Back in 1978, when the University of Texas basketball team he coached won the National Invitation Tournament, Abe Lemons, impressed by the high prices on his Big Apple hotel's breakfast menu, made a request of the maitre d': "I said I wanted to see the chicken that could lay a $4.95 egg. It would have to have a fancy little umbrella, a gilded nest and all that."
With the Final Four of college basketball's March Madness coming up next weekend, accompanied by too many banal interviews from too many bland coaches "We have to rebound better; we have to play tougher defense; we have to take better care of the ball," blah, blah, blah it seemed a good time to call the colorful and candid Abe Lemons, now retired in Oklahoma City. It was time and money both well spent.
Saluted as "one of the best college coaches in America" by UCLA's John Wooden, whose own teams were national champions 10 out of 11 years, and praised by legendary Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach for having "the best coached team I saw all year," Abe Lemons always refused to pretend that his chosen profession was brain surgery. "Are you kidding? You think coaching is tough? I'll tell you what's tough. Working in the coal mines or a meat-packing plant that's tough," Lemons said.
This week, he repeated his reaction to hearing a couple of colleagues complain on TV about the enormous pressure of coaching: "When I was 18 years old and on my belly on Iwo Jima, I used to comfort myself by thinking, 'Boy, am I lucky not to have to deal with the pressure of coaching big-time college basketball."'
Lemons did have kind words for contemporary coaches Mike Krzyzweski of Duke and John Chaney of Temple. Coach K at West Point more than a quarter century ago first impressed Abe Lemons, who said then, "If anybody could spell his name, The Army Guy would be coach of the year." Coach K "coaches individually." He lets them play with a certain freedom but always with discipline. They never take themselves out of the game." Lemons credits Chaney of Temple with being a superior coach "whose got his boys believing there is something mystical" in the zone defense he teaches, and more importantly, "believing they can win."
What about fired Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight signing on to coach at Lemons' old intrastate rival Texas Tech University? With a devilish touch, Abe approvingly quoted the observer who said Knight and Texas Tech deserved each other.
Asked on the eve of the NIT championship game by an imaginative member of the press corps, "Coach, what were the contributing factors to your success this season?" Lemons answered, "Probably beating all those teams."
This week, Lemons recalled his answer to reporters who asked, "What do you do when you fall behind?" "We usually lose."
Thanks to Texas writer Robert Heard, who collected and compiled a wonderful sampling of Honest Abe's wisdom, we know why Lemons agreed to come to Texas after a successful career of coaching at Oklahoma City University and Pan American University: "It's the only place I ever got offered a job where they had their own school song. For 21 years, I've coached teams that didn't have one. All I could do was stand around and hum."
Refusing to make basketball strategy more arcane or esoteric than he insisted it was, Abe Lemons maintained "there are only two plays 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Put the Darned Ball in the Basket."' But he still could defend his profession from unfair alumni assaults, pointing out that if you "finish last in your league they call you an idiot. But finish last in your medical school class and they call you Doctor."
The irrational intensity of some college basketball fans has long fascinated Lemons, who during his coaching days marveled at "those little old ladies dressed in school colors from head to toe, with their jugular veins popping out, yelling obscenities at the players and coaches. I wonder if on the way home from the game, do they jump into a phone booth and come out wearing a housecoat, serving tea?"
Abe Lemons of Walters, Okla., is one-eighth Cherokee and 100 percent American original. The real fun of column writing is getting to talk to somebody like Lemons, whose warmth, wisdom and wit constitute a national treasure. The empty place he leaves makes college basketball a lot less interesting and intelligent.
Mark Shields is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.
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