Category Archives: Kentucky Wildcats

Ben Howland, Indiana Hoosiers, John Calipari, John Wooden, Kentucky Wildcats, Minnesota Golden Gophers, North Carolina, Roy Williams, Tubby Smith, UCLA Bruins

Great Expectations


The NCAA Tournament has a way of shattering dreams and expectations. It’s Cinderella for some, heartache for others. And it’s often best to just let it all sink in for a while before doing anything rash.
Unless, that is, you are UCLA. In which case, you are simply delusional about your program, your conference and the state of college basketball in general. Because less than 48 hours after falling to the Minnesota Golden Gophers Friday in the NCAA Tournament, UCLA fired head coach Ben Howland.
Now, maybe there was a massive settlement and they deemed it a mutual parting in the media, but let’s be honest, the dude got canned. 

And perhaps this would be understandable if you just looked at it from afar: once storied and prominent program falls in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and had failed to make it to the tourney consistently over the past three seasons.

But you have to peel back the onion. As most college basketball fans would remember, Ben Howland won the Pac-12 regular season with a relatively young team. They lost in the conference tournament championship without their best player (Jordan Adams, not Shabazz Muhammad) to an Oregon team that’s now in the Sweet 16. 

Oh, and let us not forget the three straight trips to the NCAA Final Four from 2006-08. 

Yes, three straight.
Had recruits not left for the pros or transferred, perhaps UCLA would have captured its first national championship since 1995. But Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love left early. His list of pros in the NBA is pretty impressive: Westbrook, Love, Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison, Ryan Hollins.
UCLA says it wants to get excitement back in the program, play a fun style, hard nose defense and pack the gym. OK, those are great goals, but it’s not 1975 anymore. Indiana had to learn this. You have to move on from the past. John Wooden isn’t walking through that door. And unless they bag Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens – and it isn’t for certain they would – who are you going to get that was better than Howland?
Former UCLA great Bill Walton kind of started this whole mess. He riled up the fan base by chastising Howland during the games he broadcast and said if he ran the program “things would be different.” He never really said how. Obviously, Walton didn’t do Howland any favors – and nor does he have to – but riling up a fan base that’s already lackluster these days doesn’t exactly produce positive results.
Westwood is filled with fans who don’t attend games but want banners on the wall. Big difference between UCLA and Indiana and Kentucky in that regard. Recruiting Los Angeles is difficult for UCLA, because they are also recruited by Arizona, USC, Cal, and really, the Pac-12 as a whole, as well as 50 others schools who swoop in and try to get L.A. players out of L.A.
This isn’t really a defense for Ben Howland, though it should be pointed out that President Barack Obama’s brother-in-law remains employed by Oregon State despite being one of the worst teams in the Pac-12, which isn’t the strongest conference these days anyway. 

Seriously, Oregon State has finished higher than 9th place just once in the five seasons Robinson has coached the team and finished dead last this season. But want to make a bet he’s still employed through 2016?

Howland wasn’t perfect, but he also wasn’t abysmal. No, the point here is that too many schools with tradition think it’s a birthright to win NCAA championships these days. And it isn’t. There’s too much turmoil, too many players leaving early, too many chances for upsets. Just look at the tournament bracket after the first weekend of games. Florida Gulf Coast is in the Sweet 16 and they weren’t even eligible to compete in the tournament until last year.
But is Georgetown firing John Thompson III? No. How about New Mexico firing Alford after it got beat by Harvard? Um, no. Is Kentucky firing John Calipari after they didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament and lost in the first round of the NIT? “Well, Cal, we know you won the title last year and lost your entire starting five to the NBA, but what have you done for me lately?”
Roy Williams and North Carolina were a No. 8 seed – in large part because several key players are gone from last year’s squad. If you think Indiana will remain as dominant in a post-Oladipo, post-Zeller world, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to college basketball the past five years. It will take the Hoosiers a year or two to climb back up that mountain as well.
No one is bullet-proof from the way the college game is built now. Maybe Duke, but not many others. You just don’t know how long some players will be around, and when you put together a team, you need time to blend all of it together to make it good. Imagine the NBA if LeBron could leave after a year or two. Imagine high school teams if their best two players chose to go to college early (if that were possible).
How do you build and compete with that kind of uncertainty. Better yet, how can you be expected to?
Apparently, you are – even at the oddest places. Minnesota – the same team that as an 11-seed upset UCLA on Friday and lost to Florida yesterday, fired head coach Tubby Smith. Smith is one of only a handful of active coaches who’ve won an NCAA championship (at Kentucky in 1998). When Minnesota got Tubby, it was seen as a coup. Now, the Gophers are apparently wistful for the days of Clem Haskins and NCAA sanctions.
And again, the question becomes: who is Minnesota going to get that’s better than what they had? And now they are competing for Smart, Stevens and other young coaches, with UCLA also hiring? Good luck with all that.
Schools are playing right into this current climate’s hands. They aren’t letting things matriculate, build and grow. They all expect to win now. Except not everyone can. Teams are winning games in the NCAA Tournament and then firing coaches the next day. What’s next? Lose in the Final Four and start your job search the next week?
That’s the problem with expectations: they are rooted in dreams, a best-case scenario of everything unfolding as you picture it in your mind. They aren’t often rooted in the reality of the times. They don’t plan for the unplanned.
So I would caution UCLA and its fans, Minnesota, and many others schools as they set out with dreams of banners and trophies that it would behoove you to balance your dreams with the reality of the current climate in college basketball. Find expectations that lie somewhere in the middle. Otherwise, you’ll be far worse off in three years than you were two days ago. 

