robey, Orlando Woolridge -- and put them at LSU in the 1970s.
      Or Karl Malone delivering as the Tigers' "Mailman" in the 1980s. Or P.J. Brown, like Malone another Louisiana Tech big man who lasted for 15-plus years in the NBA, going there.
      Think they might all have helped LSU's program?
      And today -- this morning -- envision Robert Williams playing for LSU in the NCAA Tournament instead of for Texas A&M. 
      Think the Tigers -- just like all the other men's basketball teams in Louisiana -- would have been shut out of the NCAA Tournament (for the second year a row)?
      We can no more rewrite history than LSU could get those guys in school. 
      But the point is, "what could have been," as suggested a couple of weeks by Dale Brown -- mastermind of the LSU men's program for 25 years.
      Dale, as most anyone who has been around him for, say, 10 seconds, can spin some tales (pick a subject), and among those are his adventures in recruiting over three decades in college basketball.
      He was reacting to our recent blog piece about Parish's statistics at Centenary finally being officially recognized by the NCAA, and in that piece, we mentioned that while Brown recruited Robert for LSU and happily would have welcomed his 7-foot presence, Robert did not qualify academically.
      By Parish's senior year in high school, LSU had just  integrated its basketball program. Among the talent Dale inherited when he became the Tigers' head coach in the spring of 1972 was Collis Temple Jr., a 6-foot-8 forward recruited out of Kentwood, Louisiana, in 1970 by Press Maravich and his staff. He was the color barrier breaker in LSU's program.

Houston coach Guy Lewis with his two big stars
from Louisiana in 1966-68 -- Elvin Hayes and
Don Chaney. Imagine if they had played at LSU
instead of Houston.

      But the barrier breaker could have been Elvin Hayes ... if, as Dale tells it, the "Big E" could have made that choice.
      He could not, of course. In early 1964, Hayes' senior year in high school, LSU was not yet recruiting African-American players.
      He was a still-developing 6-9 forward who averaged 35  points a game and led his Eula D. Britton High School team in Rayville, Louisiana -- 22 miles east of Monroe -- to a state championship in the all-black athletic association (LIALO).
      Was he the best player in the state? Little question. In his team's state-title game, he had 45 points and 20 rebounds.
      But the bulk of the publicity, the white guy considered the state's best prospect, was 6-4 forward Bobby Lane of Isadore Newman High (New Orleans), the do-it-all leader of two consecutive LHSAA (the all-white organization) Class A state championship teams.
      (Oh, LSU didn't get Lane, either. He chose to attend and play at Davidson, N.C., College.)
--- 

      Here is the Dale Brown version of Hayes' "what could have been" story.

