COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP GAME : With Due Respect, Richardson Gets It : Razorbacks: Coach decries the way program is perceived, but evidence of current slights is lacking.

There are better places to hold a Final Four news conference than the Kingdome Pavilion. Like, say, the runway at Sea-Tac International Airport. Planes roar overhead. Trains whistle and groan to a halt on the railroad tracks conveniently located outside. Occasionally, Dick Vitale wanders the hallways.

Fortunately for the NCAA this hour, the man behind the microphone was none other than Nolan (Foghorn) Richardson, who never met a locomotive he couldn’t drown out, or outdistance. Richardson is a long train running himself. You ask him the question and you get the hell out of the way. Nolan’s coming through--and pity the poor stenographer assigned to his 45 minutes with the media Sunday.

The theme?

Need you ask?

The initials Nolan Richardson would have monogrammed on the pocket of his dress shirt would be NR. No Respect. Even though he is coach of the defending national champion Arkansas Razorbacks, even though he goes for his second title in a row tonight against UCLA, even though Al McGuire has anointed him as exalted curator of “the program of the ‘90s,” Richardson believes he hasn’t received his due and won’t receive his due until he leaves Arkansas and goes “somewhere else and they have a few down years and every article (will) say, ‘When we had Nolan Richardson, he was the greatest basketball coach in the world.’ ”

Sunday’s variation on the theme revolved around the descriptive devices used for Richardson’s brand of basketball--”unorthodox,” “ragged,” “chaotic.”

Those words got Richardson’s motor running.

“When I was at Tulsa, I went to a program that didn’t win basketball games and the first year we went 26-7 in my first year as a major college coach. It was totally different than anything they’d ever seen. But the city embraced it. They never saw a winner, so they embraced it. It was an exciting brand of basketball, it was basketball at its best. . . . We went from averaging 2,000 fans to selling out every ballgame.

“And then I took over at Arkansas, and that’s when all the ‘raggedy’ started. You see, because I was following a ghost or a legend (Eddie Sutton) who walked the ball down and was successful. And here comes this black man who’s playing ‘playground basketball.’ That’s what it was called. ‘Playground basketball’ or . . . ‘ratball’ or ‘dogball.’ That’s what happened. It was because they didn’t understand what I was trying to accomplish with the style that I had already played with and been successful with. I understood that. And it took time to put it in place. And it took time to bury the ghost.

“Now I can leave tomorrow and you can bring back a person that will walk it down. They’ll hang him in effigy and run him out of town. Because you have to get out the old die-hard ‘walk-it-down’ (fans) and bring in young ones. I pass them now and they say, ‘Let it fly, baby.’ It’s an entertaining sport.”

Richardson said he used to walk it down, too, back when he was an impressionable high school coach and quicksand basketball was considered cerebral.

“I had games that were 5-6 at halftime, 9-12,” Richardson said. “Everybody said, ‘He’s going to be a great coach.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Look at the defense you guys play.’ Final score: 31-33. And I would say to myself, ‘I held the ball and they held the ball. How can you score points with both teams holding the ball?’ But they said, ‘My God, this guy is good--31-33.’

“Then, I finally got me some athletes, and I said, ‘To hell with this, we’re going to rip and run.’ We started winning games by 30 now.

“My old grandmother told me, ‘If you ever get an ant and he’s by you, get a sledgehammer and knock him out.’ That’s the same way in this game. If you’ve got a chance to put somebody away, it’s so beautiful.

“I look at that now and I can say, ‘Remember, I used to coach that way.’ Thank God the good Lord said, ‘Hey, you better move on to something else.’ And I’m glad I did. I’m glad I’m totally different.”

John Wooden--there’s someone who was different too, in Richardson’s estimation. Or, in Richardson’s pronunciation, “Coach Woo-ten.” Sunday, Richardson said he had great admiration for Coach Woo-ten.

“I don’t personally know Coach Wooden,” Richardson said. “But I copied a lot of things Coach Wooden did as a basketball coach. . . . You see, I always considered Coach Wooden a coach who got the maximum without strings attached to his players.

“One day, I was talking with (former Arkansas coach) Mr. (Henry) Iba and he said, ‘You know what? Johnny was smarter than we were.’ I said, ‘What do you mean by that, Coach?’ He says, ‘Johnny recruited. Johnny went out and recruited. We thought we could out X-and-O Johnny, but he went out and recruited and beat us up.’

“You see, I think it’s important when you know what you need to do, you don’t have to be like everyone. And (Wooden) was totally different during his era. He pressed. He fast-broke. One time I remember as high school coach a guy was criticizing because he had Lew Alcindor guarding the ball out of bounds. The coach said they’ve got that big 7-footer guarding the ball out of bounds. But that’s what these guys were taught. And I don’t think he ever did what everybody else was taught.

“And that’s why I thought, wow, this guy here solves problems, he puts people in the right places. Coaching is about solving problems. Coaching to me is about making kids make good decisions. And I think that’s what he taught.”

Richardson said he could sympathize with Jim Harrick, who “is in the shadow of the ghost of the greatest basketball coach that has ever lived. . . . I know that he would love to win the national championship and that is the only thing that would serve maybe the media, the fans, the alums.

“You know, it is a tremendous pressure when you are in the ghost of a legendary person such as Mr. John Wooden. No matter how many you win, you are never going to catch up with him. No one in the game is going to catch up to him.”

Not even Nolan Richardson, which is not entirely a bad thing.

We’d never hear the end of it.