Was it all so bad?

You can’t always get what you want; but you might find just what you need.
A good dose of reality. 
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Kentucky Wildcats, Larry Bird, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, NBA, Rick Pitino, Scottie Pippen, Walter McCarty

The "It" Factor and LeBron James

“They are who we want to be, but can’t be because they can do things, or at least have the ability to do things, we couldn’t. We idolize them, though we shouldn’t, because it’s what we want.”
This was a statement made by a friend at the conclusion of a nearly four hour conversation around sports, athletes, our reality, their reality and what it all means. Some alcohol may have been involved.
It all centered around LeBron James and his play, not just in the NBA Finals, but the nonsensical idea of debating a 26-year-old’s legacy when he is not even halfway through his career.
My stance is and remains simple: I’ve accepted James for who he is. He is a hybrid version of Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson, two of the greatest basketball players I have ever seen. Noticed I said two of the greatest, not the greatest. James is not in the same league or category as Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. And not just because of the rings. It is because he is a completely different kind of player.
My friend’s stance is and remains just as simple: As a former athlete, like myself, he can never understand why James has all the physical tools, but none of the mental makeup of the all time greats. To him – and even a James defender like me – we cannot understand how he has shied away from the leadership, the hunger and desire required to be in the realm of Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kobe and Bill Russell.
“We had that desire and 10 percent of the talent,” my friend says, voice raised and fists clutched. “I can’t root for a guy like that – it’s wrong against every notion of what sports are supposed to be about.”
And then he dropped the quote on me that led this blog.
Is that why we watch sports? Move beyond the entertainment and escape from our everyday lives, and ask yourself why you watch sports. We have a vested interest in teams and players we know nothing about. We loathe them and love them at the same time. We bemoan their salaries and then turn around and buy their jerseys.
For me, I do it because I am a history guy. I majored in it in college and love the stories. That’s really all history is, somebody’s story or interpretation of what happened. Their reality becomes ours.
So for someone like me, sports are a big part of my life so that one day I can tell people, we were there when “it” happened. I do not often recall games from 10 years ago, but I can tell you who won and the interactions I had with the people in the room. I know where I was for the 2004 American League Championship Series, when the Boston Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to come back from a three game hole and win a seven game series.
I can tell you where I was when the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons had their brawl. I can tell you about being in Yankee Stadium, as a Red Sox fan, with my dad, a Yankee fan, on September 11, 2008 – when the emotion of the seventh anniversary of 9/11 and the eighth-to-last game ever to be played in the “House That Ruth Built” had grown men in the Brox bleachers in uncontrollable, sobbing tears.
Basically, whatever “it” is, it was great and you should have been there.
But do we really want to be the people we watch? Do we wish we had their talents and their reality?
The only way I can explain it is this: our reverence fades and we try to replace it, but never can. I have a personal example with this.
In 1996, the University of Kentucky won the NCAA men’s basketball championship. I watched the game with my family as a high school sophomore on Spring Break in Sanibel Island, Florida.
The team was loaded with NBA talent: Tony Delk hit seven threes in the game, Walter McCarty was an athletic freak who ran, dunked, slashed and defended. Antoine Walker was too big a star to be in college. Jeff Sheppard was a pogo stick with deadly range. Ron Mercer was a sensational freshman destined to led the team the following year. Not to be listed as footnotes: Derek Anderson, Nazr Mohammed, Wayne Turner and coach Rick Pitino.
They were called “The Untouchables” because they were so good, no one could hang with them. Nine players ended up in the NBA from that team.
Two months after they won the title, I found myself in a Lexington dorm room at Rick Pitino’s basketball camp. One of my good friends was a huge Kentucky fan and had talked me into going with him for a couple of years. It was always enjoyable and you picked up some good drills, plus, every now and then, some of the players would be around and you could watch them play pickup ball in the evenings after dinner.