      In Hayes' fabulous college career at the University of Houston (late 1965 to March 1968), he was the nation's best college player not named Lou Alcindor. A 16-year NBA career followed and included 27,313 points, 16,279 rebounds, one NBA championship, two other Finals appearances and 12 All-Star Games in a row.
      Several years later, he made it to LSU.
      By now, he operated a company that cleaned campus dormitories and he had come to LSU seeking a service contract. He visited with Coach Brown, and that night attended the LSU basketball banquet.
      "He told me it was the first time he'd ever been on the LSU campus," Dale recalled. "And then he got very emotional about LSU. He said that when he was in high school, he really wanted to go to school there and wrote a letter to the LSU coaches. Never heard back from them."
---
       LSU was a football school always. It did have a couple of basketball highlights -- a pre-NCAA Tournament national championship in 1935 (Sparky Wade's team) and, led by  Bob Pettit (from Baton Rouge, and a future NBA all-timer), SEC championships in 1953 and '54, and an NCAA Final Four in '53. 
       Jay McCreary, an Indiana Hoosier through and through, was near the end of a less-than-mediocre eight years as LSU head coach when Willis Reed and Elvin Hayes came along.
       McCreary ignored Hayes. University of Houston coach Guy Lewis did not.
       It was Lewis and assistant Harvey Pate who recruited Hayes and another Louisiana black-school star, guard Don Chaney -- from Baton Rouge no less (McKinley High) -- and signed them on the same day to integrate the Houston program. And they added a third player from the state, 6-7 forward Theodis Lee, from Carroll High in Monroe.
      (Lewis and Pate would bring their talent search back to Louisiana, most notably for guard Poo Welch from LaGrange-Lake Charles in 1969 (after two years in junior college), Dunbar -- best player other than Parish many of us saw in high school -- out of Webster High-Minden in 1971, and "outlaw" Benny Anders from Bernice in 1981.)
      Houston, riding Hayes' turnaround jumper and rebounding prowess, became a national powerhouse.
      In the famous "Game of the Century" -- Jan. 20, 1968, before 52,693 paid at the Astrodome, the first nationally televised regular-season college basketball game -- Elvin and No. 2-ranked, 13-0 Houston stopped No. 1-ranked, 14-0 UCLA, winner of 47 consecutive games over 2 1/2 seasons. Hayes outscored the awesome Alcindor 39-15, outrebounded him 15-12, and made the winning two free throws in Houston's 71-69 victory.
      (That season, Houston twice played Centenary, winning 118-81 in Houston and -- yikes -- 107-56 in Shreveport. Hayes scored 40 the first game, then 50 at Hirsch Youth Center.)
      Houston went to two NCAA Final Four in a row (1967 and '68), and lost to UCLA in the semifinals both years. In '68, the revenge score was a rout, 101-69.
      LSU didn't go anywhere from 1954 until Brown's program finally took hold in 1979 and became a postseason regular.
---
      Let's backtrack to early 1964 as Hayes was finishing high school. Willis Reed was finishing that spring at Grambling College, about 20 1/2 miles directly south from his hometown of Bernice (which is 73 miles from Rayville).
      Don't know if Willis ever thought about LSU. But what a sensational four-year career he had at Grambling.

Willis Reed: a young star at Grambling College
(no thoughts of LSU in the early 1960s).
Photo from Small College Basketball Hall
of Fame.

      It began in the 1960-61 season when he was the  freshman star center on GC's NAIA national championship team and ended with him as the New York Knicks' second-round NBA draft pick, eighth overall, in 1964.
