At The Knee Of John Chaney
Catching up with the wisest old Owl at the tail end of his first year away from the game
March 7, 2007
By Bryan Armen Graham
CSTV.com
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BRYAN GRAHAM
Bryan is a basketball editor for CSTV.com and contributes on a regular weekly basis. |
Eleven months and three weeks have passed since Hall of Fame coach John Chaney stepped down from his post on the Temple sidelines, but the Mayor of North Broad Street remains as animated and opinionated as ever, whether the topic is the NBA's controversial age-limit, the long-term fate of the Big 5 city series or the murder epidemic that's sweeping through Philadelphia.
When I had the chance to catch up with Coach this past week as his first year away from the sidelines winds down, as always, a whole lot of listening ensued:
How have you been spending your time over the past year?
I've been spending a lot of time looking after my wife, who's had a couple operations. Other than that, I've been traveling around speaking to kids. Of course, we've had so much crime here -- just a new culture of crime that has seemed to permeate this city with so many kids being shot -- and I've been speaking with children and political leaders about the problem. So I've been doing that kind of thing and I had been learning how to play golf when the weather was good. Right now I'm not doing any of that, but I'm waiting for the weather to break so I can get out, play golf with the old guys and then sit and play gin rummy with them.
How has your wife Jeanne been doing?
She's doing much better now. When I retired [last March] she had the cancer operation and then six to eight weeks ago she had this gall bladder operation to extract gall stones. She's had to go through quite a lot and I've been doing my wifely duty.
Have you been to many
I've been to about four or five games and my wife has been to a couple -- that's both men and the women because when I go to one I have to go to the other. I've have to patronize both of them. [Laughs]
Have you been in touch with Fran Dunphy a lot?
Yeah, Franny and I go out. In fact we were just out watching [former
Are you still in contact with your players?
My NBA players, all the time. But only a couple times with my players who are still at
What are your thoughts on
I didn't know Fran was interested in the job at the time I retired. He and I met and discussed the possibility later on, but that was weeks after, and I was very much surprised that he was interested because he's certainly one of the best-kept secrets in this city and one of the best-kept secrets in the whole world of basketball. He's one of the great coaches. To get someone who has such a great background and such a storied history in basketball -- they were very fortunate that he was interested in coming in and applying for the job.
He's a first-rate teacher and he's a great coach. Just like Petey Carril in the Ivy League, [Fran] will go down in the Hall of Fame there. I just think that
In the current climate of college basketball, do you think that the Philadelphia Big 5 will be able to survive under its current format -- and is it important that the Big 5 survives?
When you ask those questions, I find them very difficult to answer. We have gone through such a great revolution in basketball. Here in
So you often find yourself languishing over the fact that just the people here in
Is the Big 5 an antiquated notion or can it evolve?
To give you a good example: Drexel was one of the teams that wanted to become a part of the Big 5. At one time, they were talking about the Big 6. The team that is having perhaps the greatest success here in the city is now Drexel. And Drexel is beating up on the Big 5 this year [laughing] and rightfully so: they're a great team and well-coached by Bruiser Flint. But when they put the record of the Big 5 down, they put "zero and zero" down for Drexel.
I'm one of the guys that was saying in the past, as we look at the growth of basketball, why not include them in this Big 5 situation? We've got so many conferences in this country that have more teams than their names say: like the Big Ten has more than 10 teams in it, the Atlantic 10 has more than 10 teams in it. [The Big 5] is just the inclusion of the inner-city teams and teams in the
People who have argued against the Big 5 in the past, like former Villanova coach Rollie Massimino, have complained that playing a complete five-team round-robin presents obstacles for teams looking to compete on a national level because of the out-of-conference scheduling constraints that are inherent to making the dates work for everybody involved. If you added Drexel to the mix, wouldn't that compound the problem with one less open date per city school to book an out-of-conference game?
But they're playing them right now. [The Big 5] schools still play Drexel every year!
Look at the emergence of these teams that once were called mid-level teams, like the James Madisons and the Butlers. They were once called mid-level teams, but those teams have always raised their heads and, in fact, we had one in the Final Four last year. Those teams have emerged as being solid Division I schools.
