COLLEGE BASKETBALL 1991-92 : Two Old Warriors : For Majerus and McGuire, the Admiration Was One-Sided at the Beginning, but It’s Mutual Now

One afternoon in the fall of 1968, Marquette Coach Al McGuire summoned a short, slightly chubby no-name walk-on to his side during a Warrior practice, grabbed him gently by the nape of his meaty neck and said: “You’re one of the crappiest players I’ve ever had on one of my teams and you should think about quitting.”

The walk-on finished the workout, quietly gathered his belongings and then went outside the gymnasium, where he choked back tears. To this day, Rick Majerus thought the coach he idolized was going to offer him a scholarship, not end a fairy tale.

One night in the spring of 1991, Utah Coach Rick Majerus stood courtside at the Kingdome in Seattle and tried to squeeze yet another victory out of his Runnin’ Utes. The opponent was No. 1-ranked UNLV. The winner would advance to the NCAA tournament regional final.

Utah, outmanned but not out-coached, lost, 83-66.

Back home in Brookfield, McGuire didn’t watch more than two minutes, if that, of the game. He didn’t care about watching basketball. Truth is, despite having won a national championship in 1977 and then walking away from the profession with a 295-80 record, he never has.

But McGuire recognizes talent. That, making money and approaching life from his quirky angles, are several of his special gifts. Of Majerus, the man he cut in 1968 and hired in 1971, McGuire says: “I truly believe he is the greatest mind in the world of basketball. If any coach is poised for the ‘90s, it’s Rick.”

Majerus, who was named 1990 coach of the year by United Press International, Basketball Times and the Western Athletic Conference, is uncomfortable with such praise.

Of the man who taught him much of what he knows about the game, Majerus says: “I owe Al a great debt. I would hope that I would mean 1/10th to my team as much as Al was to our team.”

One day in the fall of 1967, Majerus discovered that he had been selected to join the Marquette freshman basketball team. Hank Raymonds, an assistant to McGuire, was the coach.

Majerus was the 10th man on a 10-player freshman squad that was used as practice fodder for the varsity. Majerus didn’t mind. He loved basketball. He loved the strategy, the competition, the drills, the beauty of a pick-and-roll play.

Majerus hustled. It is what he did best. He listened, too, spellbound by almost every word uttered by the charismatic McGuire, who would dispense street logic at every opportunity.

“The most thing expensive thing is cheap labor,” he would say.

Or, “It’s only important to win in war and surgery.”

Or, “Behind every bum on every street corner in America is a woman.”

Or, “The nice thing about coaching is that one day you feel like you can play handball against a curb and on other days you feel like you can fly to the moon.”

Even then, Majerus knew McGuire was different, unconventional. McGuire couldn’t have cared less about material things. He drove a Ford Falcon--no radio. He lectured his team about the joys of life. He took his team to plays. He encouraged them to be like their coach, cocky and arrogant.

“I wasn’t different,” McGuire says now, “I was ahead of my time. I still am.”

When McGuire cut Majerus from the team a year later, Majerus cried because he knew it would be the last time he would play on that level. He cried because he thought he would no longer hear McGuire’s strange wisdom.

McGuire wasn’t quite as emotional.

“If there would have been 20 men on the team, he would have been the 20th,” he says. “I don’t know where he came from. All of a sudden he was there.”

One day in 1972, Majerus became a full-time Marquette assistant. He earned $5,000, but he probably would have worked for nothing.

Majerus didn’t mind working hard. In summers past, he had labored on the loading docks of Milwaukee’s Pabst brewery for 12 hours a shift, or at the Hotpoint dishwasher plant. His father, head of the powerful United Auto Workers union, had arranged the jobs.

Majerus’ father wanted Rick to go to law school. So he did. Briefly.

But part of the problem with fulfilling other people’s dreams is that often you don’t fulfill your own. Majerus’ father, though a Milwaukee community leader, had never finished high school. He wanted his son to have an easier life, which was why he stressed the importance of education.

Majerus listened, up to a point. Then, his mind set, he happily became a coach. He worked first as an assistant at Marquette High, where McGuire’s son, Allie, was the star, then moved on to the university. But he didn’t forget those summers on the loading dock. Even today he carries in his wallet a union card from Brewery Workers Local No. 9.

The Marquette coaching staff was interesting enough. There was the new-age McGuire. There was the ultra-conservative Raymonds. And then there was Majerus, who surprised his head coach with his earnestness.

“I didn’t know anyone who could take anything that serious,” McGuire says. “To me, roundball is a moment, a nice moment, but just a moment.”

This was some group, McGuire, Raymonds and the young Majerus, especially in social situations.

“He’d take me out with him once in a while,” Majerus says. “Al was a cool guy, which is the last thing people would say about me. I mean, Hank dressed like Ward Cleaver. Al dressed like the movie stars of the day. I dressed like a hick.”

One afternoon in the winter of 1976, Majerus realized that McGuire’s days as a coach were numbered.

The Warriors were ranked No. 2 at the time and were scheduled to play Bobby Knight’s powerful No. 1-ranked Indiana team in the NCAA Mideast Regional at Baton Rouge, La. As usual, McGuire was nowhere to be found as tipoff approached. It was his custom not to walk onto the court until the last possible minute.