      And, of course, he helped the Knicks to their first NBA championship in 1970, made the Basketball Hall of Fame, became a team executive ... and a legend.
      LSU obviously never gave him a look. Not in 1960, at West Side High School in the Bernice suburb of Lillie (that is a joke; it's all very rural territory).
---
      "You can't believe the number of black players who were not recruited before schools in Louisiana were integrated," Dale Brown said in suggesting this post. 
      Oh, yes, we can believe. Those of us who can name many of the great players Louisiana high school basketball has produced know.
      And so, just a sampling from the 1950s through about 1970 when LSU -- and other state schools -- finally followed the basketball integration path first taken by Southwestern Louisiana and Louisiana Tech:
      -- Bob "Lil' Abner" Hopkins, a lithe 6-8 center-forward from Jackson High in Jonesboro who scored 3,759 points (29.8 per game) for Grambling in 1952-56, then played four years in the NBA and was the Seattle Supersonics' head coach in 1977.
      -- Bob "Butterbean" Love (Morehouse High in Bastrop, then Southern University 1961-65, a 6-8 small forward who for eight years was a scoring machine for the NBA's Chicago Bulls).
      -- Lucious Jackson (also Morehouse High, then Pan American in Edinburgh, Texas, which he led to the 1962 NAIA national championship) and then as a bullish 6-9 power  forward helped Wilt Chamberlain and the 1967 Philadelphia 76ers to the only NBA title not won by the Boston Celtics in an 11-year span.
      -- Chaney, a guard, a defensive phenom who started for those Hayes-led Houston teams, then helped the Celtics win two NBA titles and was an NBA head coach for 12 of his 22 years in coaching.  
      -- Theodis Lee also started for Houston in the monumental 1967-68 season, was a team co-captain the next year and went on to play for a decade with the Harlem Globetrotters, then died in 1979 of cancer, only a few weeks after it was found.
      -- Wilbert Frazier (Webster High in Minden, Grambling 1961-65), a 6-7 forward who had two pro seasons.  
      -- The players out of McCall High (Tallulah): guard Jimmy Jones (Grambling 1963-67, then a six-time all-star in the American Basketball Association) and three stars on Stephen F. Austin's NAIA power in the early 1970s -- guard James Silas, a top-flight ABA and NBA player for Dallas and San Antonio), forward Surrey Oliver and center George Johnson.
---
      We could give you a long list of terrific players from Louisiana that LSU did recruit successfully, and a long list of good/great ones that LSU could not sign, who chose another Louisiana school perhaps closer to their homes or decided they wanted to play for an out-of-state school.
      But if you have gotten this far, you have earned an ending. So we will return to Robert Williams and Texas A&M.
      He is the Aggies' biggest star, a strong 6-10 forward who likely will be a high NBA Draft pick. He is that good, has that much potential.
      Coming from Oil City, Louisiana (just north of Shreveport) and out of North Caddo High School, he might have been a natural for LSU.
      No. Although LSU -- when Johnny Jones was head coach -- was very interested and recruited him, Williams apparently always preferred A&M.
      So this NCAA Tournament, in fact today, might be the end of his college career. The Aggies face Providence in the  first of the day's 16 first-round games. LSU faithful can watch Williams and think, "What could have been."  
      Elvin Hayes and Willis Reed probably will be watching, too.
     
