The Houston Rockets are in a difficult spot.
First, the team hasn’t won a playoff series in a decade now. Even this year’s team, which is not bad, is only the third best team in Texas and probably fifth or sixth in the tough Western Conference. Thus, the Rockets don’t generate much buzz around town. Most folks prefer talking about who the Texans might sign or let go than the Rockets’ season.
So, it was no surprise that the Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen, the newspaper’s beat writer for the Rockets, summed up the Rockets’ latest loss to the Spurs (which was their 15th in their last 19 games with the Spurs) in the following manner:

Things were so bad, that with 6Ω minutes left in the game, the [Rockets’ team mascot] bear came out on the court with a siren while the teams were still playing.
No time out. No dead ball. He just came out to the middle of the court and went into his act. Fortunately, by then most of the crowd was stuck in traffic after leaving early to beat the traffic.

The Chronicle’s David Barron uses last night’s Texas Children’s Hospital fund-raising dinner to honor legendary former University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal as a Texas Legend to pen this fun article on two Clear Thinkers favorites — Coach Royal and Dan Jenkins. Barron includes the following gem from Jenkins comparing how Longhorn fans felt about Coach Royal versus how fans of two other top programs felt about their coaches of that era:

As a writer for newspapers in Fort Worth and Dallas and later for Sports Illustrated, Dan Jenkins, got to see all of the great coaches at work. Royal, Jenkins said, had a unique relationship to Texas and Texans, especially when compared to contemporaries like Woody Hayes at Ohio State or John McKay at USC.
“Darrell’s association with the Longhorn fans was more intimate,” Jenkins wrote in a recent e-mail. “Darrell had good buddies in all the other towns. Woody was standoffish, gruff, and stayed out of the public eye. Most Buckeyes respected him but never got to know him.
“McKay once told me he wasn’t revered by USC alums. They expected him to win. When McKay won his first national championship for the Trojans in ’62, I asked him how he was rewarded, and he said some people got together and bought him a new set of tires.”

Barron also passes along the following Jenkins anecdote about the UT sports information director during the Royal era, Jones Ramsey:

Royal was particularly gifted in the care and feeding of the Fourth Estate, with a little help from the Longhorns’ sports information director ó the late Jones Ramsey, the self-styled “World’s Tallest Fat Man.”
“I fondly recall the first time Jones took two or three of us to El Rancho for lunch,” Jenkins said. “Somebody asked him if it was any good, and Jones said, ‘Is it good? You go in the front and eat the dinner and go out the back and eat the garbage.’ It was the kind of thing Darrell probably said first.”

However, for my money, the best anecdote about Coach Royal was the one that UT women’s basketball coach Jody Conradt told several years ago during another fund-raising dinner. Former Chronicle sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz was there and passed along Conradt’s story:

But the [speaker] who stole the show was Jody Conradt, the Hall of Famer who gave the Longhorns a national championship in women’s basketball.
“They built the Erwin Center 21 years ago,” she said, “and obviously it never occurred to anyone that the women would need a separate locker room. So every room in this place had urinals in it.
“Now we have one of our own. Before one of our games, coach Darrell Royal was kind enough to speak to my team. Before he left, someone asked what the biggest difference was between our locker room and all the ones he knew from all his years of coaching. Coach Royal said:

‘Offhand, I can’t remember anyone ironing anything before a game in one of our locker rooms.’ “

Update: Barron follows up his article with this blog post on the dinner.

Say what you will about Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight, but he knows what he is talking about in regard to making college basketball a true intercollegiate sport:

While most college basketball coaches would jump at the chance for a one-year player like Texas freshman sensation Kevin Durant, Texas Tech coach Bob Knight said Monday he would not do so.
In fact, the coach said Monday that he thinks the NBA’s mandate of at least a year of college for high school graduates is bad for the college game.
“I think it’s the worst thing that’s happened to college basketball since I’ve been coaching,” Knight said Monday.
A year ago, the NBA made the decision that players have to attend college for at least one year after graduation from high school. That decision has exposed players such as Ohio State freshman center Greg Oden and Durant ó two players who would have been lottery picks last year and will likely be the first two players chosen in this year’s draft if they decide to leave after one year ó to the college game for what seems to be just one year.
Knight’s primary concern seems to be that the NBA’s mandate allows student-athletes to get around being true students in college.
“Because now you can have a kid come to school for a year, play basketball and he doesn’t even have to go to class,” Knight said. “He certainly doesn’t have to go to class the second semester. I’m not exactly positive about the first semester, but he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball.
“That I think has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports. I think what should happen is a kid can come out of high school and go to the NBA and if they chose to put him in the developmental league, fine. But if he goes to college there has to be an agreement that he is not eligible for the draft until after two years of college. That way the kid has to obtain eligibility and then he has to retain eligibility and at least for those two years he is a college student. Now the kid is simply like a hired player.”
Knight said there would never be a scenario where he would knowingly recruit a player who intended to play college basketball for one year.

