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StumblePublished Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 | 3:34 p.m.
Updated Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 | 6:15 p.m.
Shark Bytes: Larry Johnson
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diggUNLV coaching legend Jerry Tarkanian discusses why he never bothered to recruit Larry Johnson and how he still ended up a Rebel.
I was heart-broken to learn of the passing of Pete Newell on Monday.
I absolutely loved Pete. More than anybody else, he influenced my career. I idolized the guy. I went to every clinic that he spoke at and got to know him really well.
I’ve never told anybody this story, because I didn’t want to embarrass Pete, but in the early 1970s the Lakers offered me their coaching job.
Pete picked me up at LAX and we went over to the house of team owner Jack Kent Cooke. Pete was the GM. Bill Sharman, the coach who had just retired, was there. Chick Hearn was there. Cooke’s aides were there.
We were sitting in the living room, and Jack Kent Cooke was talking about what it would take to win. He asked Pete, what do we need? Someone said we need a power forward, what about Sidney Wicks?
Sharman says, that would be great. I say, yeah, Wicks is a fine player. Pete said, if we can (also) get a big man ... and Jack starts yelling at Pete. Weren’t you listening?
He scolded Pete in front of everybody. The next morning, I turned the job down. Sharman told me, once in a while, after he lost a game, he’d go up to Jack’s office and Jack would yell at him for losing.
Nobody feels worse than me when I lose a game. I feel like dying. Miserable. The biggest thing was him yelling at Pete Newell in front of me. Wow, I thought. If he can yell at Pete …
You’ve got to understand, I just totally admired Pete more than any man I’ve known.
The last couple of years I was at UNLV, he’d come to 10 or 15 practices a season. He said those were the best practices he’s seen anywhere. That was a big thrill for me. He was my guru.
He was in our Tuesday morning breakfast group at Del Mar at the end of every summer.
They called me right away Monday. His son was living with him.
I’m driving down to Long Beach, from Fresno, right now. Don’t worry about me talking as I drive. I’ll be all right.
At Long Beach State, they’re honoring the five teams I coached on Saturday night. We never lost a home game in my five seasons at Long Beach. We went to the NCAAs four times.
Those were the best teams that Long Beach State ever had.
But I will think about Pete all weekend. Everyone knew it was coming. He was 93. The last couple of years when he came to our Tuesday breakfasts, he was struggling. He had to have both lungs removed.
His son told me that one of the last things he said was, Hey, where is Tark’s granddaughter going to school? He was trying to get her to go to Berkeley.
Pete liked her. She went to his camps. She’s at Bishop Gorman and will be going to Northwestern next year.
Pete was so wonderful. He and Billy Packer were the ones pushing so hard for me to get into the Basketball Hall of Fame. He was great to me and to UNLV teams.
I am glad I never had to play against Pete.
I copied his defense when I first started coaching, then went to the zone. I found out he once came to Long Beach when we played San Diego State and I was playing a zone. I was so embarrassed.
I went up to him and apologized. He never did play zones. Someone said he would be very disappointed. But he was great. He said, No, you play a great zone. Don’t worry about it.
He had no ego.
I’ve said it over and over, but he is the only coach I can remember who ever won a national championship without great players.
He ran a very structured offense. When I was coaching at Riverside City College, six of the eight teams in the league were running his offense, and five didn’t know what they were doing.
It hurt them more than helped them. Bob Boyd at Santa Ana was the only one who ran it well. And everyone was trying to copy his defense, including me.
It was different pressure. He wanted the ball pushed to the middle of the court, and we tried to push it to the sidelines, to force it to the baseline. He forced it to the middle.
My second year as a coach I went to a clinic at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where Pete was speaking. At that time, I didn’t know Pete. He said he never switched screens. We fight through all screens, he said.
He said he told his players, You better have a written excuse to switch a screen, you better have a note.
Pete retired a few years later. His assistant, Rene Herrerias, became the head coach. I had a player at Redlands High that Rene was recruiting.
I told him what Pete said, about never switching screens. I told Rene that I had watched his games on television and you’re always jump-switching screens.
He said, We do that all the time. I don’t know why he said that. We always jump screens. When you see someone speak at a clinic, don’t always believe what the speaker says.
In my mind, Pete and John Wooden are the best coaches of all time. Pete won his last eight games against Wooden.
Bobby Knight started the joke that, when Pete retired, they had the biggest champagne party you ever saw in Westwood.
Pete retired at 44, a little too young. His health was bad. What amazed me is, I’d go to a lot of college football games, like Michigan State, everywhere Pete had coached, and they always had reunions for his teams.
They all absolutely loved him and admired him. One of his former players, a doctor, got Pete to move down to Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., so he could keep an eye on him.
Pete died in his house.
I think about mortality a lot. My time could come anytime. My legs are sore. I get winded fast. I got a lot of little problems and I keep going to doctors for check-ups.
Other than that, I’m pretty healthy. I hope I am. It’s sudden. People say it’s tough getting old. I say, it sure as hell beats the alternative.
But it will be a sad weekend.
I am going to miss Pete.
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