Real and Spectacular

It was twenty-one years ago on a Saturday night and Jim Valvano had just watched his North Carolina State basketball team wipe out all but two points of a 20-point deficit before losing to Georgia Tech.

After he had talked to his team and to the media, Valvano retreated -- as he always did following a game -- to his office to eat pizza and drink wine with his coaches and some friends. He put his feet up on his desk, took a sip of wine and put his head back for a moment.

"Let me tell you something about all this," he said. "We made a great comeback tonight, almost pulled one out when we got outplayed most of the game. But in the end, it's an 'L' and that's what matters, it's the only thing that matters this time of year."

He put the wine glass down, took his feet off the desk and stood up. "But you know what? I'm fine with it. You know why? Because those two hours out there were real. It was competition: good plays, bad plays, me making a move, Bobby (Cremins) making a move. There was no BS to it. I wasn't selling anything and no one was selling me anything. There was no glad-handing anybody, no trying to prove anything to the media or the alums. It was basketball. That's what I love about this job -- those two hours when it's all real and nothing else matters."

Valvano was always worth listening to in those late night sessions. He was leaving N.C. State and the ACC just as Gary Williams was arriving at Maryland in 1989. In a sense, their personalities could not have been more different: Valvano had a funny story for every situation -- even when battling terminal cancer -- and seemed to enjoy every minute of every day. Williams seems to be constantly fighting something or someone and comes across as someone who is miserable in defeat and only slightly less miserable in victory.

And yet, the parallels between Valvano and Williams -- and all successful coaches if truth be told -- was never more evident than Saturday in the aftermath of Maryland's stunning 88-85 overtime win over North Carolina.

Williams talked about how much he had enjoyed coaching the game; how for two and a half hours he didn't have to worry about anything but what was happening on the court. "No one comes over and says, 'have you got a minute,'" he said. "The phone doesn't ring. All I'm thinking about is the game that's in front of me, what's going to happen next, what I need to do next to try to win."

In short, it's real.

He doesn't have to explain why he doesn't enjoy sucking up to AAU coaches or street-agents or why he hasn't recruited more superstars in recent years or why some of the big name players he has recruited have fizzled. For two and a half hours Debbie Yow's name doesn't cross his mind and he isn't obsessing about Maryland being the "Siberia," of the ACC or who supports him and who doesn't support him.

Coaching at the elite levels of college basketball has become a very complicated, and very lucrative, job in the last 25 years. A coach who has accomplished all that Williams has accomplished lives a very privileged life. He makes a lot of money and is often surrounded by wealthy, successful people who want to be his buddy, who want to be able to say to people, "I was playing golf with Gary Williams last week and he told me..."

But with all that come expectations. You are supposed to keep winning and that means recruiting in an increasingly dirty, sleazy world. You have to be careful about what you say in public, about where you go and who you go with. You have to keep your high rollers happy and God forbid you should slip and lose to Morgan State. The screams that you've lost it will echo off the gym walls and with a 64th birthday looming, you're going to hear that your school needs someone younger, someone more willing to grind it out in high school gyms -- places you've been going to for more than 40 years and maybe, you're bound to think, enough is enough.

There isn't a coach alive who reaches 50, much less 60, who doesn't think he's had enough. A lot of it is recruiting. Even if you aren't rolling in the mud with the street agents and the sneaker company guys and the AAU coaches, recruiting is still an unseemly process -- grown men virtually begging teenagers to come and play for them.