A Parting of Ways : Although Canoga Park’s Jeff Davis Remains Friends With Mike McNulty, His Coaching Methods Rankle His Mentor

Canoga Park High point guard Lindsey Dunbar, all 5-foot-7 of him, cradled the ball in both hands, rocking it back and forth as he stood at the top of the key. His pivot foot glued to the ground, Dunbar yelled for a teammate’s assistance.

“Screen, right here,” Dunbar yelped, motioning to the right of Cleveland guard Kenny Collins, whose chest-in-your-face defense was beginning to rub the hair from Dunbar’s eyebrows. “Right here .”

Collins fell for the verbal fake and took a quick glance over his right shoulder. Nobody there.

And guess what? When Collins turned back around, there was nobody there , either. Dunbar was on his way to the hoop.

“I really believe that they mirror me, that there’s a lot of me in them,” said Jeff Davis, Canoga Park’s first-year coach and a relative tower at 5-8. “They’re not very big. If they don’t hustle and play scrappy, we’re never gonna win.”

For the past several seasons, Canoga Park has had trouble juking anybody. Under the guidance of Davis, however, the Hunters (8-11) already have won twice as many games as they have over the past two seasons combined (four). One of those victories, it should be noted, came over the Hamilton junior varsity in 1988.

Not that there’s anything wrong with JV teams, which is what Davis spent the past few years coaching at West Valley League rival El Camino Real.

On Wednesday, Canoga Park will play host to El Camino Real (6-8) at 4 p.m. It is a game that pits Davis against his longtime mentor, Conquistadore Coach Mike McNulty. One might expect a reunion of two men who spent the past seven seasons sitting next to one another on the same bench to be an upbeat, spirited affair.

“There won’t be many secrets,” McNulty said. “He knows all of our guys and I’m sure some of what he’s running will look familiar to us.”

The transfer last spring of talented guard Marcus Reed from El Camino Real to Canoga Park, however, has chilled the friendship--to the point that McNulty recently termed the relationship as “tense.”

Perhaps the Canoga Park team resembles the fast-talking Davis a little too much. Is the first-year coach a tad too slick, a bit too wily?

Sometimes, McNulty thinks so.

“He should be selling used cars,” McNulty said.

Sure, Dunbar’s trickery got him past Collins, but a half-second later, Dunbar was called for charging.

Davis was still a runny-nosed kid in junior high when he first saw McNulty wheel and deal in the El Camino High gymnasium in 1972.

You might have seen the game, too. It was televised on KNBC on a long-since-canceled program called “Prep Sportsworld,” which featured a high school game of the week from the Los Angeles area. The broadcasters for the Taft-El Camino Real tilt were Tommy Hawkins and Ross Porter.

“(McNulty) was the star guard,” said Davis, who was starry-eyed, indeed. “After that I went to every game. He was kind of my idol. At that time, I hadn’t really seen any pro or college games on TV, so he was it.”

The 1971-72 team remains one of the best in school history. It finished West Valley League play 10-0 and was 17-2 overall. In the 18 seasons since, no El Camino Real team has won more games.

“McNulty was a god,” said Jim Coleman, a guard and 1972 alumnus. “He had a group of people who followed him around school, people who’d known him since he came over from Hale (Junior High). To them, he was the man.”

McNulty, 36, graduated in 1972 but soon returned to serve as a volunteer assistant with the El Camino Real junior varsity. By then, Davis was a sophomore guard in search of whatever assistance he could find, and McNulty--who would become the Conquistadores’ varsity coach in 1982--was the targeted tutor.

“I don’t know if he remembers this, but, after practice, he’d take time out for about a half-hour every day and work on my shooting,” said Davis, 29, a 1978 alumnus. “He’d pass the ball around the perimeter, make me work on my balance and my footwork, just keep shooting the ball out to me.

“I was dying, I was exhausted. But he kept me out there--he said it would be good for me.”