        

      

Where there is a Will, is there a national championship?

     I have said this often, and written it a time or two: I want to see LSU win the national championship in men's basketball.

From LSU basketball's Twitter account.

      So there is your assignment, Will Wade, introduced today as the latest new LSU men's basketball head coach.
      Good luck to you.
      It is one of the few dreams I have not seen come true in a lifetime of rooting for my favorite teams, schools and countries.
      I am not the college basketball fan I once was (gee, I said that about the NBA a couple of weeks ago), and to be honest, I only really follow LSU and Louisiana Tech men's basketball. (In the rare instances when LSU and Tech teams play, in any sport, I root for ... the winner. So there.)
      The NCAA Tournament, and the Selection Sunday show, are only must-see for me if the Tigers and/or Bulldogs have a chance to be part of it. 
      Tech has not been in the NCAAs in 26 years and its only chance, most always, is to win its conference tournament because it is -- almost without exception -- in a one-bid league. Three consecutive conference regular-season titles and consistent high finishes have given us hope the last five years, but it hasn't happened.
      LSU was no factor the past two years, but someday -- soon, we hope -- it will be again, and the thought should be the first thought in this blog.
      Go ahead and laugh and say that's preposterous. It is not a joke to me.
      LSU's basketball history and tradition -- which some perceive as not very good, but they are wrong -- tells you this is not an impossible mission.
      Difficult, yes, but four Final Fours, 10 SEC regular-season championships, 21 NCAA Tournament appearances, 24 NCAA victories (and 24 losses), and a string of great players -- some of them among the greatest in the sport's history -- are proof this can be a big-time program. 
      I won't make you read through the list of great players. Just believe me. But most people know.
      I don't want to hear, as I am told by some of my friends, that basketball isn't important enough at LSU, that it is an exercise (often in futility) between football and baseball seasons.
      I don't agree. I don't agree at all. I never will.
      I wrote much about Dale Brown, Shaq, LSU's program and basketball history almost two years ago, if you care to go back and check on the consistency of my feelings: http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2015/05/shaq-and-dale-its-not-just-about_6.html 
      True, LSU has never hired the proven big-time winning head coach at the top levels, or broken the budget to pay the coach as much as some other universities do.
      But Dale, in 25 years, proved you can take a middling, or mediocre, program and make it a consistent winner (NCAA Tournament 13 times in a 15-year period, including 10 in a row). John Brady, in 11 years, had two SEC champions -- one that made the NCAA Sweet Sixteen and  one exciting Final Four team. Trent Johnson's first LSU team, with mostly Brady-recruited talented, was an SEC champion.
      Six times LSU has been eliminated from the NCAA Tournament by the eventual national champion.
      So it can be done. Winning fairly big consistently, though, year after year, only has happened in the middle portion of Brown's long, often wacky, tenure.
      Enter Will Wade.
      I really like the selection. He is -- to borrow from Hamilton -- "young, scrappy and hungry."  
      I like his youth (34, one of the youngest major-sport coaches LSU ever has hired) -- Dale was 37 in 1972 -- and his reputation as a tireless promoter of the game (like Dale was), and his short record of success as a head coach at Tennessee-Chattanooga and Virginia Commonwealth (two years each).
      He was a Virginia Commonwealth assistant to Shaka Smart when their 2011 team pulled a huge surprise, after a good-but-not-great regular season, to surge into the NCAA Final Four.
      At VCU, they became known for their "havoc" defense, the fullcourt, scrambling pressure that dictates to opponents.
      So he comes in as a defensive-minded coach. Good, because -- in my opinion, my observations -- that is what was lacking so often in Johnny Jones' five years as head coach.
      Wade's team beat LSU this season. But then, obviously, that was no great feat, considering the Tigers' 10-21 record.
      Some thoughts about Jones' tenure:
      (1) When he was hired, after 11 seasons as head coach at University of North Texas, I thought he was the right guy for the LSU job because of his long ties as player and assistant coach;
