by Glenn Stout
Driesell has made it to the final round of Naismith voting four times, most recently in 2016. As to why he has fallen short, or by how many votes he has missed, we are left to guess.
The Naismith process is secretive. Nominations go to screening committees that recommend names to an Honors Committee of 24, with 18 votes necessary for election. The electors are not named publicly; the idea is to prevent lobbying, but the effect is to sow suspicions of political machinations by people who cannot be held accountable.
Most guesses come down to two things. First, Lefty never made the Final Four. Second, he is stained by the fallout following Bias’s cocaine-intoxication death, 48 hours after he was selected by the Boston Celtics with the second pick in the ’86 NBA draft.
The first guess is simple fact. That argument is lame. Of the 63 NCAA Division I men’s coaches in the Hall, 23 never got to the Final Four.
The second guess is simply unfair. Driesell was Bias’s coach, not his 365/24/7 guardian.
A grand jury investigation into the Bias tragedy revealed campus-wide drug use virtually uncontrolled by school authorities. When the investigation moved into the basketball program, some of Driesell’s players were shown to be players first and students only when they felt like it. (As if all other athletes at all other institutions were models of academic perseverance.)
In the fall of 1985, Maryland had so admired Lefty’s long record of success and promise of more to come that it rewarded him with a 10-year contract. Then Bias died. The school chancellor, John Slaughter, kept his job despite the grand jury’s scathing report detailing the university’s failures. Meanwhile, the chancellor moved on Driesell. Rather than try to fire a coach to whom he had just given a new contract, Slaughter reassigned Driesell to athletic department duties. Lefty said he was paid in full for 10 years, even after he left College Park in 1988 to coach at James Madison University.
Bottom line: To blame Lefty for his players’ brain-fades makes no more sense than giving him credit for developing two Rhodes Scholars at Davidson and Maryland. The job of a big-time basketball coach is to win games. Otherwise, in its infinite complexity, the world spins beyond his reach.
One of Maryland’s most distinguished alums, a man who played for Driesell’s best teams, stands up for his coach. Tom McMillen was an All-America in the early 1970s who became a Rhodes Scholar, played 11 years in the NBA, was elected four times to the U.S. Congress, and served from 2007 to 2015 as a regent of the university.
“If they were looking for an excuse to remove Lefty,” McMillen said, “that was the Len Bias situation. I think it’s specious.”
McMillen means, to borrow an idea we heard from Krzyzewski, that Driesell was made a scapegoat for the mistakes of others.
Some famous coaches—John Wooden, Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Adolph Rupp—are in the Hall despite good reasons to raise an eyebrow. Wooden forever ignored a sugar-daddy booster buying recruits. Bogus classes helped North Carolina players stay eligible in Smith’s time. Knight was fired for belligerent boorishness. Rupp’s teams had two All-Americas taking gamblers’ money to fix games.
And how about today’s coaching stars? John Calipari is in after leaving two programs on NCAA probation. As with Smith, some of Roy Williams’s North Carolina players didn’t go to class because the class didn’t exist. Once upon a simpler time, it was the NCAA sniffing around Rick Pitino; now, it’s the FBI.
“There was never innuendo about Lefty doing anything wrong,” McMillen said.
Beyond those two guesses—missing the Final Four, the Bias fallout—there is a more complicated, nuanced explanation for Lefty’s failure to be elected. A perfect storm of forces has worked against him.
The Naismith has financial difficulties. To increase attendance at its site in Springfield, Massachusetts, it has leaned toward electing a diverse class of coaches—high school, women, NBA, international—along with active college coaches familiar to today’s television audiences.
One former Honors Committee member told me, “I’ve never heard anyone say the Bias death had anything to do with Lefty. He has fallen through the cracks, like a lot of older coaches.”
The Naismith is now debating whether a coach should be retired three years before becoming eligible for consideration. Nine still-active coaches have been elected since 2000.
“A rule like that would thin out the nominees,” the former elector said, “and that would help Lefty.”
Joyce Driesell had prepared an elegant breakfast. We sat in a small kitchen nook with a long, broad view of Chesapeake Bay. A stiff wind shoved whitecaps toward the beach. We had scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, jam, coffee. The silverware was shining, napkins folded perfectly, everything beautiful.
Big binoculars sat on a windowsill.
“We see everything out there,” Lefty said. Norfolk is home to a major U.S. Navy base. “Battleships, aircraft carriers, cruise ships.”
“Lefty uses the binoculars to watch girls in bikinis,” his bride said.
They have come a distance, Lefty and Joyce. Married as teenagers, they were “broke but didn’t know it,” to quote her. Together they figured out life. They moved from Durham and set out on a coaching journey that began in Norfolk and took them from Newport News to Davidson to Maryland to James Madison to Georgia State. Lefty won more than 100 games at all four of the D-I schools, and he’s still the only coach who has done that. Lefty brought home the money; Joyce raised the couple’s four children.