McNulty, Davis freely admits, continued to be a good influence. Last spring, after completing his seventh season as McNulty’s junior varsity coach and varsity assistant, Davis took over the struggling program at Canoga Park.

“I learned about 80% of the things I know about basketball from him,” said Davis, who on occasion, still refers to his former associate as Coach McNulty.

“I look at him like a big brother, I look at him like a teacher, I look at him like a coach I played for, because I did,” Davis said. “I look at Mac from all these different perspectives. I remember being 12 years old and sneaking into the gym to watch him play--I never paid--and I remember thinking, ‘Boy, that guy’s so smart.’ He was like Bob Cousy.”

Davis was more like Ernie DiGregorio. A backup guard, he had to bust his rear to make up for a lack of physical ability. After joining the El Camino Real coaching staff in 1981-82, the gregarious and opinionated Davis fast became one of the Valley’s most identifiable assistant coaches.

“We’re exact opposites as personalities,” Davis said of McNulty. “He’s real calm and reserved. His teams mirror him, my teams mirror me.”

Maybe reflection is what this is all about.

In McNulty’s book of synonyms, loyalty, discipline and basketball mean virtually the same darn thing. Four seasons ago, a gifted former player--a sure starter who had transferred to talent-rich Crenshaw before his junior season--approached McNulty during a UCLA game at Pauley Pavilion and asked if he could transfer back to El Camino Real for his senior year. It turns out the kid spent his junior campaign buried on the Crenshaw bench.

“Mac looked the kid right in the eye and said, ‘First of all, I’m not your coach and you don’t go to my school, so you shouldn’t be talking to me,’ ” recalled Davis, who attended the game with McNulty. “Then he says, ‘And second, I never take anybody back.’

“That’s how by the book Mac is.”

The lesson? Don’t knife the Mac.

McNulty hasn’t changed much. Before last Thursday’s practice, McNulty chewed on one player’s ear for wearing non-regulation shorts underneath his practice garb. He then ordered another to remove a T-shirt he was wearing under his practice jersey.

Last season, McNulty had a falling out with junior guard Todd Orlando--one of the team’s lone scoring threats from the perimeter--and booted him from the team. He refused to reinstate Orlando even after the player apologized and his parents intervened, asking the coach for forgiveness.

“I figured it might come back to hurt us, and it did,” McNulty said with a shrug, referring to his team’s loss to Fremont in the City Section 3-A Division semifinals last season. “We could have won that game with Todd.”

Orlando is back for his senior year, but McNulty insisted that Orlando’s grades in deportment were superlative, or else.

“I expect more from my guys,” said McNulty, a walk-on coach. “I do whatever it takes to help them, and I expect the same in return.”

Not surprisingly, a breech of loyalty, McNulty feels, is what sparked the rift with Davis.

Marcus Reed, a senior guard who is averaging 19.9 points and seven assists a game at Canoga Park, attended El Camino Real last year and played for Davis on the junior varsity. Reed disappeared a year ago during the spring-league season, McNulty said, without a word of explanation.

Reed turned up at Canoga Park--where he was enrolled as a freshman and sophomore--and is the Hunters’ best player. McNulty says Reed was a projected starter at El Camino Real.

Davis says Reed’s father, John, had a falling out with El Camino Real administrators and that Marcus transferred to Canoga Park long before the basketball coaching position was available. John Reed approached McNulty at the Taft-San Fernando game last Wednesday and reiterated that the transfer had nothing to do with McNulty or the team.

To this day, however, McNulty has trouble buying Reed’s rationale or Davis’ explanation.

“He started on the varsity in the spring league,” McNulty said. “All of a sudden Marcus didn’t come out. I sent the word out that I wanted to talk to him, but I haven’t spoken (to) or even seen that kid since the day he left here. I get a version through the kids and I get a version through Jeff.

“It’s not right that he gets to go and play against us (at a league rival). It’s just the principle.”

But it may transcend a mere bending of propriety, McNulty said.

