Good Article

[I_Miss_You_Trey_71603]

Thought I would post this for those of you who possibly dont get the Akron Beacon Journal.

Coach's career rebounds

By Bob Dyer

Beacon Journal staff writer

When LeBron James heard his old high school coach had been named head coach at the University of Akron, he called to congratulate him.

That may not sound like a big deal -- until you consider that his old coach is a short, white, Jewish guy whom the Rev. Jesse Jackson once branded a racist.

The coach-player relationship goes well beyond a courtesy phone call. When James needed some fine-tuning on his jump shot on the eve of his first season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, he dialed up Keith Dambrot.

How on earth could LeBron -- whose ``street cred'' helped him land $118 million in endorsement contracts before playing his first pro game -- remain close to a man who once peppered a speech with the most racially loaded word in the American vernacular?

To find out, you have to go back, look closely at what happened and put some facts with the whispers.

The saga begins on Jan. 20, 1993.

Keith Dambrot's Central Michigan University Chippewas have just lost their fourth straight game, this time toMiami University.

Dambrot, only 34, is unaccustomed to losing. He has = [100.0]blazed through the collegiate coaching ranks like a product of Werner von Braun, first at tiny Tiffin University, then at bigger Ashland.

In both cases he has turned losing programs into huge winners. But in his second year at Central Michigan, the progress has been agonizingly slow. And the losing makes Dambrot want to chew up his clipboard.

Intense? Major understatement. Maybe all you need to know about the guy is that, as an overachieving baseball player in college, he set the school's all-time record for getting hit by pitches, coming into the line of fire 28 times. The record book doesn't tell us how many times he tried to get out of the way.

And now Dambrot, 5 feet 8 inches of Type A personality, is looking around the locker room.

Twelve of his players are black, three are white. One of the coaches is black, three are white. But Dambrot doesn't see colors. Neither do most of the people in the room. White and black, they have suffered together and succeeded together, argued and hugged, needled and laughed.

During the last several months, the players have thrown around a certain word almost as much as they have thrown around a basketball. It is used mostly as a term of endearment, a declaration of toughness.

Politically correct? Hardly. But this isn't a PTA meeting. This is family -- perhaps dysfunctional, but family nonetheless. So Dambrot looks around the room and asks a question: ``Do you guys mind if I use the N-word?''

No one objects. One player says fine. So Dambrot lets fly.

``We need more niggers out there,'' he says. He gives his seal of approval to assistant coach Derrick McDowell, an African-American. ``Mac's a nigger,'' Dambrot proclaims. He praises senior captain Sander Scott, a white guy, as another ``nigger.''

The players get his point and move on. Most of them.

At least one of the black players is offended. Shannon Norris, a walk-on, thinks the remarks are inappropriate. But he doesn't say anything at the time.

Word about the unorthodox pep talk slowly spreads, and eventually someone puts together a flier that is circulated among the school's 450 minority students. The campus of 16,300 about three hours northwest of Detroit, in Mount Pleasant, becomes anything but pleasant.

On April Fools' Day, the campus newspaper, Central Michigan Life, quotes Dambrot's locker room comments. All hell breaks loose. Three days later, the university announces that Dambrot will be suspended for four days without pay.

But that's not enough punishment in the eyes of his rapidly growing legion of opponents. The Rainbow Coalition gets involved. Leonard Mungo, a Detroit lawyer who is a national leader in the coalition's Fairness in Athletics Commission, announces that Dambrot is filled with ``ill intent'' and that his words are prima facie evidence of ``a very insidious plot.''

Jesse Jackson himself sits down with Dambrot -- not once, but twice. The momentum builds, and Dambrot is fired.

Two black players immediately quit the team in protest.

Dambrot files a $25 million suit against the university, alleging that administrators have stomped on his First Amendment rights. Soon, nine of his black players formally join his suit.

But U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland declines to issue a preliminary injunction to reinstate Dambrot, saying freedom of speech is not absolute in a locker room. If the university was uncomfortable with Dambrot's approach, the court says, the university had every right to fire him.

Dambrot is devastated. At age 34, with an ache to continue his ascent into the upper ranks of the coaching hierarchy, he is suddenly faced with finding an entirely new career. Who is going to hire a coach fired for making ``racist'' statements?

``I was young, I understood their language,'' he says of the Central Michigan players. ``And I think anybody who has been around inner-city youth knows how that word is used.''

But he admits he ``wasn't very smart'' to unleash the N-word.

``White America doesn't really understand it because they're not around it. Then you have the inner-city youth who use it all the time for a variety of different things. Then you have the intellectual African-American community that doesn't want the word used at all. So once I used it -- I mean, it just wasn't going to fly.''

As a Jew, Dambrot knows a thing or two about prejudice. And, having been raised by a liberal, feminist mother -- a college professor known as a champion of women's rights -- he seems an unlikely candidate to be a bigot.

Nevertheless, it's back to his old hometown, Akron, the site of his old high school, Firestone, and his old college, the University of Akron. Back to a place where people know him.

Call of the court

Already armed with an undergraduate business degree and an MBA with a specialty in marketing, Dambrot catches on as a stockbroker and immediately does well. It's a nice career. Challenging, reasonable hours, a clean environment. And he's making money. Tons of it. But something is missing.

