The Coach Lost Out to Recruiter

David Gaines is a solid coach, a fundamentally sound and disciplined leader. Smokey Gaines is a recruiter extraordinaire, an articulate and persuasive salesman.

Or so he might have been perceived.

David (Smokey) Gaines is, of course, the same person . . . but are David Gaines and Smokey Gaines one and the same coach?

This man’s problem, as eight seasons of coaching basketball at San Diego State University stumble toward a frustrating and disappointing conclusion, is that he never seemed to be David and Smokey at the same time.

A David (Smokey) Gaines would have been an immensely successful coach. After all, he would have been a fundamentally sound and disciplined coach with the persuasiveness to stock his program with the finest in athletic talent. Such a combination would have made this a hot team and a hot ticket.

Alas, I am not sure whether Gaines was closest to being Smokey . . . or David. I am not sure, in fact, if he was ever really sure . . . nor anyone else, for that matter.

His problem, perhaps, was rooted in the image he himself chose to promote at the time he was hired in the spring of 1979. He hit town like a brass--or maybe brash--band. He came on with so many one-liners he seemed more qualified for vaudeville than the Final Four.

Gaines made one thing perfectly clear.

He could recruit. After all, he had sold an entire university on himself.

That was Smokey at his best. He declared that anyone capable of recruiting would have SDSU in the Final Four in three or four years. He left no doubt that he was exactly the person to accomplish such a miracle. He would make San Diego a blazing hotbed of collegiate basketball.

That Smokey Gaines could recruit became gospel, in spite of the fact that I never heard anyone say it but him. One newspaper story later in 1979 blithely noted: “He’s known as one of the top recruiters in the country.”

This man would march through America’s high schools (and junior colleges) playing such irresistible tunes on his flute that SDSU could not help but become a prominent force in collegiate basketball. It wasn’t if , baby, it was when .

And, please, do not accuse me of exaggerating. That was the impression, and it was created by Gaines himself.

Of course, Smokey would reinforce this image when he successfully recruited Michael Cage for the 1980-81 season. Unbeknown to Gaines, he had hit his peak as a recruiter at SDSU. Cage was the blue-chipper of the Gaines era. There were other fine players, such as Anthony Watson, but only one bona fide, top-of-the-line Final Four-caliber blue-chipper.

Michael Cage.

However, there was a down side to the Cage years. SDSU never won a Western Athletic Conference championship with its greatest player. Never even came close.

Consequently, Gaines began to hear whispers that he could recruit but not coach. He became quite sensitive to this, railing at WAC coaches who seemingly went out of their way to praise SDSU’s talent. It was their way of suggesting something must be missing, and Gaines had a suspicion what they were saying it was . . . coaching.

These coaches were right, in that SDSU did have talent. However, Smokey, the recruiter, was so enamored with Cage that David, the coach, was stuck with a relentless insistence on an inside power game.

Consequently, SDSU ran its offense a bit like a football team stubbornly running an All-American fullback between tackles. It was good but beatable--good enough to win 68 times in those four seasons but beatable enough to lose 44 times.

One of these Gaineses was responsible for the mediocrity of those years.

Or was it both?

With Cage gone in 1984-85, David Gaines coached a team. SDSU basketball was no longer a showcase for one marvelously talented individual, but rather a manifestation of an entire team’s capabilities.

David Gaines had good players but not a great player, and this team pulled together, won the WAC tournament for the first time and advanced to the NCAA playoffs. No one expected much from these Aztecs, because no one thought the recruiter could coach.

It was at about this time that I began to wonder if maybe we had it all backward. Maybe this man’s strength was his coaching . . . and not his recruiting.

Maybe this man had fooled everyone, including himself.

This contemplation has given way to conviction. Smokey Gaines, the recruiter, is not a super salesman. He is not a recruiter extraordinaire .

Surely, he will argue otherwise. He will point to the one-year probation that limited SDSU to two recruits for the 1984-85 season, but forget that he had to replace only one departing player . . . albeit that one player was Cage. He will note the problems with tightening admissions procedures in the summer before the 1985-86 season, but forget that he still got a full complement of seven players into the university.

The dismal 1986-87 season probably had its genesis in these troubled times. However there could be no excuses. A program lives (or dies) with the recruited athletes, and SDSU had seven of them in 1985-86. David, the coach, had to live, with what Smokey, the recruiter, gave him.

The truth is that David Gaines, the coach, the more understated of these fellows, has been what he has always insisted he is. He is a fundamentalist, firm on both discipline and loyalty.

It’s just that no one ever paid much attention to this Gaines, because he ran so contradictory to what the other Gaines had caused folks to expect.

The blustery Smokey Gaines, the recruiter, is the culprit here. It is because of him that the collective David (Smokey) Gaines fell short of what might have been accomplished.