Jim Harris died Sunday evening at age 67 after a short battle with cancer.
But he looked like he was 47 and exuded the passion and enthusiasm of a 27-year-old given the first opportunity to coach his own basketball when I last saw him during the first week of July, during a tournament in the Dominguez High gymnasium in Compton.
During his 33 years as the coach at Ocean View High in Huntington Beach, Harris evolved into one of the “faces” of high school basketball in Southern California.
He didn’t always have the proverbial “blue-chip, NCAA Division I-bound” players on his roster.
But that didn’t matter relative to the caliber of basketball his teams played. His players were always sound, fundamentally, and played as hard and unselfishly as any you’ll see anywhere. They didn’t need to sport “We play hard” t-shirts or do a lot of screaming on the floor. The proof was in the effort – and result.
The school isn’t going to have to look long and hard to find an apt heir to the Harris Legacy – his son, Jimmy Harris, was a standout guard for the Seahawks has been the program’s “co-head coach” for a few years.
But the elegance and wonder of Harris, the man and the coach, was such that the legacy isn’t going to be on display strictly when Ocean View basketball teams take the floor.
It can be found in the influence that Harris had on so many people – hundreds of basketball players, for sure; but thousands of non-players as well – and how those people live their lives, in ways obvious or subtle, because of that influence.
Who that had the opportunity to be in presence even briefly, or watch his teams play a few games, could disagree?
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