That year was different. We’d be watching the players of the current reigning National Champions. That week was different, too. Every player was there – and they were acting as camp instructors and coaches.
As luck would have it, I ended up on Walter McCarty’s team.
The week was a blur. McCarty was on cloud nine after winning the title and, as a senior, he was headed to the NBA Draft, so he was in a great mood and fun loving. The seven of us chosen to play on his team felt like his buddies, members of a special posse for the man they called “Ice”.
We had a pregame chant (we played twice a day in between drills and stations and McCarty was with us at least 12 hours a day):
McCarty: “Who you with?”
Us “”Ice!”
McCarty: “Who you with?”
Us: “ICE!”
McCarty: “What time is it?”
Us: “Game time!”
McCarty: “What time is it?”
Us: “GAME TIME!”
It’s been 15 years and I still have that etched in my brain. McCarty laid down a nickname for me – “Flyin’ Brian” – for the way I hustled and flew all over the court. He nicknamed everyone on the team. We had pizza and video game parties in his room several times and he’d point at us during the player scrimmages when we did something. We’d all yell out “Ice!!!” in unison.
We were hooked. It was surreal. At 16, I spent a week hanging out with a future NBA player who was riding a wave of good reviews following the NCAA Tournament. In two weeks, he’d be picked 19th overall in the first round by the New York Knicks.
Throughout the week, I felt terrible for my friend. He was the Kentucky fan, but not as lucky with his assigned coach. Each night, I’d relay to him in graphic detail the events of the day, from what shoes McCarty had on to how funny his jokes were. It was a simultaneous feeling of guilt and joy. I could not contain the joy of having hung out with McCarty all day, but telling him made me feel like he was dying a little on the inside.
I left that camp the biggest Walter McCarty fan on the planet. For his first year in the NBA, I followed his box score every day, hoping to see how well he did. It was personal. I had shared experiences with him and we were buds.
Except we really were not. I suppose it’s the same feeling someone gets from a fantasy camp, those guys that spend $50,000 to go and play with Michael Jordan at his camp for a day. You want to share that floor, that moment, with them.
Over the years, I lost track of McCarty’s career and certainly didn’t follow him as closely as I did as an impressionable teenager. And like many fans, you follow a player you like and then you move on – always looking for the next one, the next superstar, the next thrilling moment, the next time you’ll be sharing real time and hard reality with them.
And so it is with LeBron. He’s dealing with an entire generation of media and fans that grew up with Jordan, Magic and Bird, Pippen and Kobe. We’ve seen greatness and we want it again. We just want it to be better than it was before, we want LeBron to be better than anything we’ve ever seen, mainly just so we can say we saw it and we were there.
But it can’t be better, because nothing can ever be replicated. Take my week hanging out with Walter McCarty. I will absolutely not have another experience with an athlete as cool as that. Too many mitigating factors at play: my age, my peak interest in basketball, McCarty’s rise to mid-level celebrity, Kentucky on the heels of a title, Pitino the hottest coach in basketball, possibly playing some of my best ball and growing into my own as a shooter that summer and the hype of “The Untouchables.”
It was unexpected and could not be compared. Jordan wasn’t expected to win six rings. At 28, when we won his first one, we just hoped he’d win a couple and be in the conversation. James is 26. Every game his legacy is dissected, every game our opinion of him moves.
And yes, some of it is deserved. When you preen and dance and take the mantle of King or Chosen One and join up with two of the top 10 players in the league, you’re going to be despised. That’s a whole other discussion, frankly.
Just for now, we have to stop doing a disservice by comparing James to Jordan and the other greats. Not for James’ sake – but for our own. Because no matter how good or how bad, he’s never going to be good enough for us.
Remember, we can’t make them be what we want as people or athletes. And even if we could, we wouldn’t really want it that way because it wouldn’t feel real. But it does not stop us from wanting that of athletes and of sports. 

We still want to be there when it happens.
Whatever “it” is.
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