Synchronized Sneakers : Mike May’s Madison Avenue Approach to Coaching Takes Conservative Hart High Basketball Team to 18-1

They show for work in coat, tie and leather dress shoes, carrying notebooks filled with biweekly reports.

They meet in close quarters two, sometimes three times a week to review their performance and plan for the next day’s work.

Product refinement is always first and foremost on the agenda--as one might expect from a small firm in a highly competitive business environment.

Its approach is conservative, formulaic, diligent.

The more one learns about the Hart High boys’ basketball players, the more one wonders why they don’t have monogrammed briefcases and initialed cuff links.

But the answer comes fast and clear. The leader of this methodical, successful group--Mike May--doesn’t himself sport any of the Madison Avenue accouterments.

If there ever was a coach’s team, Hart is it.

Hart is Mike May personified. Not Mike May the player, who led El Camino Real High in the mid-1970s with flash, flair and a splash of mustard, but Mike May the coach, who professes teamwork, toil and triumph with a minimum of luster.

His senior year at El Camino Real, May was a fast-breaking, fancy-passing guard who averaged 20 points a game and had a shooting range well past today’s three-point stripe.

His coaching scheme preaches blue-collar defense and a patient, orderly, sometimes tedious offensive attack.

It is a bore to watch, but the results are exciting for Hart, The Times’ No. 1-ranked team in the region.

The Indians are 18-1 this season and 36-9 since May’s arrival a season ago. The players like May and they are sold on his charcoal-gray playbook.

But those same players are confounded when they see their coach--who once played for Brigham Young--hot-dog it in his church league. The 6-foot-1 father of four (whose wife, Cindy, will give birth to a fifth this week) runs and guns, makes no-look passes and can slam-dunk.

“He just dominates,” senior guard Brian Ballew said.

Said Craig Panama, who referees both May’s high school and recreation league games: “When you’re the coach and you’re better than your players--that’s saying something.”

May, 37, explains his dual personality.

“Rec league’s for fun,” said May, who coached at Colton High for five seasons before moving to Hart. “We’re out there for a good time. Basketball’s a form of expression. When you’re done playing seriously--collegiately or professionally--you can let loose. That’s kinda the way I take it.

“With the (Hart players), it’s a little more on the serious level. We’re representing the school. It’s a teaching-learning process.

“Kids naturally want to run. They don’t naturally want to run a patterned offense and be disciplined. I think if we put our emphasis on (the half-court game) first, then I think we can reach our potential as a team.”

Hart players--most of them seniors who grew up watching former Coach Greg Herrick’s teams streak from basket to basket while Herrick danced in front of the bench--say they like May’s arms-crossed, close-mouthed, de-individualized philosophy.

No coast-to-coast outlet passes, no vertical dashes, no one-on-three spin moves, no thunder dunks. No showtime.

It’s man-to-man, arms-in-the-air defense. It’s wide-open jump shots only or back-door layups on offense. It’s bring it up slowly and pass, pass, pass until the opponent passes out.

“Sometimes we’re running motion for maybe a minute or so, then we get the layup and it demoralizes the defense,” Ballew said.

“Often we look for a guy to overplay his man and anticipate a pass. That’s when we get the back-door layup.”

Said senior center Cody Patterson, who played for Herrick as a sophomore: “Maybe at first (May’s) style seemed too disciplined. But once we got into the motion and got the hang of it, we realized that was best for us.”

Last season, Hart was 3-5 and struggling under May. But then the team concept clicked and the Indians finished 18-8, winning the Foothill League title for the third consecutive season.

May’s 36-9 start at Hart has prompted other coaches, such as Burbank’s Jeff Davis, to call him for advice.

Davis, who played at El Camino Real after May, credits May for helping him secure a scholarship to East Texas State with hours of schoolyard tutoring when both were teen-agers.

“He showed me little things like release point and how to warm up,” Davis said. “We’d be out there at 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night playing under a fog light.

“He’s a great coach. I called Mike when we went 1-4 and he said, ‘Make sure your players are playing to their strengths.’ I started looking at that more and more. Then we won three in a row. Instead of looking at the whole, he told me to look at the parts.

“His approach is very interesting. It’s very practical, very rational.”

May is like the president of a successful business who has found a formula that produces positive results.

In fact, you could say the Indians are run by the accounting firm of May, Spindt, McDonald & Angel.

Team statistician Genna McDonald and assistant Rick Angel compile statistics in 18 categories each game. They often monitor the numbers at halftime and tell the coaches if the team is on target for goals.

One Hart goal, for instance, is to shoot at least 50% from the field each game.

Hart also wants to shoot 75% from the free-throw line, attempt at least 25 free throws, turn the ball over 10 times or less, get at least 20 assists and shoot inside the key at least 20 times.

Defensively, the Indians’ most important goal is to contest at least 80% of the opponents’ shots with a hand in the face.

“We figure a good high school shooter will probably shoot around 50% from the field,” May said. “But when there’s a hand in his face and he’s contested, his shooting percentage will probably drop 15 to 20 points--just with a hand in his face.”

The statistics for each game are turned over to the chief accountants--May and assistant Gary Spindt, whose specialty is defense--and the numbers are tabulated on a sheet of paper titled “Varsity Game Goals.”

The next day, Hart players file into a classroom to review the previous night’s game. They study game films of themselves and their upcoming opponents. They go over scouting reports. They file the photocopied reports into their individual notebooks--which they carry in their backpacks--then head to the gym for practice.

“We are like a business,” Patterson said. “(Basketball) is a competitive business as much as it is a sport. There’s no way any teams could have more meetings than us.”

Said Ballew: “When we get on the court, we’re not just a bunch of guys out there running around on the floor. We know exactly what to do.”

And the system works. They held high-scoring rival and 10th-ranked Canyon to 16% shooting and only one basket in the final 21 minutes of a recent game.

Not only have the players embraced the system, they seem to have embraced May.

Four of the five starters sport clean-cut Mike May haircuts. They arrive wearing white button-down dress shirts. Eric Spindt, the team’s Bobby Hurley look-alike point guard, and his father-coach wear suspenders.

Madison Avenue comes to Newhall? It’s all part of the serious approach May puts in his package.

*

Brief stints at Cal State Bakersfield and Pierce College followed May’s high school career, then he headed to Brigham Young for his final two seasons of college ball. And instead of being a scoring leader, May led the Cougars in assists (he still holds the school record of 16 in one game) and steals.

“I was always serious about the game growing up,” May said. “I wasn’t a partyer. I was always taking care of myself. But when I joined the Mormon Church and took my mission to Bolivia, I learned to become more responsible, not only for basketball but my personal life.

“Serving the mission changed my life. You couldn’t play basketball on the mission but you learned a lot about yourself. I learned about being organized. I learned about the purpose behind things. And now basketball has become a means for teaching principles.”

If Mike May has one regret about basketball, it is that he never had a chance to play in the NBA. That possibility was thwarted, in part, by then-BYU Coach Frank Arnold, who replaced May at point guard with Danny Ainge his senior season. Ainge, then a freshman, starred at BYU for four seasons and has played in the NBA since 1982.

“That wasn’t easy to come to grips with,” May said of Arnold’s switch. “The coach decided on a youth movement. Ainge was a good player and did some things. But when you’re a competitor, it doesn’t sit too well.

“I would have loved to play in the NBA, to play basketball as a profession. But you know what? The next best thing is to coach it.”