Charles “Lefty” Driesell was a larger-than-life figure, and so his passing should be large as well — perhaps more than just one column of tribute to the Hall of Fame coach who turned Maryland basketball into a Broadway show and college basketball into a passion in the Washington region.
Among the many gifts this job has given me, one of them was spending hours with Lefty listening to his stories for a project that never came to fruition. Though we didn’t see it through, I never regretted the effort we put in — I was grateful for the time and insight Lefty shared.
There were too many good stories not to share a few more snapshots of Lefty’s life in basketball — in particular, the former Maryland Terrapins coach’s interactions with and thoughts on some of the game’s legendary figures.
Pete Maravich: “In my camp, I used to hire real good college players to be counselors. I had Rudy Tomjanovich, Dave Cowens, Charlie Scott and Pete Maravich. Pete was great. He would say, ‘Coach, I’m going to be a millionaire. I’m going to be a millionaire.’ There were no millionaire players in the NBA at that time. I said, ‘Pete, Oscar Robertson is the greatest player who ever played, and he used the two-handed bounce pass, the chest pass … why do you have to do all these between the legs, behind your back?’ He said, ‘Oscar Robertson never made a million dollars playing basketball. I’m going to do that.’ Every time I would see him in camp he would pat himself on the chest and say, ‘Coach, I’m going to be a millionaire. ‘And he was, because of all that fancy stuff.
“I paid Pete double or triple what I paid everybody else. This was when he was at LSU. Sometimes I would get a call and he would say, ‘Coach, I’m in Atlanta, I’m dead broke. No money for gas. I can’t make it.’ I would say, ‘Pete, you signed a contract — I used to make them sign a contract — and he would say, ‘I ain’t got any money. Can’t you wire me $100 or something?’ So I would wire him $100, and he would get to someplace else, like Greensboro or someplace, and he would call again and say, ‘Coach I spent that $100. I had to eat, spent the night in a motel. I ain’t got any more money. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’m stuck. Can you send me another $100?’ And I would send him another $100. So in all, I was paying him about $500, but he was worth it. I should have paid him $5,000. He was a great counselor. Half the campers came to watch him. He had some great scrimmages, he and Charlie Scott playing together.
“He may have been too thin as a pro. When he came up to the pros, people started roughing him up, so he took karate lessons. He got a black belt. These guys would push him then and he would say, I’m telling you, I’m going to break your hand.’ The word got out that he had a black belt. ‘Put your hand on me and I’ll break your wrist,’ he would tell them. So they laid off him a little bit, but he had to do that because people were putting hands on him and stuff.”
Bill Walton: “Walton and Tom McMillen were seniors in high school at the same time. Tom was supposed to be the most highly sought-after player in the country, and Walton was right behind him. We played him in that opening game, the year that N.C. State beat them for the national championship. We opened the season against them. I always played a great schedule. In my last few years at Maryland, we played the toughest schedule in the country. They said you come out and open with us, and then we’ll come back and play you there next year.
“That year the Bullets were practicing in Cole Field House because at the time they were building the Capital Centre. We would practice from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and then they would practice from 5 to 7 or whatever. I knew (Len) Elmore was going to guard Walton, so I got (Wes) Unseld to work with Elmore on guarding Walton. Wes told him, ‘The way I stop (Kareem Abdul) Jabbar is when he gets ready to hit a jump shot, I step on his foot. He can’t go up.’ So he was teaching Elmore how to step on Walton’s foot so he couldn’t go up. Lenny did a great job on Walton.”
Adrian Dantley: “I recruited Adrian Dantley hard. If I got him, I think we could have beaten North Carolina State. We almost beat them anyway. I kept telling Adrian you are the only guy that I have seen who could guard David Thompson. I knew the mother and the aunt. I stayed over there. But he ended up going to Notre Dame. He was mean and tough. He wasn’t but 6-foot-5. You couldn’t stop him unless you fouled him. I had him in my camp. When he got the ball inside, he wasn’t trying to make a shot. He said, ‘My goal is to draw a foul. I’m going to get the guy to foul me.’”
David Thompson: “A great player. I heard about him in high school in Shelby, N.C. I said ’George (Raveling, one of Lefty’s assistant coaches), go down and see this kid play.’ He came back and said, ‘He can’t play. He’s all right. If he was playing up here in D.C., with all these African-American kids, he would be just another player. We wouldn’t even know his name.’ So we didn’t recruit him because George said he was just another player. He still says, ‘I made a mistake.’ It was a big mistake.
“David Thompson is the only guy I’ve ever seen do this – we were playing them at Cole Field House, and he is the only guy I’ve ever seen jump up and hit his head on the back part of the rim and knocked him to the floor. I thought he killed himself. You couldn’t dunk, so they had alley-oops where he would drop it in.”
Thank you Lefty.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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