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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
McGuire memories, Final Four returning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They’re both gone. First, the Omni Coliseum was slam dunked into oblivion during the summer of 1997 by 2,884 explosive devices. Then, four years later, Al McGuire passed away quicker than a fast break, from a blood disorder.
They’re both alive, though. With the Final Four dribbling to town this month, you realize the two are linked by 30-year-old moments that will never die. In fact, the combination of the Omni and other things involving McGuire will have eternal life when you consider there is a moving one-man play coming to the Alliance Theatre on March 31 and April 1.
The play is called “McGuire,” and it is written by sportscaster Dick Enberg, the former McGuire hater who swung the other way in a hurry after McGuire abruptly retired from coaching at 48 to team with Enberg for decades as college basketball’s John Madden.Now the Final Four returns to Atlanta for the second time since McGuire’s Omni moments, and Hank Raymonds was emotional this week over the phone from Milwaukee. He likely was teary-eyed, too, the way McGuire was on that rainy March night in 1977. There was McGuire, at the end of the Marquette bench, the final seconds of his last game as a coach ticking away toward his miracle team snatching a national title from North Carolina. “He just let it out. He just let it all out,” said Raymonds, McGuire’s trusted aide, recalling how he watched the noted tough guy cry into a towel.
Soon afterward, McGuire missed much of the postgame celebration on the court to cry in private in the locker room. This was the same McGuire who nearly missed the game after he spent the day riding a rented motorcycle around rural Georgia. He had the thing break down between Social Circle, where he shocked former Falcons coach Norm Van Brocklin with a visit to his pecan farm, and the perimeter.
Later, when McGuire arrived at the Omni’s pass gate, he didn’t have his game credentials. He was turned away by security until Raymonds rushed to the scene to verify that McGuire actually was McGuire. This also was the same McGuire who rarely wore a watch, regularly forgot names, couldn’t remember his own telephone number and didn’t carry keys to his house.
On and on, the stories go about McGuire, who ranks either 1a, 1b or 1c as the most memorable sports figure I’ve ever met, and as his son, Allie McGuire, said this week over the phone from Boston, “Some of these stories are actually true,” he laughed, before adding, “I bet you that as the years go on, these stories about my dad are greatly embellished.”
Not likely. Not since a bare-footed McGuire once asked me to join him by sitting on the floor of his Milwaukee office during his first year out of coaching. He discussed everything from toy soldiers to the essence of clowns. Basketball talk surfaced only when necessary. The interview ended with McGuire handing me a book called “The Little Prince.” He signed it to me, and then scribbled the words “seashells and balloons” on the inside cover.
So I believe anything said about McGuire that is wonderfully quirky.
Long before McGuire’s Omni moments, he already was different, but he also was successful. He won 80 percent of the time at Marquette after he arrived on its Milwaukee campus in 1964. He captured an NIT title, when it nearly was as prestigious as an NCAA one, and 92 percent of his players graduated. Soon after McGuire’s Omni moments, he took his unique style to NBC to make television safe for the Dick Vitales of the future. But let’s return to the 30-year-old scene during McGuire’s Omni moments, when his son nodded from a few rows behind the Marquette bench as his father cried and then left.
“Was I surprised? Well, he was as hard-nosed as hell, but his heart was as big as they get,” said Allie McGuire, 55, a retired investment banker who once played for his father. “When you think about his heart, that’s what made him so successful. That’s what made the millions of dollars that he generated for the Milwaukee children hospital through his annual charity runs and benefits. He always gave back. He had a simple way about him, and along the way, he just happened to be a coach.”
A coach. A philosopher. A broadcaster. An entertainer. A humanitarian. A collector.
A memory forever.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Final Four, Tech / ACC, Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Gators still the team to beat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The team to beat heading into March Madness hasn’t changed.
So ignore the other stuff.
Those three losses during its last four games. Shaky or no defense. Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers.
Even so, you still have to take Florida to win the national championship in men’s basketball over everybody else. Here are the five reasons why: Joakim Noah, Taurean Green, Corey Brewer, Al Horford and Lee Humphrey. They were the starters when the Gators won it all last season, and they remain the starters today.
Now about the Gators’ last three losses. They all were on the road. They lost at Vanderbilt, which is no disgrace. They shouldn’t have lost to struggling LSU, but those things happen during a season. They just lost to Tennessee, but you had normally no-nonsense women’s coach Pat Summitt whipping the crowd into a frenzy as an impromptu cheerleader. There also was that rousing pre-game speech to the Volunteers from Peyton Manning.
Florida didn’t have a chance.
Well, not in that Tennessee game.
As for the rest of the way, the great Al McGuire used to say that he liked for his teams to struggle before the NCAA tournament so that they could start listening to the coach again.
That will happen to Florida, which previously had a 17-game winning streak before their slide. And remember: The Gators struggled near the end last season, and then they won 11 straight to become national champions.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Final Four, Quick Hit, Terence Moore
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