Harold Miner : Inglewood Star’s Wrestling Career Ended in One Bad Fall, But Cage Future Looks Bright

As teen-age boys are sometime wont to do, Harold Miner and Tommy Holland were horsing around one afternoon in the front room of Miner’s mother’s Inglewood home.

They were wrestling and tackling each other trying to get an advantage, but neither could get the upper hand.

Soon the roughhousing, although still playful and friendly, got a bit out of hand and the boys sent each other flying into the patio window, cracking and splitting it into pieces.

Miner and Holland are by nature honest and forthright, but they didn’t relish telling Harold’s mother that they had broken the patio window by wrestling in the house.

So they found some clear tape, patched and strengthened the cracks, then sat back and waited to see if it would hold. Night fell and the 10th-graders had almost forgotten about the incident until a street lamp cast its light through the patio window.

“When the light shined through, it looked like there was an intruder out there; like a man with a head and his arms raised was coming right through the window at us,” Holland recalled. “We were so scared every time we looked at it that Harold ended up telling his mom what we did.

“We still laugh about that. All we have to do is mention it and we just crack up.”

If Miner, now a senior, wrestled as well as he played basketball, chances are the patio window would never have survived. But, as it is, hoops is his forte and he plays the game as well as any prep player in the Southland.

The 6-5, 180-pound forward paced the Sentinels to a 16-9 record and into the quarterfinals of the CIF 4-AA playoffs with a South Bay-leading 28.6 points-per-game average. He pulled down 10.5 rebounds per contest and averaged three steals and three assists a game.

In Inglewood’s 77-72 victory over Mission Viejo in the second round of the playoffs last week, Miner knocked down 35 points, grabbed eight boards and blocked three shots.

Wednesday night against Perris in the quarterfinals at West Torrance High, Miner led all scorers with 28 points, but the Sentinels were eliminated, 77-68.

Miner scored a career-high 48 points against Beverly Hills this year and has scored 46 twice, once last year in a victory over the Normans, who were the Ocean League champs.

He’s been selected to play in the Dapper Dan Classic in Pittsburgh and McDonald’s Classic in Tucson, two prestigious tournaments that showcase the nation’s best high-school players.

Miner is a perfectionist now and insists he has a long way to go before becoming the kind of player he aspires to be.

“I’ve really never been satisfied with the way I’ve played, but I am happy with the way I’ve progressed,” he said. “I feel I’ve gotten a lot better over the years only because I’ve worked hard at it, playing in a lot of games, studying a lot of tapes and reading a lot of books and magazines on the game. That’s what’s helped me improve.”

Said Holland: “You can see how gifted he is. He was just born to play basketball. He knows how to do all the things: play defense, rebound, score, pass. If he could ever put all those things together in one game, it would be unbelievable.”

Miner’s importance to the team became apparent when he suffered a slight ankle injury in a Las Vegas tournament in November. Inglewood lost both games without him and was beaten badly at Torrance two weeks ago when Miner sat on the bench in street clothes.

But his play has hardly gone unnoticed. Notre Dame, Kansas and UCLA pursued him, but he surprised everybody, including his high school coach, when he decided in November to attend USC.

The opportunity to play close to home and the chance for a lot of playing time right away was the deciding factor. “I wanted to help change things over there,” he said.

USC Coach George Raveling said he recognized Miner as a blue-chip prospect the moment he laid eyes on him. He saw Miner as a player who could help set the standard for excellence on a team that has suffered a 24-58 record in Raveling’s tenure.

“I just tried to sell him on the idea that he could play basketball at a lot of places, but he could be involved in helping to turn a program around here at USC,” Raveling said. “I convinced him he could be more of a headlight here than a tail-light somewhere else.”

As a freshman, Miner earned the nickname Worm because everyone said he could sneak and slither through defenses designed to stop him. Now, they call him Unreal because, well, some of the things he does on the court are downright unreal.

But Inglewood Coach Vince Combs claims those nicknames belie Miner’s true nature and personality. Although he is a flashy player, Miner is a sensitive individual, more concerned with getting recognition for his teammates than padding his statistics. “I want my teammates to be recognized very much,” Miner said.

Combs, however, says perhaps Miner was not taking the right tack.

“Sometimes I think that attitude has hurt Harold a bit,” Combs said. “You know when people think of Inglewood basketball these days, they think of Harold Miner and he’s not comfortable with that. He wants the team to get its recognition.

“Finally, I told him to stop holding back, that whatever he can bring to the team, the team will appreciate and be better off for it. I think he senses that now.”

Some people claim Miner takes too long to get started, that he goes through the motions early in the game, then tries to take over in the later stages.

But that kind of court demeanor can be terribly misleading.

“He has a personality that makes him appear laid-back and makes him look like he’s not playing hard,” said Rolling Hills Coach Cliff Warren, who has seen his share of Miner in Bay League contests. “But there’s no doubt in my mind he’s playing hard. I’ve always known that. He just does things so effortlessly.

“And the better players do seem to play better later in the game when they know they can have an impact. The fact that his biggest output comes later in the game is not unusual for a player of his talent.”

Miner said he’s aware of the talk that claims he’s a slow starter. But he said that’s all part of the master plan and all part of being a team player. Sometime sacrifices have to be made, he said, and if it helps the team, no sacrifice is too great.

“I like to help get my teammates going and get all of our minds on the game,” he said. “Then when the fourth quarter comes, I like to take over because I like the pressure situations.”

Everyone notices a player’s point total. It is the most telling and most glamorous of all basketball statistics. But any knowledgeable fan will tell you it’s the little things that make a player successful and, in turn, ignite the team around him.

Holland, who has known Miner since moving to Inglewood from South Bend, Ind., in the seventh grade, attests that Miner has mastered the subtleties of the game of basketball.

Every time he looks around on the court, Miner is contributing in some way.

“He makes us play better and he’s a team leader, but not in an intense way,” said Holland. “He’ll get us going with something flashy like a big dunk or a steal or he’ll do something not so flashy and the rest of us will just pick up our game a little bit more.”

Miner’s become a student of the game and has watched films of many of the game’s greats. Oscar Robertson impressed him greatly, but Julius Erving is his favorite player.

“I loved the way he carried himself on and off the court,” Miner said.

But he was deeply touched last year when Pete Maravich died of an undetected heart malfunction. Already bitten by the flu bug, the Pistol’s death nearly laid Miner out, yet he still had a game to play that night at Culver City.

Before the contest he spoke with Combs about the news and decided to dedicate the game to the memory of Pete Maravich, perhaps the flashiest player ever to take to the court.

He went out and scored 30 as the Sentinels won.

“It hit me hard, real hard,” Miner said. “He was always one of my heroes because I admired the way he played harder and tried to push the game to the limit.”

That’s just the kind of guy Harold Miner is: flashy with a dash of sentiment as soft as his jump shot.