LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – There have been numerous Rick Majerus tributes written over the past couple of days, many of those by writers much more gifted than I.
So I’m not looking for figurative kudos for these brief recollections and impressions of a man I first met 35 years ago, waiting for our respective flights out of what was then called Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan) after coming attending the Capital Classic All-Star Game.
I’d just like to see some of those thoughts on the screen of this laptop and, hopefully, you can gain in your understanding of a man whose influence on me spanned a lot more than just my understanding of basketball.
He was an assistant coach for the Marquette program that had just won a national title; I was barely out of my teens and on my first assignment in the east for the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Of course we talked briefly about the players we had watched during the game and the practices that led into in, including whose career panned out quite nicely in the college and NBA ranked, by way of Lansing, MI – a remarkably tall and gifted guard named Earvin Johnson.
Over the course of all of those years, I realized that, as keen as his grasp of basketball was – and the way he believe he should be played – Majerus had a passion for things other than the sport that I also had grown to love, probably as much as he did.
Sure, he loved to eat – too much and too often, he was the first to concede – but he saw sharing meals, with close friends or those he was barely acquainted with, as more than “eating”.
Those were face-to-face opportunities to share opinions and insights into politics, history, literature and movies – and, of course, basketball, although I shared dinners and lunches with him in which basketball was barely mentioned.
Like so many of those whose stories you may have already read, Majerus would call me frequently – in and out of the basketball season – to talk about the aforementioned subjects and many more.
He was well-versed, but ever inquisitive, on any subject he discussed.
As much as anyone I know, Majerus understood that – no matter how strongly you might feel on a subject, or on what side of any argument you fell – looking for “all black” or “all white”, “either or” answers was often pointless.
“One man’s ‘terrorist’,” he would remind me, “is another man’s ‘freedom fighter’.”
I considered Majerus, along with George Raveling, Lute Olson, Jerry Tarkanian, Jim Harrick and the late Lynn Archibald, as one of my “basketball mentors” – a group of college coaches who befriended, and patiently offered their time and insights to, a young sportswriter without the clout or figurative stage to help them at all. I guess they were receptive because they sensed that my growing curiosity and enthusiasm for the game were genuine.
Over the course of my five-plus years of marriage to my wife, Julie, I can’t begin to recall the number of times he mentioned a difference in me from the “pre-Julie days”.
“I tell you, she really is great,” he told me a few days after met us over hotel appetizers and then dinner at Newport Beach’s Fashion Island.
Of course, Julie thought the appetizers and wine in the concierge lounge at the hotel was dinner. As I said, that was their first meeting . . .
“I’m so glad you guys got together,” he added. “You really are in a great place now, aren’t you?”
Absolutely, coach. Only, it’s not as great as it was not so long ago.
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