Chaney Was the Right Man for This Job

GREENSBORO, N.C. —  It was among the best parting lines any sports figure has ever offered.

“Excuse me while I disappear,” John Chaney said Monday.

Those were the Temple basketball coach’s last words at a jam-packed news conference where he announced his retirement.

Before this NCAA tournament begins this is my timeout to talk about the most genuine, caring, emotional, irascible, incorrigible sports figure I’ve ever met.

Even when he was wrong, Chaney, 74, was always a little bit right. Because even when Chaney acted irrationally, when he was calling his own player “a goon” and sending him into a game to create havoc, when he was threatening “to kill” John Calipari in the press room at Massachusetts, Chaney was acting in support of his players.

He cared too much sometimes.

When he thought St. Joseph’s players were getting away with setting moving screens last year, Chaney publicly called out Atlantic 10 Conference officials. Then he sent in one of his own players to cause mayhem by intentionally fouling five times against the Hawks. When a St. Joseph’s player suffered a broken arm as a consequence, Chaney was distraught and in tears. And so obviously wrong that it’s impossible to defend.

And yet I must. Because if you watched the films, Chaney was right. St. Joseph’s was using moving screens. Chaney’s players were getting a bad deal.

Calipari didn’t deserve to die, but he was good at baiting officials up in Amherst and when Calipari started talking about bad calls against his team, after his team had beaten Temple, Chaney couldn’t stand it. So he rushed the podium. No one exactly jumped to Calipari’s defense.

For those who say Chaney was no better than a bully, same as Bob Knight: Try finding a Chaney player who will criticize their old coach. Dozens of former Temple players were in the room when Chaney announced his retirement -- most of them weeping.

Chaney took the poorest of the poor kids, the ones without fathers or sometimes mothers, the ones who couldn’t afford a decent suit to wear on the road and who came to North Philadelphia without small change to buy even a movie ticket or a burger. He made them come to practice at 5:30 every morning. The logic was impeccable. If they were at practice at 5:30, they wouldn’t be asleep for an 8 a.m. English class.

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said Wednesday, “Temple and John formed a great partnership.” Exactly.

Temple is a city school in a bad neighborhood trying to do right by the least privileged young men and women of a big city.

Chaney grew up first in segregated North Florida and then in poor South Philadelphia. He was mentored by white Jewish and Italian men and wise black coaches and Chaney has always thanked them. By all accounts, Chaney was good enough to have played in the NBA -- except he came at a time black players weren’t wanted.

He didn’t get a Division I coaching job until he was 50, but Chaney never complained that racism or segregation kept him from being a success. What bothered him more than anything, though, were those now unwilling to help the same kind of downtrodden child he once was.

“Don’t they see us?” Chaney asked earlier this year in his windowless, cluttered office. “I’m one of them in my heart. I’m one of those young men or women fighting to get out of the neighborhood, trying to do right. Those kids need a little help. Someone has to give it to them.”

Chaney tried to be that someone. Always.

Sibling Success

Jamie and Maggie Dixon talk every day if they can. They are brother and sister, having grown up in North Hollywood, and they are far away from home now. Jamie, 40, is a rising young star of a coach at Pittsburgh. His name keeps coming up for the Arizona State job, though his Panther players have been making public pleas for Dixon to stay with them. Jamie is busy preparing his team, which is seeded fifth in the Oakland Regional, for a first-round NCAA matchup against No. 12 Kent State.

Maggie, 28, is the rookie coach of the Army women and in her first season she too is coaching an NCAA tournament team. She was hired only 11 days before practice began, after the previous coach resigned suddenly for undisclosed reasons. Now the Lady Knights, seeded 15th, are making their first-ever NCAA appearance against second-seeded Tennessee in Norfolk, Va., and Maggie is ecstatic. She was in New York last week, cheering on Pitt at the Big East tournament and talking about her older brother.

“He’s my hero,” Maggie said. “He’s always supported me and encouraged me.”

Growing up, Jamie and Maggie were part of the Hollywood world. Their father, Jim, was a writer and journeyman actor who had a part as Lieutenant Perkins in a trilogy of horror movies called “It’s Alive.”

Both Dixons played at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High, and the siblings almost coached in the same league this year. Until Maggie got the last-minute opportunity at Army, she was an assistant at DePaul, which joined the Big East this season.

Two Days for Dreamers

For all the bluster some blowhard television commentators showed on selection Sunday, it is not a travesty to all sportskind that Cincinnati or Michigan or Florida State didn’t make it into the tournament, while Bradley and George Mason and Air Force and Utah State did.

Because if Cincinnati upsets Tennessee or Pittsburgh or UCLA or Connecticut, that’s just not the same as Bucknell taking down Kansas. Or Hampton beating Iowa State. Or Princeton beating UCLA. The charm of the NCAA is seeing Nevada go to the Sweet 16. Or Valparaiso. Michigan will have plenty of other chances to make the Elite Eight. Will George Mason?

So on my bracket I’m putting Winthrop into the next round instead of Tennessee. Maybe South Alabama over Florida (except Joakim Noah is so hard to guard).

San Diego State over Indiana? Why not? The Aztecs are getting better, as they have from the day Mohamed Abukar became eligible in January after transferring from Florida.

Northwestern State over Iowa? Maybe. The Demons go 11 deep, creating mayhem with infusions of new energy every three or four minutes. In the staid Big Ten the Hawkeyes haven’t dealt with such a thing.

If Cincinnati or Michigan had made the tournament we would not have been introduced to players we’ve never heard of. But with Air Force we get a whole team of guys we’ve never heard of. Four of the five starters average double figures. One of them, junior Matt McCraw, is a guard from Lakewood Mayfair High. Maybe he’ll hit a game-winning shot against Illinois and get to be a star for the weekend. Probably not, but Air Force plays a deliberate style. The Falcons understand what they can do and don’t try to do any more.

The guys from Illinois, most of whom played in the national championship game last year, can’t possibly take Air Force as seriously as they might have taken Cincinnati or Michigan.

And for that we thank the NCAA selection committee.