Commentary : Lefty Used to Make All the Right Moves--and Maybe He Will Again

Once, when he walked through the tunnel at Cole Field O House, a band would snap to attention and play “Hail to the Chief.” Wednesday, there was silence.

Once, Lefty Driesell would have made an abrupt left and, anticipating victory, strutted toward Maryland’s bench. Wednesday, he walked straight across an empty court and announced his toughest defeat. Alone and animated during the glory times, he was somber and with family for his public farewell.

The year an American first walked on the moon, 1969, also was a heady one for games in Washington. Vince Lombardi was coaxed out of retirement to coach the Redskins; Ted Williams was lured away from his favorite fishin’ holes to manage the Senators; the third--and least celebrated--exceptional addition was Driesell, who ultimately had the most profound impact.

Nobody has done more for basketball in the Washington area than Driesell. Cut and dried. Not Red Auerbach. Not John Thompson. Beyond the high schools and the playgrounds, the sport was close to moribund. Other colleges were forced to emphasize basketball, or get choked by the dust Maryland was leaving after that powerful jump-start from the Lefthander. So energized was the area that Abe Pollin thought it safe to move his Bullets here from Baltimore.

With all that in mind, Maryland has manipulated for months to get rid of Driesell. Aware--and appreciative--of his enormous contributions over 17 years, the school nevertheless is willing to pay him handsomely never to walk through that tunnel again as its coach. He’d done nothing for which he could be fired. Or at least not without a bitter court fight. In truth, Driesell surely is cleaner than most coaches in a morally questionable profession. Yet the deep thinkers at Maryland were willing to scrape up about $150,000 a year to keep him out of the living rooms of hot-shot recruits.

And they’re right.

The weight of accumulated problems involving Driesell, many of them for the second time, is more than Maryland needs to bear. When it needed positive reinforcement after the death of Len Bias, the coach mostly brought embarrassment. The settlement Wednesday was a generous compromise for the school and Driesell, for it gives him a bit of dignity he could use to resurface as a coach.

Always, the contradictions seem as large as the man. His 25-year career has been full of twists and cruel irony. Maryland seemed a dream job, yet Driesell got as far in the NCAA playoffs at academically rigid Davidson; a fluke in pro basketball cost him the player who could have fetched that grail of a national championship; silly rules now changed kept his best team from even getting into the NCAA tournament.

Now Driesell is being accused both of being too involved in the aftermath of Bias’ death and not being involved enough academically with his players. And yet, having been humiliated, he may well have a fine chance to resurface at a big-time basketball school. What he has to jump-start this time is his life.

The fellow who worked an athletic miracle at Davidson and kicked Maryland out of its lethargy would be a credit to any school. At 54, Driesell still is young enough for one more major surge. Having gotten himself into this sorry situation, he is all but obliged to rectify it.

Even the man who sort of fired him and sort of paid him off, Chancellor John B. Slaughter, knows Driesell basically is not an evil guy. At best, he is a charmer blessed with an attribute rare in anyone with huge success and an ego match. Driesell does not carry a grudge.

Those of us who have fussed regularly with Driesell knew to expect an early-morning phone call from the enraged coach. He would rant, sometimes even threaten. Once he wanted to settle matters with a fist fight in a parking lot; less than two weeks later, he was sharing a marvelous anecdote about Moses Malone.

Sensitive to the extreme about his ability as a floor coach, Driesell also was quick to deflect credit when a bolt of inspiration won an important game. “The Lord” got him to switch to a zone defense against Duke when he won the only Atlantic Coast Conference championship of his career. His favorite postgame line seemed: “I dunno, you know. I’ll have to look at the sasistics (sic).”

At Davidson and Maryland, he was compelling. You had to go watch whatever stunt Driesell figured was necessary to generate interest. Until he got great players, he sold himself. Stomping. Tossing off a sport coat in the heat of battle. Giving an opponent the choke sign. You might send your son to play for someone else, but you’d pay to watch Lefty.

I dunno, you know, but the Driesell I have seen the last 10 years or so has seemed different from the earlier Driesell. There have been bursts of fire, but his commitment has not seemed so intense. Able to recruit less qualified players with changes in admissions policies nationally in the mid-’70s, he often has settled for mediocrity in the classroom.

To ignite sleepy Davidson, Driesell would bump about the east and south in the school station wagon. Sometimes, that also was his bed. Many an evening would be spent with another coach, moving their wives about the room to illustrate new player alignments. On a tiny budget at Davidson, he was persuasive enough occasionally both to sign great talent and get that player’s parents to pick up the tab for dinner. If mothers made the final decision, he never would have lost a recruit.

Somewhere, Driesell began to slide. I suspect it was about the time Malone was able to skip from high school to the new pro league, the American Basketball Association. A big man’s coach, he missed out on pivotal players in his natural turf: Ralph Sampson in Virginia, Sam Bowie in Pennsylvania, Sam Perkins in New York. Few ever accused him of knowing a whit about guard play.

We would growl about that, but never to the point of suggesting Driesell be fired. The academic lapses in the mid-’70s and a break-in involving Larry Gibson were excused. Anyone who lasts that long is going to have problems and problem players. Even Driesell’s bumbling into the Herman Veal matter was seen as a first-time offense into tampering with justice and not worthy of his scalp.

Slaughter began peeking into Driesell’s performance as an educator before the most recent academic trouble surfaced. According to a source, the basketball team could have played the entire regular-season schedule last year, including the ACC tournament, without missing more than six days of classes. But Driesell would insist on an early flight the day before a game rather than one that allowed the players to make their classes. Instead of catching an early flight the morning after the game, Driesell would choose one that got the players back to campus just in time for practice.

Still, I believe Driesell might have remained as coach if it had not been revealed that he asked an assistant coach to sanitize the room in which Bias collapsed and later died of drug overdose. That was many times more serious than the Veal situation and made him, I believe, ineffective at Maryland.

Given his having won 300 more games than he lost, given his virtues obvious over the years, Driesell is capable of a grand and dramatic comeback. Rather than wallow in self-pity and some tame job at Maryland, he ought to charge into a job market always lively after each season. He doesn’t necessarily deserve to leave basketball this way; he certainly doesn’t have to.