Conducting a job search for a team mascot. Pilfering a movie-set cot. Driving nine hours for a job interview only to find out the interviewer was out of town.
The four coaches in the South region semifinals that begin Thursday at Philips Arena are at the heights of their profession, the recipients of adulation on campus and nationwide for their tactical and motivational prowess. Kentucky’s John Calipari, Loyola-Chicago’s Porter Moser, Nevada’s Eric Musselman and Kansas State’s Bruce Weber were once at the bottom rung of the ladder, though, a berth in the Sweet 16 perhaps only a wispy dream.
The coaches and the men who gave them their first jobs in the business reflected on those first days.
“No worries, no money, nothing except basketball,” Calipari said, “and it was a great time.”
Bruce Weber, Kansas State
Bruce Weber entered the profession in 1979 as a 22-year-old graduate assistant at Western Kentucky, following his parents’ mandate that he and his siblings go into education or coaching.
Weber ran errands and did “a lot of stuff that we didn’t want to do,” said his boss, basketball Hall of Famer Gene Keady, who then was at Western Kentucky before his 25-year run at Purdue. Keady called Weber the most organized coach he ever worked with, finishing work ahead of schedule, making sure players were going to class and anticipating Keady’s needs.
Keady was so impressed with Weber that when he was hired at Purdue at the end of the season, he took Weber with him, making him an assistant coach in the Big Ten at the age of 23. Weber stayed with him until 1998, a 19-year partnership.
It almost never happened. To interview for the job, Weber drove nine hours from a camp he was working at in Milwaukee to Bowling Green, Ky.
“I had my leisure suit, I was ready to go,” Weber said Wednesday.
Credit: Streeter Lecka
Credit: Streeter Lecka
However, Keady had forgotten about the interview and was out of town. Weber was heartbroken, fearing his opportunity was lost. Stuffing quarters into a pay phone, Weber called a week later, and Keady asked him to drive back. Weber said he couldn’t leave the camp again and gave him an ultimatum: Hire him or not.
“And, obviously, if I would have known how mean he was and tough he was, I would have never done that, but I didn’t know any different,” said Weber, 61.
Keady assented. Thirty-nine years later, Keady was reminded of that steely display.
“I didn’t remember that, but it was smart,” Keady said. “He was always smart about stuff.”
Porter Moser, Loyola-Chicago
As coach at Creighton in the late ’80s, Tony Barone got to know Porter Moser as a dead-eye shooter and a player who would do anything he could to get better. Barone, who went on to the head job at Texas A&M and later ran the player-personnel department for the Memphis Grizzlies, once told him he needed to get quicker. Moser took a course to improve his vertical jump.
After he tested Moser, Barone had bad news.
“I said, ‘Porter, get your money back because you improved your jump by about a quarter of an inch, so instead of being able to jump over one piece of paper, you can jump over two,’” Barone said this week.
Still, after arriving at Creighton as a preferred walk-on in 1986, Moser ended a two-year starter. He won loose balls, asked a lot of questions and seemed a natural for coaching. As Moser’s playing career ended, Barone didn’t need to talk him into accepting a graduate assistant job, which he accepted in 1990. Even as a GA, Barone said, Moser scouted opponents and helped run practice.
“I wanted them to learn the game, and he was very bright at it,” Barone said. “He picked it up very quickly.”
Moser moved with Barone to Texas A&M and stayed with him a total of seven years. He has been at Loyola, his third head job, since 2011. Living in Chicago near Wrigley Field, Barone still sometimes stops by Moser’s practices. On Wednesday, Moser called him a huge influence on his life. Particularly, Moser learned that he could be demanding of players if they knew that he loved and trusted them.
“When I worked for him, he wouldn’t allow you to think that any task was too small or too big,” Moser, 49, said. “It was about getting it done, getting it done the right way. And the work ethic of working and doing things, he was very demanding of me.”
