On The Retreat

Coaches young and old retreat to Mississippi to talk basketball

Sept. 18, 2007

By David Scott

Special to CSTV.com

TUNICA, Miss. - In a brightly-lit place where lucky horseshoes dot the main hall's carpet, about 35 coaches from all levels of basketball, with various degrees of separation and coaching tree branch divergence, gathered for a think tank including some of the game's most informed (and winningest) thinkers and tinkerers.

Some of the coaches were there to continue their successes. Some were there in hopes of getting some success rolling. And yes, some were there because they had lost success in the way the blue-haired ladies were losing coins into the slots of this Deep South gambling Mecca's Horseshoe Casino.

But the whole lot of `em, from the Elon College assistant in his 20s to the retired USC legend approaching 80, found themselves by the mighty Mississippi River for the seventh annual Larry Brown/John Calipari Coaches Retreat and the chance to rub elbows and diagram plays with modern coaching legends. They also may have come to play some blackjack, tell lies (golf failures always kill) and laugh a whole bunch at each other's expense.

But mostly to talk hoops.

"What a great thing you have going here," said ex-USC mentor, 79-year-old Bob Boyd at last Wednesday's informal and private tip-off dinner for the chosen head coaches and assistants. "In my time, we never had anything like this. It's an amazing group of people who are here."

Brown (who most recently helmed the New York Knicks before being famously separated) and Calipari (whose Memphis Tigers could be a consensus preseason No. 1) are not the first big-name college coaches to convene a "retreat" for the purposes of further developing their coaching skills and further fortifying their coaching trees -- Dean Smith had a Tar Heel version -- but it is the Brown/Cal Retreat that is the modern day standard-bearer.

"Everyone that I talk to in coaching wants to come to this thing," said Drexel's Bruiser Flint, one of Calipari's closest confidants. "First, they'll all tease and say, `Oh, you've got The Retreat coming up, huh?' But then they all wind up asking, `Can I come to that thing?' This is a really special deal."

"All of this is about all of us looking out for each other," said Calipari. "Our jobs are to promote each other. This is a family."

While the three-day event is heavy on coaching strategy (complete with the Memphis home court transported to a Tunica Grand Casino ballroom for play simulation), it's more about coaching synergy. For every rising or established college coach attending last week's invitation-only retreat, there was a college or pro guy attempting to bounce back. The NCAA's Jay Wright (Villanova) and Sean Miller (Xavier) shared on-court speaking time during the "clinical" portions with exiled NBA coaches Eric Musselman (Sacramento) and Mike Fratello (Memphis). There was networking, game-planning, drill development and, in the case of Pepperdine's Vance Walberg, the introduction of some fairly radical offensive thinking to a mostly old school (and somewhat skeptical) assemblage of guys like Brown, his brother Herb, Del Harris and the still-feisty Boyd.

But as much as the Xs and Os at The Retreat, it's the stories that are swapped and the high-level networking that serve as the main commodity of the gathering.

"We're silly if we don't take advantage of this opportunity," said Brown, who candidly admitted to the coaches. "I never thought I'd be the one needing help at this [retreat]."

Truth is, Brown doesn't need much help. He's had chances to get back in both the college and pro game but said that last year, sitting out and traveling around was "great for me." He latched onto Wright's Villanova team, attending practices regularly from his nearby Main Line home and he spent time with Calipari in Memphis watching his former assistant's interpretation of the Walberg run-and-gun.

Will he coach again? Probably.

If there's one thing you feel more than anything at The Retreat, it's that these guys need to be around the game and affecting it.

"The only thing we care about here," said Brown, who turned 67 on the retreat's final day, "is helping each other become better coaches."

Even if some of the coaches can't exactly hold their water so well anymore.

"I know I'm known for talking a lot," said Harris, 70 and spry, after being praised and introduced by Brown at Wednesday's dinner. "But I gotta go to the bathroom."

The grandfather and Dallas Mavericks assistant paused perfectly and added, "When you get to 70, that happens a lot."

"Seriously, though, we had something like this started by Sonny Smith and Lenny Wilkens. George Raveling, Bill Foster, Gary Colson, Bobby Hussey, Mel Gibson -- those were some of the guys involved in that in the late 1970s," Harris said before hitting the head. "But I will say that THIS is where you learn basketball."

For Eric Musselman, less than five months removed from being canned by the Maloof Brothers after one grueling NBA season, The Retreat was a re-entry of sorts.

"I had 211 phone calls within the first 48 hours when I got hired in Sacramento," said the 43-year-old son of the late Bill Musselman. "I've had about 11 in four months [since the firing]."

Some of those 11 (Brown foremost) were providing Musselman with words of encouragement. Bootstrap pulling for sure. But more than that, too.

"I think right now, Eric is going through some doubts," said Brown, who had a close relationship with the elder Musselman. "But we're here to tell him, `Don't get down. We've all been through it. There will be someone here that helps you.'"

Or vice versa.

"If you're a head coach in college and a Hall of Famer comes to your practice the way [Brown] did, you feel anointed," said Wright. "I hope I'm in a position some day where I can, by showing up at practice, impact a young coach's career."

Wright may never have to go quite that far. It might be as easy as extending an invite to the Knights of the Round(ball) Table's most coveted gala, held right here under the big, neon horseshoe.

College Affiliated Coaches at the Brown/Calipari retreat last week:

John Robic, Memphis

Tyrone Weeks, Memphis

Rod Strickland, Memphis

Tony Barbee, UTEP (Head Coach)

Larry Eustachy, Southern Miss (Head Coach)

Steve Barnes, Southern Miss

Vance Walberg, Pepperdine (Head Coach)

Eric Bridgeland, Pepperdine

Paul Biancardi, ex-Wright State Coach

Ed Schilling, ex-Wright State Coach

Bob Bender, ex-Washington Coach

Sean Miller, Xavier (Head Coach)

Emanuel Richardson, Xavier

Jay Wright, Villanova (Head Coach)

Barry Rohrssen, Manhattan (Head Coach)

Tad Boyle, Northern Colorado (Head Coach)

Bruiser Flint, Drexel (Head Coach)

Mark Turgeon, Texas A&M (Head Coach)