I just know that we have too many people who find themselves mired in tradition rather than looking at what could be and what should be. I don't have too much confidence that it's going to move from that. We are local in the way we think. It used to be the "Big Three" up in
In
You talk about the younger kids not knowing about the tradition of the Big 5. Do you think it's important for the city series to abide for the younger generation?
I don't have the answer to that, I wish I did. Try to remember that the Big 5 at one time or another had all players from this area. They had very few people outside the
The NCAA Division I has grown from where it once was, when it was only about 25 to 50 teams, to where there are more than 330 schools. You go into the big cities like
I know they're having a Big 5 celebration night on Monday night. It's an event that just celebrates what we always look at: our teams developing and keeping the Big 5 spirit alive. But here again, the invitees are people that have been around the Big 5 for thousands of years. How do you get that across to the youth so it can be carried on? I just think that it's harder to get all of it translated on to younger people in terms of where it's going to be in the future, if you know what I'm saying.
It's like that with a lot of things with younger kids today.
That's what I mean. They're the ones that are going to be responsible with carrying on this tradition. Old people can carry it to their grave but young people can carry it a little longer I guess. [Laughs]
What's your take on the 19-year-old age limit that's come into play?
I think it's a stupid rule. It's the dumbest rule that I've ever heard of, to prohibit anybody from achieving what they'd like to achieve -- especially when the facts are on the table. The facts are commonly clear. Did you watch the All-Star Game this year?
I did.
Did you know who's been the Most Valuable Player in the All-Star game for the last three of four years? It's been high school kids. Kobe Bryant was there, Kevin Garnett before. The whole league, the whole NBA depends strictly on high school players. They're the stars in the league. Stoudemire, the guy down in Houston (Tracy McGrady), you can go down the list. They are nothing but high school players that are the best players in the NBA. The best. So by saying that a 19-year-old is not ready to go, he's got to spend one year in college, that's very stupid.
They don't do that in any other sport but basketball. Why is there more legislation in basketball than any other sport? I don't know. Why is it? Michelle Wie is 15 years old and she's making a million dollars. Chang was 17 when he played tennis. Sampras, he didn't go to college. Agassi, he didn't go to college. These guys start early. Hockey, nobody goes to college. Baseball, they don't go to college! Nuxhall pitched four or five no-hitters and he was in baseball at 17 years old.
So when you go through sports, why is it that they project this image in basketball?
They came up with that rule suggesting that it's going to make kids stay in school and graduate. Isn't that stupid? Look at the kid from St. Joe: Jameer Nelson. If Jameer Nelson had gone out his junior year, he'd have been drafted 15th. Instead he stayed around another year to graduate and guess what: He graduated from St. Joe, he's now one of the best players in the NBA, but when left school he was drafted No. 21! When he was a junior, he was the best player in the city. When he was a senior, he was the best player in
You tell me how stupid that is. Forget about the millions, boy! Go back to school! And break a leg!
It's just absolutely the dumbest piece of legislation that the NCAA and the NBA concocted. It was a money deal that they worked out and everybody knows it, but I'm the only guy that will tell you that -- nobody else will say it. If a kid is not capable of playing basketball in the NBA and he falls through the cracks, that's his fault. I can't guarantee success to every player that goes to the NBA. I can't guarantee that every kid is going to get a degree, that's very stupid. But my point is one thing: Every youngster should have the right to achieve whatever level of success he can. Every youngster.
It's rather stupid to suggest that someone should stay in school when you look at all the other sports that take players as early as they can.
So what's the reasoning behind it?
My point is when you start talking about money, nothing is fair. Everything right now hinges on money. The colleges build new facilities -- big facilities all around the country because of what one reason? Money. They're getting billions and billions of dollars from television right now, for one reason: to build the NCAA up. And what do they do with that money, when they should be putting some of that money back into inner-city situations?
Would you have recruited a player that was considered to be a "one-and-done" guy?