      (2) Few accused him of being a great coach, so as I watched his teams -- and talked with some friends -- I thought the Tigers lacked discipline on offense (especially in shot selection) and especially on defense. Patient teams could break down the LSU defenses inside, and the few games I watched, I thought the Tigers were often just outhustled. 
      At times, I did see great effort. Too often I didn't. And then it got to where I couldn't watch.
      (3) Johnny Jones, we were told, was a gentleman, a relatively calm sideline presence and good ambassador for LSU. (Same with Trent Johnson, we heard. Brady, again by hearsay, had an often profane sideline manner, to the dismay and concern of nearby spectators.)
      With two good inside players, NBA draft choices Jarell Martin and Jordan Mickey, Jones' third LSU team went 22-11 and made the NCAA Tournament. But -- an indication of how it went -- it lost a game it controlled most of the way and should have won, fading late and losing by a point to North Carolina State.
      One-and-done: Jones' NCAA record at LSU.
      And then there were such great hopes last season because the world's No. 1 recruit, wonderfully talented 6-foot-10 Ben Simmons (from Australia), chose to play at LSU.
      He proved he could play point guard because he is a great ballhandler -- maybe too great; he tended to try to do too much -- and a slashing forward with a strong inside game, but not a consistent mid- or long-range shooter, and because he was a freshman still learning, not able to carry his team to great heights.
      Early last season, after watching LSU a few times, I wrote an e-mail and Facebook post (not a blog post) criticizing LSU's defensive efforts and shot selection, and warning that if there wasn't improvement, the Tigers would not live up to expectations.
      Dale Brown -- defensive for the kid he recruited and coached out of DeRidder, La., the young man he then made a longtime top assistant, and the older coach he so eagerly lobbied for to return as head coach -- sent me an e-mail saying it was easy to be critical and that he was confident Johnny would bring his team around.
       I have not written another word publicly about LSU basketball since then ... until now.
      Simmons -- my opinion -- "used" LSU, knowing he would be a "one-and-done" player en route to the pros and just waiting his time for the NBA Draft (and he was the No. 1 pick). I don't know how badly he cared about LSU.
       The season was a disappointment, the final loss to Texas A&M by 33 points an embarrassment.
       In Jones' defense, the top true guard off that team was injured and then this season he had to boot one of his top players from the squad. But it was obvious, too, that this team lacked enough talent, discipline and -- maybe -- grit to compete.
       When you lose by at least 15 points 10 times, and by 30-plus four times, when you lose 17 of the final 18 games and go 2-16 in the SEC, longtime LSU ties aren't enough.
       Will Wade will have to see if his defensive style will work with the returning players and will have to recruit the talent to fit that style or whatever he needs to compete in the SEC and nationally.
        I have always considered Louisiana a talent-rich basketball state. Think about the talent that's come out of there. The best LSU teams, too, have had their share of players from Baton Rouge, New Orleans and all over the state. Dale Brown had great players from points east and west, north and south, but he did strong work in-state, too.
        Maybe Jones and his staff didn't dig deep enough. One example: Robert Williams was a 6-9 forward at North Caddo High School, just above Shreveport, a year ago, a strong prospect.
        He wound up going to Texas A&M, where he was one of its top players this season and a projected NBA lottery pick. (He just announced that he will return to college ball another year.) It is hard to imagine that he would not have been interested in playing for LSU. But the word was that the LSU staff did not put a fullcourt press on him; that they had questions about his style of play.
        If LSU had been more dogged and signed him, perhaps Johnny Jones might still be the coach. Moot point.
        It's up to Will Wade now. He loves fullcourt presses. He can take the beloved gold ties he always wear wherever needed.
        We'll see where this takes us -- hopefully to the NCAA championship. Dream on.     
          

