From the S&S archives: Outspoken McGuire puts emphasis on winning

WIESBADEN — Al McGuire is wholly in a class by himself and he knows it.

Not only is he a paradox, an enigma, but he is eccentric, overbearing, ebullient and the most interesting, outspoken basketball coach in the land.

Kentucky's bluegrass baron, Adolph Rupp, despises McGuire and avoids him like the bubonic plague in public and his team on the court.

McGuire is not in the basketball business to make friends or be a Joe Good-Guy. His aim is to win games any way he can as long as he is within the rules.

In Al McGuire's own eyes, he is a con man's con man.

In a 13-minute interview McGuire, one of the headliners at the USAFE Basketball Clinic, hit quickly at subjects like: the pros raiding the colleges, U.S. downfall in international competition, the softness of the NCAA and AAU, his handling of the blacks on his team, etc.

The full-cropped, wavy, black-haired Marquette coach is a New Yorker. And it is a known fact that there is a strong difference between a Yankee and a New Yorker (someone from New York City).

Listen to McGuire for a few minutes and you learn he must have come up the hard way through the pits and the ghettos.

It has been said that the handsome McGuire is favorite copy for newspapermen because he has an answer for every question asked. He dodges nothing with a "no comment."

He admits he has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde complex, a split personality.

"Off the court I am quiet, I have a wonderful family and I am a good father," says McGuire. "And we never talk basketball."

"When I go on the court something within me snaps. I turn into a dictator. I become surly, arrogant and obnoxious. Once I lose this then I will quit coaching."

McGuire calls his affiliation with Marquette a "love affair." He lists his three loyalties: 1. to his family; 2. to his players; 3. to his school.

"The reason I list the school third is that it will be there when I am long gone.

"The players are the ones that make me a big shot, paved my driveway and pay my insurance premiums," McGuire added.

"I tell them that basketball is a means to an end but not an end in itself. They get their degrees and I get my increases in salary."

Half of the Marquette team is black but McGuire claims he "doesn't run a plantation."

"I treat every player fair and equal. I try to understand all my players.

"I generally believe the blacks have a culture and I believe they have been exploited. But I tell them if my grandfather did something to your grandfather, what am I supposed to do, pay you back? My grandfather did it, not me. If I thought I owe something I should owe it to your grandfather, but he's dead."

"My team does not isolate," McGuire insists, "because we talk things out."

McGuire was asked if he tries to solve the problems of his players. "It has to be a heavy problem before I take it — a $200 problem. I tell them if they have a $2 or $3 problem to go find a faculty member."

"I allow my players individual identity. We don't try to con one another. We don't worry about hair or being black, white or checkboard or any of that stuff."

Though he was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1951 from St. John's, McGuire delves in psychology and philosophy. He uses both on his players, officials or anybody.

"I tell my players never to steal a towel out of a hotel. If you are going to steal something, steal the TV." McGuire's philosophy is "show some class if you are going to do something."

And that is what the Warriors have done in the past five years under McGuire's guidance, winning 21, 23, 24, 26 and 28 games, respectively. They finished second in both the AP and UPI ratings last season and the year before won the National Invitation Tournament.

McGuire admits he tries to get "the edge on the referee. If I can shake up the referee I am going to shake him. And I use the crowd on the subconscious of the official.

"As a coach I shouldn't be a spectator but I am," says McGuire. "I go like an animal when I am in the pits (on the bench). I don't prefer to be like that but I am.

"I am not the type of coach to go out and say the Hail Mary and sit down. I am not a character-building coach. The only thing on my mind is to win."

McGuire assails the pros, both the NBA and ABA, for recruiting college players before they graduate.

"It is unwise for the colleges to recruit the 'super star' because he will sign before his eligibility is completed, leaving the team with no continuity.

"These signings of collegians as 'hardship cases' by the NBA is hurting collegiate basketball," McGuire insists. "The pros are foolishly destroying their own farm system, the colleges. If they keep it up they end up being like baseball, spending millions of dollars to build up the farm system again."

McGuire feels that the day is coming when the courts are going to intervene, take away the anti-trust laws and declare basketball a business. "Once that becomes tested in the courts" says McGuire, "then you are going to have complete chaos in basketball."

McGuire thinks that if the courts put the hammer to basketball, then baseball, football, hockey and others will lose their freedom from the antitrust laws.

McGuire's own 6-foot-11 junior center, Jim Chones, was hounded by one NBA team, McGuire wouldn't name it, during the Pan-Am Games.

"They came after him at three different locations and asked him to send in a hardship letter to the NBA so he could be signed."

"He wouldn't do it because he wants to stay with me one more year," says McGuire. "I don't think he will stick his senior year because the money is too big. I guess I can't blame him because if it was me I would probably take the money and run. I can't advise him, it's up to him."

"Look what the pros did to Villanova," he chortled. "Everybody's hands were tied at Villanova. The NCAA had no choice but to do what it did. But the $72,000 it got back from Villanova should have been put in the hospitalization-plan for the coaches' fund."

"I personally believe that in the last three years 100 or more blue-chip players were pre-signed and many of them played in the NCAA playoffs. Villanova took the rap for something the pros did, enticing the player (Howard Porter) to sign.

"I have seen kids finish their careers one night and sign a $1 million contract the next day. Don't tell me there wasn't a lot of negotiation going on long before the signing."

McGuire believes the other basketball nations are catching up to the U.S. He cites Cuba's title in the Pan-Am Games.

"The softening in attitude of our athletes today is one cause for some of our basketball decline in international competition. Of course, not the best players represent our country because the pros are signing them. We stand a good chance of getting beat in next year's Olympics."

Will the colleges and amateur teams in the U.S. ever begin using the international rules for good? "Knowing human beings, it will never happen," said McGuire.

He was talking about the NCAA and AAU. "There are too many knights in shining armor, each with an ivory tower, each trying to protect his own world."

And speaking of worlds, the one of Al McGuire continues to revolve crazily and at a rapid pace. There is no way it will ever be destroyed unless Al McGuire destroys it himself.