Again, the “rent-a-player” situation that Coach Knight is talking about is the result of the NBA’s needless regulation, which once again foists upon the universities the risk of subsidizing the NBA’s minor league farm system. As noted here, the colleges have a model already established in baseball that would create the free choice for players that would transform college basketball into a truer form of intercollegiate competition. With the proliferation of minor professional basketball leagues overseas, there really is no legitimate reason to restrict a young player’s access to professional basketball or to force him to fake being a college student while playing a year of minor league ball in the U.S. Let basketball players make the same choice that baseball players have coming out of high school — either play in a professional league or accept the benefits of a college education for a few years in return for competing intercollegiately. Not only will it make Coach Knight much happier, but it is the right thing to do for the players.

Charlie Pallilo passes along this clever Chuck Klosterman/Esquire article that compares the playing careers of various former professional athletes with their current careers as broadcasters. Klosterman is on target with most of his comparisons, including this one on Bill Walton:

Bill Walton: A megalomaniac whose insights often seem wholly unrelated to the game he’s actively watching, Walton has an on-air persona that can be akin to Jerry Garcia vomiting through a version of “Sugar Magnolia.” That said, the Red Rocker is fearless and unpredictable, and the fact that Walton overcame a childhood stutter makes his loquaciousness something of a marvel. Still, this guy (when healthy) was probably the most complete post player who ever lived; he’ll never argue with Snapper Jones as efficiently as he threw outlet passes to Larry Steele. Better as a player.

Klosterman also nails it in pointing out that Bill Rafferty puts fellow basketball analysts Billy Packer and Dick Vitale to shame. Here is the entire piece.

Pistol Pete Maravich was a paradox, an incredible basketball player blessed with a talent on the level of a Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, but cursed with a celebrity that ultimately made him the Elvis of basketball. During a remarkable brief period in the late 1960’s, Maravich, Rick Mount at Purdue and Calvin Murphy at Niagara put on a shooting and scoring competition in college basketball that had never been seen before and will likely never be seen again. Maravich was the best all-around player of the three, a veritable Jerry West clone with a touch of Bob Cousy, Steve Nash and Harlem Globetrotter thrown in for good measure. It is no stretch to say that Pistol Pete is responsible for introducing professional basketball to the entertaining way in which such top flight NBA teams as the Phoenix Suns and the Dallas Mavericks play the game today.
I didn’t have an opportunity to watch Maravich play in person while he was in college and basketball wasn’t on television anywhere near as much back then as it is now, so Maravich’s brilliance while playing at LSU wasn’t see much outside of Louisiana and the SEC college towns. But after moving to Houston in the early 1970’s, I saw Maravich play the Rockets many times and he was clearly way ahead of his time. This NY Times Sunday Book Review reviews a couple of new biographies of Maravich, inluding “Pistol” by former New York Daily News sports columnist Mark Kriegel. I picked up a copy of “Pistol” at the bookstore last week and it was like reading a Maravich-led fast break — you can breeze through it no time.
The book is as much about Pistol Pete’s father Press as it is about Pete. Press was an excellent basketball player in his day and went on to become a well-regarded high school and college coach. However, as Press became obsessed with making Pistol the best player ever, his coaching and fathering became compromised. Although that part of the story is sad in many respects, it’s still interesting to learn how Press trained young Pete to become a basketball phenom. In one drill, Press would make young Pete lie prone in the backseat of a moving car and dribble a basketball out the door while Press sped the car up or slowed it down, testing Pete’s reflexes and ability to control the ball. Press would proudly show his son off to other coaches and players, almost like a circus act.
Press’ obsession produced a remarkable basketball talent. Maravich averaged an NCAA record 44.2 points a game in his three seasons at LSU before basketball adopted the three-point line. Given Pistol’s shooting range, he certainly would have averaged over 50 points a game during his collegiate career had the three-point line been in effect. He was named the college basketball player of the year in 1970 and and was signed by the Atlanta Hawks after a bidding war between the Hawks and the Carolina franchise of the old ABA.
But there was also a huge toll to what Press had created. Pistol was already a heavy drinker and quite likely an alcoholic. Pistol needed the ball in hands most of the time to be effective, which some pro players resented. And Press wasn’t around in Atlanta as the coach to coddle his basketball creation (Press was LSU’s coach while Pistol played there).
So, after four mostly disappointing seasons in Atlanta, Maravich was traded to the expansion New Orleans Jazz, which was just the NBA’s ticket to fill the then new Superdome. Back home, Pistol won his first NBA scoring title in 1977, averaging 31.1 points a game. In one memorable game at the Superdome, Maravich torched the Knicks for 68 points in a game that many longtime NBA fans still consider the best individual performance in NBA history.
But Bourbon Street was not a good training table for Maravich, who also suffered a serious knee injury in New Orleans that undermined the quickness that had made his floor game so extraordinary. After kicking around the NBA for a few more seasons, the bright flame of Pistol Pete’s basketball genius flared out.
However, in a fascinating twist, Pistol Pete’s life became even more interesting after he quit playing basketball for a living. Pete watched Press raise a grandaughter the way he should have raised Pete and, spurred by an embrace of evangelical Christianity, Pistol cared for his ailing father lovingly during his dying days. Then, as quick as one of his no-look passes, Pete was gone, too, felled by a congenital heart defect at the age of 40 while playing a pick-up game in a church gym.
Sadly, much of the video of Maravich during his salad days at LSU was stolen years ago and has never been recovered. So, much of the legacy of this remarkable talent must be passed along by those of us who were blessed to see him play. Thus, as you watch Steve Nash put together a third straight MVP-caliber season this year for the Phoenix Suns, recognize that, in many respects, you are watching the modern version of Pistol Pete Maravich.