Credit: Ashley Landis
Credit: Ashley Landis
Eric Musselman, Nevada
In 1988, Eric Musselman was 23 when he interviewed to be the general manager of the Rapid City (South Dakota) Thrillers, a team in the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association. He had the recommendation of his father, Bill Musselman, who before that had great success coaching the Thrillers and went on to coach in the NBA.
“The truth is, I had no concern,” said Pat Hall, the team’s owner. “It was such an incredible interview.”
As Hall recalled it, within two weeks, Musselman had traded every member of the team that had finished 16-38 the previous season.
“He traded players like people change ties on a suit,” Hall said.
With players culled from NBA cut lists and Flip Saunders as coach, the Thrillers flipped their record to 38-16. When the late Saunders – himself also headed for the NBA – was hired away at the end of the season, Musselman became coach at the age of 24, winning by persuading NBA castoffs to join the Thrillers rather than go to more lucrative opportunities in Europe in order to return to the NBA.
The GM job wasn’t only basketball. Among other tasks, Musselman identified the need for a team mascot, and then interviewed candidates for the Thrilla Gorilla, patterned after the Phoenix Suns gorilla.
“I really did,” Musselman confirmed Wednesday. “Promotions in the CBA were pretty important, and we had incredible attendance.”
Credit: Andy Lyons
Credit: Andy Lyons
In 1993, after Michael Jordan was spotted in an Atlantic City, N.J., casino in the wee hours before a playoff game that same day, Musselman came up with a “Be Like Mike” (a Gatorade slogan of the day) promotion in which any Thrillers fans who showed up at a particular South Dakota casino in a team T-shirt adorned with Jordan’s 23 would get season tickets. Nike and Gatorade protested, and Hall got calls from then-NBA commissioner David Stern and Jordan’s lawyer. Hall killed the promotion, but not before Musselman’s gambit won nationwide publicity.
It began a long run in the CBA and then the NBA, including two seasons as a Hawks assistant and later turns as head coach of the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings. He moved to colleges in 2012 and has been the Nevada coach since 2015.
Hall and Musselman remain friends, and Hall is not at all surprised by the success of the Wolf Pack.
Said Hall, “One of a kind.”
John Calipari, Kentucky
In 1982, then-Kansas coach Ted Owens watched a young John Calipari, just out of college at Clarion, work his basketball camp for four weeks and was overwhelmed by his enthusiasm and intelligence. So he created a job for him – volunteer basketball coach for the Jayhawks.
“And I said, ‘Well, how much does a volunteer make?” Calipari said Wednesday.
Calipari, then 23, earned wages by serving meals at the team training table, and he shared an apartment with a grad assistant, Dolph Carroll. They didn’t have furniture, Calipari said, because they had to choose between that or getting ESPN. To meet his needs, Calipari demonstrated his guile.
The TV movie “The Day After” was being shot in Lawrence, Kansas, and famed Allen Fieldhouse was transformed into the set of a medical center. Leaving the arena one day, Calipari said, he and Carroll spied the rows of cots.
“And we went back that night, and I scooped up that cot, and that was my bed,” Calipari said.
Calipari worked (for free) for Owens for a year before Owens was fired, and then was hired by his replacement, Larry Brown. Among other things, he met his wife, Ellen, during his time at Kansas, where she was a university employee.
“John was willing to make that sacrifice to get started in coaching,” Owens said. When people ask him if he knew Calipari would become a coaching success, a Hall of Fame inductee, Owens responds that he knew he’d be successful in whatever field he chose, “because he had energy and creativity and so forth, and that’s what he’s done. I’m very proud of him.”
Years later, Owens was an athletic director at St. Leo and was in the New York area on a fundraising trip. He paid a call to Calipari, then in his short-lived tenure coaching the New Jersey Nets. Owens asked if Calipari had any interest in him joining the Nets staff.
“And he said, ‘I do, Coach,” Owens said. “He said, ‘I’m going to give you the same job. You’re going to be a voluntary scout. And I’ll pay you the same as you paid me.’”
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