We finished breakfast. Lefty looked across the table. “You’re so pretty,” he told Joyce.
She turned to me. “He’s always saying that.”
“I’m always right,” he said.
Lefty called me the other day. He said the Naismith thing still bothers him.
“But y’know,” he said, “I woke up Thanksgiving morning and I told Joyce, ‘If I die tomorrow, I’ve had a wonderful life.’ I’ve got a beautiful wife, and we’ve had a bunch of kids and a bunch of grandkids. I loved coaching, and I won a lot of games and I was pretty good at it. I’m thankful for everything.”
I’m thinking the Naismith needs Lefty more than Lefty needs the Naismith, and I’m also thinking the old coach needs to find that justice of the peace and add a few bucks to the $2 he paid 66 years ago.
Contributors’ Notes
LARS ANDERSON is the New York Times best-selling author of nine books, including, most recently, The Truth About Aaron. He is currently a contributing writer at The Athletic, after three years as a senior writer at Bleacher Report and 20 years at Sports Illustrated. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Anderson lives outside Birmingham, Alabama, where he has served as an instructor of journalism at the University of Alabama, with his wife and their three children.
KENT BABB is a sports features writer for the Washington Post, where he frequently writes about the intersection of sports and cultural, societal, and political issues. Not a Game, his 2015 biography of Basketball Hall of Fame member Allen Iverson, was a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and his work was previously included in the 2013 edition of The Best American Sports Writing. A proud graduate of the University of South Carolina, Babb lives in northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.
CHRIS BALLARD is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and the author of four books. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. “‘You Can’t Give In’: Monty Williams on Life After Tragedy” is his sixth story to be included in The Best American Sports Writing.
JANE BERNSTEIN is the author of five books, including the memoirs Bereft: A Sister’s Story and Rachel in the World. Her essays have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Broadly, and Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.
SAM BORDEN is a global sports contributor for ESPN. A graduate of Emory University, Borden began his career with the New York Daily News and later worked at the Florida Times-Union, the
Journal News, and the New York Times.
JOHN BRANCH has been a sports reporter for the New York Times since 2005. In 2013, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for his tale of a deadly avalanche, “Snow Fall,” and was a finalist the previous year for his story about the late NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard, who died of a painkiller overdose and was found to have CTE, the degenerative brain disease. He is the author of two books, including 2018’s The Last Cowboys, about a family of saddle-bronc rodeo champions. He lives near San Francisco.
TIM BROWN has covered baseball for more than 25 years, the past 10 for Yahoo Sports. He has coauthored two New York Times best-sellers—The Phenomenon, with Rick Ankiel, and Imperfect, with Jim Abbott. In 2016, he was awarded first place in beat writing by the Associated Press Sports Editors.
HOWARD BRYANT is the author of eight books, including The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron. He is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN: The Magazine and has served as the sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday since 2006. He was guest editor of The Best American Sports Writing 2017 and also appeared in the 2011 edition. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for commentary in 2016 and 2018 and earned the 2016 Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
REID FORGRAVE’s journalism career has led him from home and garden writer to national sportswriter, reporting on everything from presidential politics to a former NBA prospect in jail for attempted murder. He currently writes for CBSSports.com and freelances for publications such as GQ, the New York Times Magazine, and Mother Jones. He previously wrote for FOXSports.com, the Des Moines Register, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and their two sons.
STEVE FRIEDMAN is the author of four books, the coauthor of two, and a two-time National Magazine Award finalist for feature writing. He grew up in St. Louis, graduated from Stanford University, and lives in New York City. This is his 10th appearance in The Best American Sports Writing.
LEE JENKINS left the New York Times and joined Sports Illustrated and SI.com as a senior writer in September 2007. He had previously worked at the Orange County Register and the Colorado Springs Gazette. A San Diego native, Jenkins graduated in 1999 from Vanderbilt University, which he attended on the Grantland Rice–Fred Russell Thoroughbred Racing Association Sportswriting Scholarship.
SALLY JENKINS is a columnist for the Washington Post and the author of twelve books, four of which have been New York Times best-sellers. The most recent is Sum It Up, written with legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt. She is also the author of The Real All Americans, a historical account of how the Carlisle Indian School took on the Ivy League powers in college football at the turn of the century and won. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian, GQ, and Sports Illustrated. A native of Texas, she graduated from Stanford and lives in Sag Harbor, New York.
CHANTEL JENNINGS is a national college football writer for The Athletic. She previously worked for ESPN.com after graduating from the University of Michigan in 2011.
TOM JUNOD has twice been awarded the National Magazine Award and has been a finalist a total of ten times. Before joining ESPN as a senior writer, he wrote for Atlanta, Life, Sports Illustrated, GQ , and Esquire, where he spent eleven years as writer at large.
DAVE KINDRED is the 2018 winner of the PEN America / ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. He lives in Carlock, Illinois.