Shortly before the game began, Majerus hurried to a nearby lavatory. There he found McGuire. McGuire was shaking. Majerus turned away.

“He had reached the point where it wasn’t fun anymore,” Majerus says.

The next year, after Marquette beat North Carolina in the NCAA championship game, McGuire kept his word. He quit, as he had said early in the season that he would. He had had enough.

“I don’t fool with things that have stopped quivering,” he says.

Translation: The excitement was gone.

Since then, McGuire has given away the championship watch presented to him for winning the NCAA title. In fact, he has given away every basketball-related watch, all 200 or so, ever given to him. His fondest memories of the game have little to do with the games themselves.

“The best thing to happen to me is that it allowed me to be called, ‘Coach,’ ” he says. “That’s something non-negotiable. It makes me feel so good.”

In the spring of 1983, Majerus became the head coach at Marquette, succeeding Raymonds.

McGuire thought it was a mistake.

Then, after leading Marquette to three consecutive NIT appearances--the NIT was not the tournament Marquette fans had come to expect--Majerus spent a year on Don Nelson’s staff with the Milwaukee Bucks. That done, he accepted a head coaching offer at Ball State.

McGuire thought it was a mistake. “Tap city . . . suicidal . . . kamikaze,” he told Majerus.

Two seasons later, after taking the Cardinals to the NCAA tournament, Majerus took the Utah job.

McGuire thought it was a mistake. When it came to competing against the state’s best players, Majerus would never have a shot against nearby Brigham Young, McGuire said.

Now?

“I was wrong,” McGuire says.

McGuire had underestimated his one-time pupil. He apparently had not noticed that Majerus had grown as a coach, combining the very best of McGuire the motivator, of Raymonds the organizer, of Knight the teacher, of Nelson the strategist and of his father, the inspiration.

He also apparently had not noticed that Majerus and McGuire shared many similarities.

McGuire liked simple pleasures: a sad country song on a jukebox, the look on a friend’s face when McGuire gave him a gift, the search for toy soldiers at rummage sales and antique shops, the love of his wife Pat, to whom he has been married for 40 years.

Majerus couldn’t or wouldn’t wear a suit unless under court order. He felt more comfortable sitting at a downtown Milwaukee hamburger joint than he did dining at a five-star restaurant. He read Atlantic magazine instead of any basketball publications. He played in pick-up games and always carried a basketball in the back seat of his car. Still does.

There was more. McGuire was generally adored by the media and the students. The same goes for Majerus at Utah.

McGuire could recruit. So can Majerus, whose disarming appearance (he is balding, overweight, and wears bad sweaters) and demeanor (Midwest accent, blue-collar style, his humanness) separate him from the wanna-be Pat Riley look-alikes who do their shopping at Brooks Brothers or Armani, carry cellular phones and stretch briefcases.

McGuire could wax poetic about social issues. So can Majerus, who lists his heroes as his father, Hubert Humphrey, Ralph Nader, Mother Teresa and Jimmy Carter.

McGuire could persuade his players to consider life’s other possibilities. So can Majerus, who constantly stresses the importance of education, who has instituted a reading program for area seventh- and eighth-graders, who, on a trip to Milwaukee last season, took his team to the loading dock he had worked on at the brewery.

“And the guys (on the dock) were still talking the same trash: women, fishing trips, whatever,” he says.

One day in the fall of 1990, Majerus began to feel ill. An examination revealed heart trouble. Septuplet coronary bypass surgery would have to be performed. Immediately.

Majerus was understandably scared. He arranged for a priest to hear his confession. He told his lawyer to make sure the will was in order. He spoke with Indiana’s Knight, a good friend, and asked if the Hoosier coach could arrange a telephone call between Majerus and Bo Schembechler, the former Michigan football coach who had undergone a coronary bypass operation.

Majerus wanted reassurance.

Schembechler called and spoke with Majerus for about a half hour. He told him that the recovery period would be painful, that it would require hard work.

“But you’ll be better,” Schembechler said. “You’ll be OK.”

Of course, McGuire never called. He didn’t see the point.

If Majerus made it, as McGuire hoped he would, then fine. If Majerus died, then so be it. But if Majerus did die, McGuire wouldn’t be at the funeral.

“I don’t go to funerals because I bought you a drink while you were alive,” he says. “Anyway, the crowd at a funeral is governed by the weather.”

That is how McGuire thinks. When the legendary Coach Adolph Rupp of Kentucky died, McGuire was a funeral no-show.

“I (once) bought him a bottle of bourbon that he liked,” McGuire recalls.

The point is: Why celebrate death? Instead, celebrate life.

One night in the winter of 1990, Majerus exchanged greetings with longtime Texas El Paso Coach Don Haskins shortly before a game at Utah.

“Boy,” said Haskins, who was struggling through his 30th season at the school. “Do you know why I coach?”

“Because you love it,” Majerus said.

“Boy, I coach because I don’t have any money,” he said. “You take care of yourself.”

