Didn’t catch the name of the television throat who said it, but it’s a classic sports quote, colorful and incisive.
Announcers were discussing why most basketball superstars don’t prove to be highly successful coaches while so many unsung spear-carriers register win after win.
They noted that ultra-talented people like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird get impatient and short-tempered when more ordinary humans don’t do things as easily as they did with guile and grace. Big-timers rely so much on bare ability that they don’t study the game and its nuances as a lower-echelon performer must do just to get playing time. The icons can look to big money as professionals. Others decide to make a living as coaches.
Then came this gem from one of the ex-jocks at the microphone: “It’s this simple: A leopard can’t teach a house cat how to catch an antelope.”
You needn’t spend hours watching Animal Planet to get that drift.
One icon who defies the big star-marginal coach notion is John Wooden. He won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years at UCLA after making All-America three times as a Purdue guard. He retired with a 664-172 record. John was an incomparable leopard who brilliantly upgraded a lot of house cats to nail antelopes.
Bob Knight, who recently retired after 902 victories and three NCAA titles, never was a starter at Ohio State in 1959-61. However, Tennessee’s Pat Summitt, Knight’s female counterpart, was a highly notable player who fits into the Wooden niche.
Take Dean Smith (879 wins, two NCAAs) at North Carolina and Adolph Rupp (876 victories, four crowns). Both were scrubs as collegians – where else but at Kansas under Phog Allen, the father of basketball coaching? Doc (746 victories, three national crowns) was like Wooden and Summitt – a brilliant athlete in several sports who became an osteopathic genius and worked countless miracles.
Roy Williams was a low-hope walk-on at North Carolina, under Smith, but now has an NCAA title and is near 500 victories. Arch-rival Mike Krzyzewski at Duke is nearing 800 wins to go with his three college titles. He was a solid but not spectacular guard under Bob Knight at Army.
Hank Iba was a good athlete and won two titles and 764 games, mainly at Oklahoma State. A prize pupil, Eddie Sutton, just topped 800 victories (no NCAA title) and was a top-notch player under Hank, helping to spring an upset of Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in 1957.
Two “local” guys who unfairly are overlooked as terrific coaches AND outstanding athletes are Chanute native Ralph Miller and Norm Stewart, the hard-nosed all-league guard at Missouri. Miller was one of the greatest high school athletes in Kansas history, then brilliant as a football and basketball star at KU. He won 657 games at Wichita, Iowa and Oregon State. Stewart bagged 728 at Northern Iowa and Missouri. Miller started for KU’s 1940 NCAA finalists.
Larry Brown, John Chaney, Lute Olson, Jim Boeheim, Jerry Tarkanian, Jim Calhoun and Denny Crum displayed varying degrees of excellence as players and became many-win coaches. Unheralded John McLendon hurdled countless obstacles to win 496 games at five schools. He interned at Kansas under Phog Allen and James Naismith when blacks could not compete. We’ll never know how good he was as a player.
Sure, there have been player leopards like Wooden and Phog. Yet more often than not, sharp, wily and imaginative house cats like Knight, Smith, Rupp and Williams have hamstrung more antelopes.