MICHAEL LANANNA is a national writer for Baseball America who specializes in features and long-form pieces. He has covered sports at every level, including a season reporting on the Los Angeles Dodgers for MLB.com and coverage of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball, football, and baseball. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism and resides in Durham, North Carolina.
JIM OWCZARSKI is a staff writer at the Cincinnati Enquirer, covering the Cincinnati Bengals. A graduate of North Central College with degrees in journalism and sociology, he is from Tinley Park, Illinois, and calls Milwaukee and Cincinnati home with his wife, Michelle Rutkowski.
DAVID ROTH is a cofounder of The Classical and an editor at Deadspin. He is from New Jersey and lives in New York.
STEVE RUSHIN of Sports Illustrated is the author of The Caddie Was a Reindeer, Pint Man, Road Swing, and The Baseball Grenade. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Magazine Writing collections, and he has contributed to Time magazine and the New York Times. He and his wife, Rebecca Lobo, have four children and live in Connecticut.
MIKE SIELSKI has been a sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com since 2013. The author of two books, he previously spent three years as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, and in 2015 the Associated Press Sports Editors voted him the top sports columnist in the country. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons. This is his second appearance in The Best American Sports Writing.
BRYAN SMITH is the senior writer at Chicago magazine and also a contributing editor for Men’s Health. The recipient of many writing honors, he has twice been named Writer of the Year by the City and Regional Magazine Association, an award for which he has been a finalist six times. His work has previously appeared in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Newspaper Writing.
TIM STRUBY is a longtime writer whose work has appeared in ESPN: The Magazine, Victory Journal, Playboy, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York City.
WRIGHT THOMPSON is a senior writer for ESPN: The Magazine.
TYLER TYNES is a staff writer for SB Nation, based in Washington, D.C. Previously, he worked for Huffington Post, The Press of Atlantic City, and the Philadelphia Daily News.
ELIZABETH WEIL is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and Outside, as well as coauthor of The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and their two daughters.
Notable Sports Writing of 2017
Selected by Glenn Stout
Bim Adewunmi
Maria Sharapova’s Rivalry with Serena Williams Is in Her Head. Buzzfeed, September 9
Lindsey Adler
Teen Girl Posed for 8 Years as Married Man to Write About Baseball and Harass Women. Deadspin, November 9
Elliott Almond
A Painful Journey. San Jose Mercury News, August 4
Sam Anderson
The Misunderstood Genius of Russell Westbrook. New York Times Magazine, February 1
Hunter Atkins
The Woman Who Sleeps Across from Minute Maid Park. Houston Chronicle, August 6
Peter Bailey-Wells
Why Is Former Illini Star Bill Burrell Not in the College Football Hall of Fame? Journal Star, May 11
Geoff Baker
A Seahawk’s Pain. The Seattle Times, April 9
Matt Baker
Future of Football. Tampa Bay Times, June 2
Joshua Baldwin
“I Read the New Ring Lardner and Here Is What I Thought,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 6
Rosecrans Baldwin
Will Roger Federer Ever Be Done? GQ, April
Zach Baron
Surfer John Florence’s Very Wavy World. GQ, June
Rachel Blount
Horse Breeding in Minnesota Is a High-Risk, High-Reward Business. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, August 14
Will Boast
A Kingdom for a Horse. Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer
John Branch
Deliverance from 27,000 Feet. New York Times, December 18
Yoni Brenner
Acceptable Forms of Protest for NFL Players. The New Yorker, November 6
Jamie Brisick
The Dazzling Blackness. Surfer’s Journal, vol. 26, no. 4
Rembert Bro
wne
Colin Kaepernick Has a Job. Bleacher Report, September 12
Frank Bures
The Mackinac Island Stone Skipping Competition. Minnesota Monthly, June
Jay Busbee
The RV Bandit Who Stole a Million Dollars, One Wallet at a Time. YahooSports, February 24
Maria Bustillos
Pipo, Pelota, and the Lessons of a Long Ago Life. ESPN.com, June 22
Brin-Jonathan Butler
The Ghost of Capablanca. Southwest, June
Tim Cahill
My Drowning (and Other Inconveniences). Outside, October
Claire Carter
To Abandon. Alpinist, Spring
Bea Chang
Tales of a Woman Coach. Awesome Sports Project, February 14
Ana Beatriz Cholo
The Accidental Mountaineer. Alpinist, vol. 59
Sean Clancy
One Time. ThisIsHorseRacing.com, May 18
Richard Cleary
The Architecture of Sports. Places Journal, July
Jose Corpas
Malfunctioning Radar. The Sweet Science, April 11
Meredith Counts
The Bard of Baseball. Detroit Metro Times, April 5
Michael Croley
Redefining the Green. Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer
Caleb Daniloff
The Runner’s High. Runner’s World, April
Lyndsey Darcangelo
My Father, President Donald J. Trump, and the Buffalo Bills. Fansided, January 20
Britni De La Cretaz
Boston, We Have a Problem. DigBoston, July 20