You don't know that. No coach goes in and asks a kid, "Are you going to stay for one year?" What if he tells you a lie and then he leaves? There's no guarantee a kid is going to stay in school even if he told you that.
Every Top 25 school goes out and recruits the best players. They're in a hurry to win. Their jobs are on the line and they go out to win. Does a coach run across a super player and say, "Alright, you're only going to be with me for one year so I'm not going to recruit you." You tell me how many coaches would say that? They're full of [expletive] when they tell you that. Don't tell me that crap -- don't tell me how pious these guys are. Everybody wants to win and everybody wants to win now.
Remember years ago they had a freshman rule where you couldn't play freshmen? They got rid of that rule, do you know why? Because the other schools were getting these kids. Other schools who didn't apply that rule like Division II and Division III schools were getting some of the better kids at the that time. Now they're not getting them because the bigger schools won them -- because they changed that rule. And all that was done in the name of what? Blue and green: The blues that they were having and the green that they wanted!
When you look at the teams that you enjoyed coaching the most, is there any one that stands out?
When I was at Cheyney, we had some great teams. The team that won the national championship [in 1978] was one of my better experiences in terms of kids and what they accomplished by winning a national championship at the Division II level. And I think that these other [
Those are some great memories of pressure-ridden situations -- great situations with great players.
I grew up in Philadelphia watching your teams play every winter and became familiar with a trend common to many of those groups -- how so many Temple teams would endure slow starts but come together as the season went along, sneak into the NCAA tournament and oftentimes knock off much more decorated opponents. In fact, four of those five Final Eight teams were seeded No. 6 or higher. What kind of statement did that make about your coaching style?
It showed that the teams always could grow. We always managed to grow as the season went on. We grew into a system of what many teams are doing now, where we played multiple zones. And I got all of my zone play out of the great coaches that were here before -- like a Jack Severance, like a [Jack] Kraft out at Villanova who played the ball zone. Then there was Harry Litwack at
I stole those ideas from those guys and incorporated that into my situation which was called the rover defense. And now you find that a lot of teams, even the NBA teams, are playing zones now. You find that a lot of college teams are playing zones.
When you look back on your career, what was the biggest personal highlight?
One of the biggest things for me was the time when I was selected as the best teacher in the state of
You spent a great deal of time condemning the NCAA for Proposition 48 (which stripped a year of eligibility from incoming freshmen that didn't meet minimum SAT requirements and required they pay full tuition). What place does that lengthy crusade hold in your memories?
That's one of my proudest moments: fighting something which was not only racially empowered but something which was destroying opportunity and access. Any time you destroy opportunity and access, you can very easily destroy hope in young people. And that's something that we find in our city today that is alarming. I was just talking to Billy Cunningham about this yesterday, about all these problems were having in the city with kids getting shot and killed. It's just unbelievable. We've almost had 50 deaths in this New Year after 300-something last year.
When a kid does not have hope, when a human being does not have hope, it's bad. And for someone to legislate against the right of youngsters to have access and opportunity to go to college and to do well in college is just stupid. It's the dumbest thing that ever happened, and it's taken them many years to realize it -- because they rescinded a great deal of those things in later years. But how much damage did it do to those other kids years ago?
I was very happy that [Temple] president Peter Liacouras gave me an opportunity to bring in some of these kids: Eddie Jones who graduated, Aaron McKie who graduated, Alex Wesby who graduated, Rasheed Brokenborough who graduated, so many of them. These are guys that, if they'd been denied, my God: How much hope would have been destroyed? In their families, in the communities in which they lived?
I had so many of them, you can just go on and on and on. I'm just proud of them.
It was clear you always felt a compelling sense of responsibility to use your platform to speak out on these issues.
If I didn't have the kind of support that I had coming out of poverty and coming out of the terrible, wretched neighborhood that I came out of -- if I didn't get the support from a Jewish coach that I had by the name of Stan Brown who was like a father to me -- if I didn't get that, I would have never been able to reach back and do anything for anyone else.
But Peter Liacouras reached out and grabbed me when I was 50 years old. When I came to
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