Commentary : Let the Players Play, Coaches Leave

When a Temple basketball player made a suggestion at practice recently, his coach, John Chaney, was enraged.

“You do not have an opinion,” Chaney told the player. “If you have an opinion, you take that opinion, and you put that opinion in your sneakers, and you get your feet, and your opinion, up and down the floor.”

The question that prompts: How is a college student’s education furthered when he hears that from a coach?

Fifteen years after James Naismith invented basketball, his most ambitious student in gym class at the University of Kansas was Forrest C. (Phog) Allen, who in time came to be listed among the ablest of the nation’s coaches.

Thus in 1906, when he was still in college, it came as no big surprise--to anybody but Naismith--that Allen had received a coaching offer, his first, from a nearby university, Baker.

The game’s inventor, however, was floored. He couldn’t believe that a prospective employer wanted to hire the young man.

As Allen told it in a book years later, Naismith summoned him and said, laughing: “I’ve got a good joke on you, you bloody beggar. They want you to coach basketball down at Baker.”

Allen, hurt, asked: “What’s so funny about that?”

“Why, you don’t coach basketball,” Naismith replied airily. “You just play it.”

That’s the kind of game he invented, Naismith said. In the early years of basketball, he said it often.

Naismith, who lived to be 88, was among the first to understand two things about American pastimes:

--Basketball is the most interesting of the team games to play, and also the most rewarding in terms of physical conditioning. You seldom hear about an old 3- or 4-sport letterman who didn’t prefer it.

--One of the best things about basketball, by comparison with, say, baseball, is that it doesn’t necessarily require a great deal of coaching, or even teaching. Teen-agers can get the hang of it by watching a basketball game for a few moments--after which they can go out and instantly play it themselves.

They won’t play it expertly, to be sure, but if they can put the ball through the hoop occasionally, they’ll have fun.

It follows that in America today, one of the worst things about basketball is that it is often over-coached. So is football, for that matter--at least in high school and college. In both football and basketball, most educational institutions put too much emphasis on the coach and too little on student development.

Naismith and those who agree with him have always thought so. In their view, school time is learning time. And in high school as well as college, such important virtues as self-reliance and leadership responsibilities, among others, are hard to learn if coaches have all the opinions, and make all the decisions.

Some coaching is, however, indispensable. Although most boys and girls seem to like basketball the first day they play it, they will enjoy it more if they know some of the nuances.

Accordingly, a compromise is in order, and here’s a plan for one:

--Coaches should be hired to teach the game through the school week.

--They should then be barred from the gymnasium on game days, when, for a true learning experience, students are better left on their own, as Naismith said. In this era, videotape would keep the coach abreast of what happened.

One benefit of this compromise is that it would lower the emphasis on winning.

Another is that it would end one of the most distasteful of modern sports spectacles, the coach ranting and raving on the sidelines. Other than to promote himself, he only rants for two reasons--to intimidate officials and berate young students.

Basketball is too pleasant to be spoiled by a coach.

Quarterbacks Joe Namath and Joe Montana are among the many great athletes on record that they would have chosen basketball for their careers if they’d been taller. Basketball is simply more fun than other sports, both Joes have said.

If entertainment values are one thing, exercise values are another.

And it is as an exercise medium that basketball is most helpful to amateur participants.

As former UCLA baseball player Milt Smith said, a Bruin tuba player gets more exercise than the school’s left fielder.

Any amateur skier or swimmer is in better physical condition than an NFL quarterback or offensive lineman who doesn’t ski or swim.

By contrast, basketball is grueling to anyone who isn’t in peak condition. The constant running, jumping and--above all--stretching that basketball demands make it the ideal team-game exercise.

That’s what Naismith liked about basketball.

He didn’t like watching it, especially. He would rather watch football, and so would I, though I learned long ago that as a game to play, no team game is in basketball’s class.