And then Haskins walked away.

One day in the summer of 1991, McGuire got a postcard from Majerus. It seems Majerus was in Paris and had visited a section of the city called “Little Tunisia.” He had gone there, alone, to buy a rug for his girlfriend. It was something he would never would have done in his pre-McGuire days.

McGuire tossed the postcard. He says he knows better. He says that Majerus, despite his attempts to do what McGuire did and still does--live life on his own terms--will never be free of basketball.

“He has other interests, but they’re only make-believe, in my opinion,” McGuire says. “Rick, in his philosophical moments, will say he’ll never coach past 55. But the only way Rick will leave coaching--and he never should--will be in a box. I hope that’s when he’s in his 80s.”

McGuire may have a point. Consider:

--That Majerus can stay up talking basketball until the wee hours and then, after only a few hours of sleep, pop up and start watching film of a Utah practice.

--That Majerus and a few close buddies go on sort of a basketball retreat each year and discuss the sport all day.

--That Majerus’ two dreams involve having enough money to play in a pro basketball fantasy camp coached by his playing idol, former Chicago Bull star Jerry Sloan, or become a bench warmer for the Utah Jazz.

--Consider that when the Runnin’ Utes, many of whom are injured right now, recently lost an exhibition game, Majerus paced his room for hours.

“It tears you up,” he says.

McGuire shakes his head when informed of Majerus’ actions. He can’t relate.

“You know what the problem is?” McGuire says. “I’m probably jealous of them. I’m jealous that they love (basketball) that much.”

One morning in the fall of 1987, McGuire, who was to speak in Scottsdale, Ariz., called former Marquette star Maurice Lucas, who was then playing for the Phoenix Suns.

“Maurice, let’s have a cup of coffee,” McGuire said.

“Why?” a suspicious Lucas said. “It must mean you want something.”

Another time, while working in his Brookfield office, McGuire got a collect phone call from a former player, Dean Meminger.

“Why are you calling me collect?” McGuire asked.

“Because that’s what you taught us,” Meminger said.

“OK.”

In the last couple of years McGuire has tried to reacquaint himself with his former players. He should take a lesson from Majerus.

When Utah players and coaches accepted their WAC championship rings, Ralph McKinney, a walk-on guard who went to school on the GI Bill, approached Majerus.

“Coach, I’ll never forget this,” McKinney said.

And then he asked Majerus to autograph a photo.

“You don’t get those kind of thrills as an accountant,” Majerus says.

One afternoon in the fall of 1991, McGuire drove his Buick Century to a Waukesha, Wis., antique and doll shop. When he parked the car, he simply threw the keys on the floor mats.

“Someone steals this car and they get the black plague,” he said.

On the wall of the tiny store was an 8 x 10 NBC publicity still of McGuire, the dapper-looking basketball television commentator.

But on that day, McGuire didn’t look quite so urbane. His hair wasn’t combed--”I only comb my hair if there are four people in the room and if there are four people, I’m getting paid,” he says--and he was limping slightly, thanks to a recent hernia operation.

McGuire is 62 and in the final year of his NBC contract. He averages about a speaking engagement per week, but could quit altogether and never worry about being poor. He does what he does because he wants to. Few are so lucky.

In fact, there are times he accepts corporate speaking appointments for the sights instead of the cash. He traveled to Northern California once so he could see a spotted owl. He traveled to tiny Williston, N.D., to say he was there.

Nor is it unusual for McGuire, the minute his gig is finished, to change into “soft clothes,” as he calls them, find out where the nearest bus depot is and then go drinking at the bar closest to the depot.

“Good jukeboxes and sad, nostalgic country songs,” he says.

One November morning in the fall of 1991, Majerus sat in the hot tub of a Salt Lake City hotel--he lives at the hotel--and tried to recover from having run a marathon in San Antonio a day earlier. He had done it on a dare and by finishing, albeit in 5 hours 55 minutes--last among 837 runners--Majerus, less than two years removed from major heart surgery, earned a little medal and raised about $39,000 for assorted charities, including a cardiac center in Indiana.

There’s a reason for that: Majerus’ father died of a heart attack four years ago. He was 63.

“Me running a marathon is like Orson Welles doing the pole vault,” Majerus says.

Now Majerus turns his attention to his basketball team, where injuries have dampened his expectations. The Utes will be good, he says, but not great. A repeat of last season’s 30-4 record would take a minor miracle.

Majerus, 43, can live with it. He can live with anything these days, even the hated losses. The heart surgery taught him that much.

“How many people are happy?” he says. “I am truly happy in life.”

And then he talks of his plans for next summer.

“I’m going to ask Al to go to Europe with me,” he says. “We’re a generation apart--he could be my dad--but I’m going to ask.”

One cold afternoon in November, McGuire considers his relationship with the kid who idolized him.

McGuire has never felt it necessary to prove his love to anyone. For those closest to him, it is a given. But in a slight change of policy, McGuire makes a concession.

“When the Final Four comes--which it will in his life--(I’ll) be there,” he says.

And he will, too. He will do it for himself and for the sophomore who cried outside the gym one afternoon in the fall of 1968.