One of the true characters in the basketball culture of Texas — former Texas A&M coach Shelby Metcalf — died this past Thursday in College Station at the age of 76. Anyone who has lived in Texas and followed basketball knows about Metcalf, who coached at A&M when basketball was truly just a diversion between football and spring football. But Metcalf’s teams were always competitive against teams of superior personnel and the Texas A&M administration learned just how special a coach Metcalf was after they unceremoniously fired him in 1990 after 26 and a half seasons at the helm of Aggie basketball. The Aggie program promptly went into a tailspin for the next 15 years until current coach Billy Gillespie was hired three seasons ago and transformed the Aggie program into a national power.
But as good a coach as Metcalf was, he was an even better storyteller and comedian. Metcalf’s dry wit and calm demeanor are legendary in Texas coaching circles, where his observation that one of his players who had 4 F’s and a D was “concentrating too hard on one class” is probably his best-known crack. Metcalf was my one of my favorite coaches to listen to during an interview, so here are a some of my favorite Metcalf observations from over the years:

After a tough game in Lubbock, a reporter asked Metcalf in the post-game press conference about what he told his players after Tech fans resorted to throwing coins at the Aggies. Metcalf replied: “I told my players to show some class, and not pick up anything less than a quarter.”
In talking about how dramatically recruiting had changed during the course of his long career, Metcalf recalled how he had recruited a player in the mid-1960’s by taking him fishing and observed ruefully: “You just canít get real good players with catfish anymore.”
When a number of A&M players were having trouble academically, Metcalf arranged to have them enrolled in a basket weaving so that they could increase their grade point average. “Problem was,” Metcalf later admitted. “A couple of them were American-Indians, and they set such a high curve that they flunked the others out.”
Commenting on the notoriously fickle A&M fans, Metcalf observed: “The only happy Aggie is an unhappy Aggie.”
Metcalf loved nicknames. So, after recruiting a player out of Louisiana named Smart, Metcalf nicknamed him “Plenty.” After reviewing first semester grades, Metcalf changed Smart’s nickname to “Nottoo.”
After former Aggie football coach R.C. Slocum resigned under pressure during the A&M administration led by former CIA Chief and current Defense Secretary William Gates, Metcalf commented: “R.C.’s lucky. He could have just disappeared, you know.”
Metcalf always had the same pre-season observation about the keys to a successful season: “Stay happy, healthy and out of foul trouble.”
During a particularly turbulent airline flight, an A&M player was feeling quite nauseous.

ìSon, what’s wrong with you?î inquired Metcalf.
ìCoach,” replied the player. “I am dizzy, sweaty, and nauseous. I think I might throw up.”
“Well now,” Metcalf shot back. “Now you know how I feel every time I have to put you in a game!”

Update: Chronicle sports columnist John Lopez, an A&M grad who knew Metcalf for over 25 years, passes along this heartfelt tribute.

Now that the hyperbole from the unfortunate death of Barbaro is dying down, some much-needed perspective is beginning to appear in the articles about horse racing.
In this NY Times piece, Gina Rarick compares the European style of horse training and racing, and posits that the injuries that Barbaro suffered are the inevitable result of the more extreme training regimen that thoroughbreds endure in an American racing system focused primarily on speed.
Meanwhile, this Bill Finley/NY Times article introduces us to Barbaro’s kid brother, a yet-unnamed yearling still frolicking in the fields of Kentucky. Will the young colt develop as well as his big brother? As they say in the horse-racing business, “you never know, but that’s part of the charm.”