Harbor Cage Coach Too Happy With Office to Leave

Perhaps the best way to understand the coaching career of Jim White is to visit his office at Harbor College.

Just off a dimly lit corridor straddling the Seahawk Gymnasium, White has converted a 10-by-20-foot concession room into his basketball headquarters.

It is here, with a red and yellow popcorn machine at his feet, a hot dog warmer and a slew of plaques and trophies, one of the greatest defensive minds in the history of California community college basketball has chosen to complete his career.

To be sure, White, 48, has no plans for retirement. It’s just that he figures after 20 years at the same school he has very few places to go.

“This place has been home,” he said.

It is with a bit of irony that White views his new quarters as a step up at a stage when many coaches are looking for a gold watch from the booster club.

“For the first 16 years my office was a ball closet,” he said.

So maybe you can stuff four rooms the size of his old confines into his current quarters. When he got the chance, he moved. He figured he could raise a few bucks for the Harbor basketball program this way, too, since all he has to do is roll up the 10-foot aluminum window that opens into the corridor and sell snacks at half time of home games.

Excuse me? Is this the same guy that has an off-season job as a talent agent for European basketball teams? The one who still receives residuals from a beer commercial in which he portrays himself--a ranting basketball coach stalking the bench, driving his team to victory so it can enjoy a cool one together after the game?

“This is my baby,” he says of the basketball program here. “Harbor College has been my life.”

You don’t have to look very hard to find at least one Jim White at every community college in the state. Dedicated and proud, they’d sweat blood for their institutions. Like White, all are lifers. White, and those like him, have seen their pride take a beating. Burnout is often the result.

“It’s the nature of the animal, being a teacher,” he said.

You can see past frustrations in White’s eyes. It has always been difficult for the fiery veteran to conceal his feelings:

“I’m no Pollyanna. I’m fairly controversial. I’m not one of those guys that everyone likes.”

That might explain why White suddenly resigned his coaching duties in 1980 after the school’s administration cut his budget in a financial crisis.

The program lasted a year without him. In 1982 it was dropped. White was incensed. Harbor had become “a laughingstock,” he said.

Two seasons later White agreed to make a comeback.

“I was embarrassed that Harbor did not have a basketball team,” he said.

The school had a new administration, one favorable to athletics, he said. Soon it reinstated the program. White, who has a penchant for wearing cowboy boots, was back in the saddle again.

“Basketball had been a part of this school since 1949. It didn’t seem right without it,” he said.

White considers himself an assistant coach now, although school literature often refers to him as the head coach. White calls his role one of “affiliation with the team.” He prefers an advisory role, one that allows the school to hire a part-tiime coach to handle most of the day-to-day coaching responsibilities.

But his mark is clearly on the team, according to observers. It is White’s ability to make the most from virtually nothing that has set him apart from many of his peers.

Cypress College basketball Coach Don Johnson, whom White describes as his “most formidable opponent” over the years, always fears playing Harbor.

“You know if he has great talent he’ll have a great team,” Johnson said. “But you also know that when he has mediocre talent he’ll also have a good team. I never like the idea of playing a team coached by Jim White.”

Using defense, White has fashioned a series of tough, smart, unselfish teams. Although less talented than opponents, they’re seldom out of any game.

In 1975, with current Boston Celtic guard Dennis Johnson at the helm, Harbor won the community college state title in an upset. When White was making the beer commercial, he said he imagined that he was yelling at Dennis Johnson.

The 1975 team came together late in the season, according to White, and defense played a big role.

A blue and gold banner commemorating the title hangs in the rafters of the Seahawk gym, along with one from the school’s only other state championship in 1956. There are other reminders of the importance of defense. On the door of White’s office there is a bumper sticker printed in blue block letters that reads: Harbor College Basketball: DEFENSE.

It is the first thing you see when you enter the room, before the aging refrigerator or the cooking supplies stowed beneath two long tables in the center of the room.

White said he became committed to defense in his playing days at USC in the late 1950s because “I wasn’t a very good shooter.

“Most people do not play intense defense. After four or five passes someone is going to break down and take a shot.

“We want to make them make 7-8-9 passes. Defense must tell the offense what it is going to do.”

Johnson, considered White’s equal in defensive strategy, said White’s pursuit of excellence often hurts him:

“He demands a lot from his kids and on occasion he may loose players for that.”

White agrees: “The only time kids enjoy playing for me is when they win.”

Last season Harbor did win. The team was 21-8 and won a divisional title in the Southern California Athletic Conference. This year, with the same nucleus, Harbor is only 7-7. White said the team would be at least 10-2 were it not for bad breaks.

“If we play to our potential we’ll be a contender,” White said. “So far we haven’t done that.”

Not everyone is as hard on White as he is on himself.

“He’d have a heart attack if he didn’t scream all the time,” said Ken Curry, co-coach with White. “But he’s easy to get along with.”

White, chewing on a plastic drinking straw, responded: “You have to be a pretty good guy to get along with me. I don’t mean to be that way. That’s just me.

“I don’t have the best ingredients to be a coach. I’d like nothing better than to be a mild-mannered intellectual type that gets my point across.”

His point has come across well at Harbor. Above one row of bleachers in the campus gymnasium is a blue triangle painted over a yellow-gold background. The words pride, tradition , champions ring the outside. In the center is the word Seahawks .

Jim White is all of those to Harbor College.