Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sports, "Hunt's Grunts"
Making tough choices in roundball
By Hunt Archbold
First of all, long live basketball’s triple-threat position. You’ve got a choice there: You can dribble, pass or shoot. Curly Neal chose the former, John Stockton the middle and World B. Free the latter, while Pete Maravich took all three routes, proving he truly was the Pistol. But the triple threat is simply your decision. We all have to make choices, and as confused as today’s hoops officials are about what truly is or isn’t considered traveling, I’m equally as certain that I’ll check out “Semi-Pro” sometime in the next couple of weeks.
You have heard of Will Ferrell’s latest cinematic sports spoof set to hit theaters this week, right? Of course you have, because the Hollywood marketing machine for said roundball flick has been in full-court press mode for weeks now. Hawking deodorant and peer on TV, staring you in the eye at bus stops, watching you while you stand to pee at East Point’s Turtle Club, there’s Ferrell as Jackie Moon of the Flint Michigan Tropics, asking you to make a choice.
A year ago this month, I was in Hawaii as part of a wedding gathering that included Southern Cal’s funniest fan and his family. Ferrell was sporting the Moon ’fro, as he was in the midst of shooting. And while he was at times unwittingly tee-hee funny with his deadpan delivery of simple conversational words, I found it surprising that Ferrell stood a full inch shorter than me (I’ll get around to disclosing how tall I am at some point). I also found him to be as nice as any celebrity could be, considering he’s pretty much a mega-star. And that’s a choice he makes.
Speaking of choices, some hard ones need to be made with regards to basketball here in Georgia. And they need to be made by those who call the shots at Georgia Tech, Georgia and the Atlanta Hawks. Including Georgia State’s frustrating season (the Panthers’ 20-plus loss season this year will include a multitude of close defeats), this has been one sorry basketball year on the local professional and collegiate level. It’s been one three-second violation of an airball season produced by our own triple threats to the respect of the game of basketball—the Hawks, Bulldogs and Jackets. Way to pick up the Falcons’ slack, gang.
My sources tell me that Tech’s Paul Hewitt is gone at season’s end. I’ll believe it when I see it, but if Hewitt goes or stays, it wouldn’t surprise me either way. The big money givers to the Institute, and these guys are heavy contributors, wanted Chan Gailey out of there and it happened. Now I’m hearing that athletic director Dan Radakovich better send Hewitt on his way or he’s gone, too. Hewitt arrived in 2000, quickly restored the program to a degree of national prominence and had the Jackets playing for the national title game in 2004. In the three-plus seasons since, Tech has won just one tournament game, and if the Jackets can’t manage to win five of their last six games, Tech is assured of its second losing season in the last three years.
Tech will play only 13 home games this year, and the mismanagement of the scheduling (a difficult road game at UConn in the middle of a crucial stretch of conference games took the wind out of this team) is Hewitt’s fault. His youth-filled team has been tired and playing sloppy basketball down the stretch. Hewitt did lose a pair of talented players to the NBA last offseason, but next year his learning team will be a year older and a very highly regarded national recruit, combo guard Ian Shumpert of Illinois, will be coming to the Flats. The guess here is that my sources are wrong, Hewitt makes some small changes with his assistants and gets the Jackets back in the Big Dance in ’09.
Over in the Classic City, Dennis Felton’s job status is in question, and Georgia athletic director Damon Evans has yet to give a clear indication as to what might happen. Either way, Evans is facing his first major coaching decision since he replaced Vince Dooley four years ago. And it’s the latter whom some Bulldog basketball supporters (yes, they do exist) partly blame for the program’s current apathetic and losing environment, because he let Tubby Smith get away to Kentucky.
Since then, there’s been the Ron Jirsa debacle followed by the Jim Harrick disaster that landed Georgia in some serious NCAA probation. Nearly five seasons later, the on-court results have not been good: The Dawgs are 70-75 overall and 25-50 in SEC play under Felton. As recently fired John Brady of LSU knows, SEC coaches do get canned for consistent losing. Heading into the final five games this year, the team had dropped seven of eight overall and 10 of its last 11 versus SEC East competition. While rivals Florida and Tennessee were also one-time also-rans on the college landscape, the Gators and Vols are now both national powers.
In his defense, Felton had sanctions to overcome early; lost, for different reasons, some key signees including Louis Williams, who jumped straight to the NBA; and this season has been a disaster with several key players suspended either for the season or multiple games due to academics and arrests. This short-on-talent team, which recently was down to just six scholarship players following a series of dismissals, injuries and player defections, does play hard for 40 minutes each game. And Felton’s tasted Division I coaching success, as his Western Kentucky teams won the Sun Belt Tournament title each of the three seasons prior to his arrival in Athens. Felton speaks of a solid recruiting class, but does he deserve another year to guide this staggering program from the doldrums? My guess is that Evans will say yes, but by the time he decides it was the wrong choice, he’ll have missed out on the chance to bring VCU’s Anthony Grant and his program-building talent to Georgia.
Oh, and then there’s the Hawks. Nice work, Michael Gearon (do you remember when we were youth basketball teammates at Second Ponce de Leon circa 1975?), on getting Mike Bibby. Even Steve Belkin couldn’t block that one. Now please, and you can do it with dignity and respect, tell Mike Woodson that his services are no longer needed. Keep the assistants and put Dominique Wilkins on the bench for the remainder of the season. See if ‘Nique likes and knows how to coach. See if he can get into the heart and soul of this talented, albeit rudderless, team. See how positively your fan base will react if you make that choice.
Happy times … and I’m 6-foot-2. And I like the skip pass versus the 2-3 zone. SP