Shaq and Dale: It's not just about basketball

from ESPN.com

      "Shaq and Dale is a film about basketball, but it's a film about a relationship, a really special relationship between a huge megastar that we all know now in Shaquille O'Neal and his college head coach, Dale Brown, that dates back to when Shaq was quote/unquote a nobody in Germany on an Army base struggling with the decision to whether or not to even play basketball.
      "It's a story about love. It was a relationship that proved to Shaq there was one person who would always stand up for him regardless of what happened on the court and also off the court. And it gave this young man so much confidence. Shaq says that he wouldn't have become the player he did without Dale Brown. And I believe that wholeheartedly."
      -- ESPN anchor Hannah Storm, on the film she directed
---
      I have watched Shaq and Dale twice now, once to make notes for this piece. I have been thoroughly entertained.
      I recommend this film -- an hour, with commercials -- to anyone who likes a feel-good story. Sure, it's better if you are a basketball fan and/or an LSU fan. But if you are a fan of human beings with character, this fits.

from YouTube.com

      This is one of the newest in the ESPN Films Presents productions, an extension of the excellent  30 for 30 series, now developed for the SEC Network's SEC Storied features. I've seen a half dozen -- all wonderful, but none better than It's Time -- Chucky Mullins (of Ole Miss). That one, poignant and sad, brought many tears.
      Shaq and Dale is poignant, too, but joyful.
      Oh, there's controversy. Wouldn't be Dale Brown if there wasn't. Or Shaq, for that matter.
      Both are outspoken and honest (maybe to a fault). Part of the celebrity status they've had for decades is that the description controversial comes with it.
      I'm sure their critics will find something to knock in this film. Sorry, I can't find it.
      What I did find was a lot of humor; that's what Shaq is known for. Telling his stories, acting them out, talking about life on campus, finding his old dorm room and, after slowly opening the door, barging in and diving on his old bed, yelling, "It's still here; it's still here." Yes, 7-foot-1 and 350 pounds (or so) diving on this bed.
      And Dale, repeatedly, is seen laughing at the Shaq antics/stories. You will, too.
      What also comes through is Dale's earnestness and the fatherly guidance he gave to Shaq and so many others. Daddy Dale, indeed.
      And his motivational methods -- in so many ways. As Shaq points out early on, from right after he met Dale at age 13, he received a letter (or more) a week from the coach and still receives an e-mail regularly.
      I know; I've been on the mailing list for years. As I was writing this Tuesday night, an e-mail from Dale hit my inbox. From the time he became the LSU coach in 1972, those of us around the state received the messages from Dale -- notes complimenting a story he liked, encouragement on non-sports matters, the printouts such as "The Man in the Mirror" (I still have that one).
---
      My opinions:
      (1) Other than Charlie McClendon and Les Miles, Dale Brown is the most criticized coach in LSU history. Charlie Mac and Les, because it came with their position as the longest tenured Tigers football coaches of the past 70 years; Dale, because he was being Dale.
      (2) Dale Brown is the most interesting coach in LSU history, a man of the world. Maybe Skip Bertman (baseball guru) was in the ballpark and maybe Miles, the often hard-to-figure-out guy, will be his equal given another 10 years of news conferences and sound bytes and social media posts.
      But if you dealt with Dale, if you interviewed him, you weren't always sure where it was going.
He might talk about world hunger, or visiting the Taj Mahal or the rain forests in South America or the Himalayas; he's concerned about Middle East politics; and I can assure you that he is very much an American patriot.
      He was always willing to criticize the NCAA's investigative methods and its archaic rules concerning humane needs for players. He wanted to recruit Arvydas Sabonis from behind the Iron Curtain in the mid-1970s; he knew a great player when he saw one.
      OK, so maybe it's eccentric, maybe it's unlike how most coaches think and act. How many times have I heard Dale criticized (by my friends, coaches and sportswriters) for that?
      Plus, how much criticism have I heard of his coaching? Plenty.
      Couldn't coach really talented teams; did better with undermanned, underrated teams. Wasn't a good in-game coach. Couldn't get past the second round of the NCAA Tournament with the 1990 Shaq-Chris Jackson-Stanley Roberts team (a focal point early in this film). Couldn't beat Indiana and Bob Knight (0-3 in the NCAA Tournament).
      Lost a 31-point lead (with 15 1/2 minutes to play) and the game to Kentucky in February 1994 -- the biggest blown lead in NCAA Division I history to that point.
      I have to be honest -- I was among the early critics. My wife will tell you that. She reminds me of it often.
      It took Dale six seasons at LSU (1972-78) before one of his teams had a better-than-.500 record in the Southeastern Conference. And when I met Bea in the mid-1970s, I was not enamored with the LSU basketball program. Few people were.
      But she had worked with some LSU boosters, and Dale boosters, and she kept telling me how much those people respected Dale and his program.
      So when many thought he was on the verge of being told to leave this coaching job, his program turned for good. In 1979, LSU made the NCAA Tournament (as SEC champion) for the first time in 25 seasons. Two years later, LSU made the Final Four.
      Here is opinion No. 3: Dale Brown is the main reason people care about LSU basketball.
