Al McGuire Remembered As A 'Character' By Players And Coaches
1/26/2001 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 26, 2001
By BERT ROSENTHAL
AP Sports Writer
Everyone who played for Al McGuire, it seems, has a favorite Al McGuire story.
Former players remembered the Hall of Fame coach, who died from a blood disorder Friday at 72, as a "character" who could be fun-loving and serious, with a burning desire to win.
And a man who would go to any lengths for a laugh.
"I was a freshman at Marquette and playing on the junior varsity," said Dean Meminger, who played on McGuire's 1970 NIT champion at Marquette. "Ray Meyer, who coached at DePaul, and Al were nemeses. They had a hot rivalry.
"Meyer made a statement that Pat Smith, one of our players, couldn't throw the ball into the ocean because he wore bifocals. Al took Smith down to the ocean and had a photographer take a picture of Smith throwing the ball into the ocean."
That was McGuire.
"Everybody liked him, everybody will miss him. He was a great guy, very serious about his basketball. He was a stickler about the game," said Butch Lee, a member of McGuire's 1977 NCAA title team.
And McGuire wasn't afraid to tell a player what he wanted to hear, either.
"When he was recruiting me (out of DeWitt Clinton High School in New York), he didn't know how good I was," Lee said in a telephone interview from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he is in the sign business. "He had never seen me play, but he said that 'whoever is the best in New York is the best in the country.'
"Whoever he spoke with was always 'the best."'
Just like when Lee called recently to find out about McGuire's health.
"He told me Bob Costas had just called from the Olympics in Australia, but he said my call was the best," said Lee, the MVP of the 1977 NCAA championship team and player of the year in 1978.
Bo Ellis, who played for McGuire from 1973-77 and now coaches at Chicago State, called McGuire "a caring man, a giving man, and a major influence in my life. He was an inspiration to me."
He was "very influential, a disciplinarian, a motivator, a father figure, a teacher and a fighter," Ellis added. "A lot of his qualities filtered into his type of players."
Meminger, who now works with youngsters in New York, called McGuire the consummate individual.
"He was Al the teacher, Al the mentor, Al the coach - and you had to do things his way," Meminger said.
"One day he decided we were going to run sprints up and down the court. This was after we had won about 35 in a row. I decided I had had enough. I said that was punishment, he was being militaristic.
"So I went down to the training room and put some ice on my leg like I was hurting. The guys then came down and said if I don't come back, practice is over. So practice was over. The next day, I was putting ice on my leg again while the team was upstairs. Again, he sent the guys down and said if I don't run sprints, practice can't start. I was the captain. I ran the sprints, and he said practice could start."
Added Lee, "He was a character. Everybody liked him. Everybody will miss him."