“If he was unhappy at Canoga the first time, why go back a second time?” he said. “There are several things that just don’t fit.”

Davis insists that the transfer was entirely aboveboard. “Anyone who thinks I recruited Marcus Reed, that’s the farthest thing from the truth,” he said. “He was leaving El Camino before I even had the job. This is his original school in his original neighborhood, all of his friends are here.

“It’s a ridiculous statement.”

McNulty’s concern, Davis said, should instead be directed toward City Section policy, which at times seems to allow players to leap-frog from school to school, irrespective of attendance boundaries.

“Transferring back to his old school isn’t against City rules,” Davis said. “It’s part of the standing joke in the City: You don’t know who you have until the first day of school.”

Davis said he thought McNulty was satisfied with his explanation of the Reed transfer; McNulty says that he merely decided--after City administrators ruled in favor of the transfer--that it was pointless to pursue the matter further.

“I asked Jeff flat-out what happened, he gave me his answer and it doesn’t come close to what I had heard,” McNulty said.

Countered Davis: “Kids transfer all the time. Bert Mitchell (now at El Camino Real) started at Dorsey, then transferred to El Camino.

“This is a Canoga team. This is not a bought team, this is not a found team.”

The first-year coach found success by assembling a group of players who, in stature, could pass for one of his old junior varsity teams. Most of the 13 players on the roster, Davis says, were ineligible last season. Three are transfers; Dunbar from Fremont, center-forward Shawn Lewis is from Chicago and Reed, well, you know.

The Hunters have lost all five of their games in Northwest Valley Conference play, but the losing margin in nearly every instance has been halved from last season. In 1989, Canoga Park lost to Cleveland by 97 points. Last Wednesday, the Cavaliers won, 84-65.

If Davis can just keep the local kids from leaving, the outlook should continue to improve. Among the players who left or never enrolled at Canoga Park after attending junior high in the area are Brandon Battle (a senior at Cleveland) and Cleveland Jackson (a 6-6 senior All-American at St. Monica). Danny Griffin, who last season received a scholarship offer from Pitt after transferring to and graduating from Crenshaw, attended Columbus Junior High in Canoga Park, Davis said.

The reasons they left? Rather obvious. For example, El Camino Real last lost to Canoga Park during the 1981-82 season, a game in which the Hunters snapped a 34-game losing streak. Not much tradition there.

The first-year coach knows that if he hustles, he can keep the home boys at home--Davis has a pair of 6-2 freshmen that he definitely plans to keep his eye on. But this may be a double-edged sword.

Davis suspects that to McNulty, he will always be that pesky little guard from the late ‘70s, the youngster who sometimes talks too much, lets players get away with an indiscretion or two, steps on an occasional toe, is a bit too gung-ho.

“If (McNulty) could see me at practice now, he’d see that I’ve changed,” said Davis, who has sought input from walk-on assistants such as Harry Daye, the father of former Kennedy High and UCLA star Darren Daye. “Assistants are always the ones who get to know the kids, and I think that scared him. The assistants handle all the positive reinforcement, while the coach handles the negative stuff.

“Now, I have guys who handle that for me, and I have to handle the discipline, the strategy and all that. I’m a lot different . . .

“It’s funny, now I feel like I have 100% more respect for him than he does for me. I guess he forgot about all the summer-league seasons I spent with the team, how I was the on-campus coach . . .”

The two remain on sociable terms. Each Friday, McNulty and Davis join Taft Coach Jim Woodard and Kennedy Coach Yutaka Shimizu at a local restaurant to rehash the week’s games and shoot the breeze. “That’s our fun night, we stay up until one in the morning or so,” McNulty said. “It’s fun to get into their heads.”

Where do they stand? McNulty sounds like a father whose son just scratched the family car--and blamed it on the other driver.

“I can’t say he’s like a son, because we’re so different in our approaches,” McNulty said. “Maybe it’s just our personalities, I don’t know. We’re still friends.”