      Yes, Bob Pettit is a legend, and those 1952-53, 1953-54 teams he led to a combined 27-0 SEC record (and one Final Four) are legends. Yes, Pete Maravich is a legend -- the greatest scoring machine many of us have seen -- and the Assembly Center is named for him.
      But Dale lasted 25 years in the job, he coached more games (749) than any LSU basketball coach, he took 13 teams to the NCAA Tournament, he coached four SEC regular-season and one SEC Tournament champions; he took two teams to the Final Four; and -- although it didn't happen -- he set a goal: LSU winning the national championship.
      Some of us -- not going along with the thought that LSU doesn't care about basketball -- have always thought that should be an achievable goal.
      Anyway, LSU won 448 times with Dale coaching, and consider this -- 18 of those victories came against Kentucky. How significant is that?
      LSU was 0-19 all-time vs. Kentucky before a 1961 victory. Then it was 1-35 before a 1973 victory -- the last victory of Press Maravich's coaching stint at LSU. It took Dale only three games to beat Kentucky. OK, so his teams were 1-10 vs. Kentucky before they won six of eight from the Wildcats.
      And then his Tigers beat them 11 more times, including that memorable 1986 Elite Eight (NCAA Regional final) in Atlanta -- maybe the greatest victory of the Dale era. After that one, Dale was shown leaping in the air and racing off the floor toward the dressing room -- similar to his sprint off the Superdome floor when his team's first Final Four trip was assured in 1981.
      In '86, that was a totally surprising LSU Final Four team. Think about how many great coaches never took even one team to a Final Four? This so-so coach took two.
---
      So, yes, the 1989-90 team -- which Dale on this film said had "unlimited potential" -- didn't get it done. One reason: Shaq really wasn't the force he would become the next two years. Chris Jackson, as exciting a shooter as LSU ever had other than Maravich, wasn't enough. Stanley Roberts wasn't a good enough all-around player. There wasn't enough cohesion, or quality depth to overcome the shortcomings.
      "Great expectations ... maybe too great," says the film narrator, country-music star Tim McGraw (who grew up in Northeast Louisiana).
      "Disappointing. I could have recruited better. I could have motivated them better. I could have done this; I could have done that," Dale said of the season and the second-round NCAA loss to Georgia Tech on Tennessee's home floor. (Tech made the Final Four).
      No excuses. You wouldn't expect that from Dale.
      The film covers the many highlight (and lowlight) games of Shaq's three years at LSU. It was a spectacular era, not all it could have been, but it's worth seeing the clips from the games, and for the LSU faithful, there are many scenic shots of the campus ... including Tiger Stadium and the PMAC.
       For those of us with Shreveport ties, there's the play-by-play sounds of Jim Hawthorne and a couple of quick shots of longtime LSU basketball sports information man Kent Lowe. Those are from 25 years ago; we go back with those guys for 40-plus years.
---
      Shaq and Dale aren't the only controversial people in this film. Jerry Tarkanian is in there as the UNLV coach, but even he pales in comparison to ... David Duke and Bob Knight.
       The less I write about David Duke, the better.
       He makes even Bob Knight look decent. But I don't want to write much about Knight, either. Did not approve of his coaching style -- or any coach that thrives on intimidation --  and detest his mean-spirited public presence. Especially didn't like his criticisms of Dale Brown.
         Sure, he was a great coach; few have been better in terms of defense and motion offense, and knowledge. He has many devoted followers; he's been giving to the game in many ways and to people he considers loyal and friends. But few top him in arrogance, self-importance.
         I can tell you that I would rather deal with Dale more than Bob Knight 101 times out of 100.
         Enough negativity. Dale would not approve of it. But just for the record, there you have it.
---
         When we were at the Shreveport newspapers, we knew that if we called Dale, he would return the call. Maybe if he was busy, or off to practice or not in the office, it might take 24 hours for the callback, but you could count on it.
          Some big-name coaches, it was impossible. Eddie Sutton at Arkansas was either too busy or did not deem the Shreveport Journal important enough to talk to by phone; the return call several times came from his assistant, James Dickey.
          But Dale would give you something. When I was in Shreveport, in the '70s and '80s, we did not cover LSU daily; we didn't have a Glenn Guilbeau type on the scene. We would -- to use one of Dale's favorite expressions -- "parachute in" to cover games (and do interviews).
          Personally, I rarely covered LSU basketball. In fact, I never attended a game Shaquille O'Neal played for LSU. The only game I saw him play was his rookie year in the NBA for the Orlando Magic, the first time he faced the Boston Celtics and Robert Parish. And I wasn't there to see or talk to Shaq.
          I always thought Shaq was a man-child, an often silly, goofy guy who was serious only about winning basketball games. He was good at that at LSU, but much better in the NBA.
          When he joined the Inside the NBA panel on TBS (and other networks), I thought at first he wasn't a good fit; working with the irrepressible Charles Barkley and sidekick Kenny Smith is a formidable task. But, as Shaq points out in the film, he isn't one to be intimidated -- not since he was an LSU freshman -- and so he has (pun here) grown into the role. He's a big man on the show now.
          With this film, my admiration for him has grown. And while others can still be critical of Dale Brown, I'm not going there. The man proved long ago that there's much more depth there than just being eccentric and outspoken.
         Watch the film. You might agree.