Dambrot lusts to hear the squeak of tennis shoes on wooden floors. So he comes up with a plan to get back on the court, to teach kids how to pivot and box out and talk on defense and shuffle their feet and run their men close to the picks, to watch them grow from crude athletes to fully realized basketball players.

Have whistle, will travel. He arranges to use the modest gym at the Jewish Community Center, on the west edge of town, on Sunday evenings, and spreads the word that he is open for business. For $1 per night, he will run all comers through a series of drills to improve their basketball skills. The clinics won't be fun. They will be demanding. He will yell. But he will do his utmost to turn every kid into a player.

One of his earliest customers is a skinny 13-year-old inner-city kid named LeBron James.

The first time Dambrot lays eyes on LeBron, he sees a 5-foot-11-inch string bean. The youngster isn't much of a leaper, either. But he is a remarkably quick study.

``He was like a sponge,'' Dambrot says today. ``He just picked up everything. You told him once and you never had to tell him again.''

One of the string bean's basketball buddies is even skinnier -- and a full head shorter. Dru Joyce III, a teammate of LeBron's on Amateur Athletic Union teams, looks like a cartoon figure in his floppy shorts. But Dambrot detects a special spark in Joyce, too. Like LeBron, he seems to have an innate feel for the game.

The Sunday-night sessions grow bigger and bigger because Dambrot is good. His products -- both boys and girls -- begin to excel in high school and even land college scholarships. Word spreads.

After a few years, the sessions are drawing as many as 140 kids -- kids willing to put in the extra time, to sweat and to ache, to give up a mellow Sunday night at home in hopes of becoming great. Dambrot has to split the groups into two sessions, then into three.

Search for coaching job

Once again, he has come down with a full-fledged case of basketball fever. He begins to cast about for a local high school coaching job.

He applies for the opening at predominantly black Central-Hower. No go.

He applies for the job at his alma mater, Firestone, which has a mixed student population. Firestone won't touch him, either.

When the Central-Hower job comes open again, a new athletic director urges him to apply. But even with the director's backing, Dambrot is too hot to hire.

Finally, he talks to some lifelong friends at a small Catholic high school with a big sports tradition, St. Vincent-St. Mary. Led by Principal Fred Ost, St. V-M decides to take a chance. On July 20, 1998, Keith Dambrot is named head boys basketball coach at St. V-M.

Dambrot is back where he belongs. ``Once you get coaching in your blood,'' he says now, ``it's really hard to enjoy anything else.''

Dambrot's blood is also rich in basketball tradition. His uncle, Irwin Dambrot, was the Most Valuable Player in the 1950 NCAA Tournament. He played at Duquesne and became a first-round draft choice of the New York Knicks.

But in 1998, Dambrot still has a big PR problem. Rival coaches work hard to keep his Central Michigan experience in the forefront, whispering reminders to potential St. V-M enrollees.

LeBron and his pals are in eighth grade. Having played AAU ball together for three years, they are tight -- so tight that they have all vowed to attend the same high school and team up to win a state championship.

Many observers expect them to enroll at almost all-black Buchtel High on Akron's west side, near their homes. But they have other ideas. And those ideas center squarely upon the ``racist.''

Parents have questions

The parents of two topSunday-night players -- black players -- sit down with Dambrot for a heart-to-heart. Former AAU coach Dru Joyce II, the father of LeBron's buddy Dru III, is there. So is former AAU coach Lee Cotton, father of another LeBron buddy, Sian Cotton.

The elder Cotton is familiar with Dambrot, having played against him in high school. The elder Joyce has seen Dambrot in action on Sunday nights, seen him working comfortably with kids of all colors, seen the remarkable progress Little Dru and others have made under Dambrot's tutelage. But the fathers want to get to the bottom of The Incident.

Dambrot is happy to oblige. He sets up a meeting and brings along copies of the affidavits his Central Michigan players filed in support of his lawsuit. The dads shuffle through the stack and see black player after black player singing Dambrot's praises.

They read comments like these, offered by Keith Gilmore, under oath:

``I wasn't offended by it. I knew the way he was saying it. It didn't even cross my mind that he meant it the way it has been taken. I had really totally forgotten about it until I read the paper.''

They saw quotes like this, from Leonard Bush:

``It was a motivational word.... I wasn't offended at all. I feel bad because we didn't have a chance to have anything to say about this whole situation.''

And this, from Marcus Culbreth:

``The majority of the players use the word -- and use it to refer to the coach sometimes. It is used in a positive way. It wasn't used in a racist way.''

And this, from Tyrone Hicks:

``Coach Dambrot is almost like a lamb chop (being) thrown to wolves, to calm minorities on this campus. It's a gross misjudgment. I can't believe people in charge can be so blind to our feelings.''

Clearly, these young men from Central Michigan had gone out on a limb to defend a white guy whom many of their peers were equating with a Klansman. That impresses Joyce and Cotton -- as does Dambrot's willingness to discuss the incident openly.

Another of LeBron's peers, Willie McGee, has a brother who was tutored by Dambrot's mother, the college prof. Willie has gotten to know and like the whole family.

In the end, the best of the Sunday-night bunch -- James, Joyce, Cotton and McGee, the self-proclaimed ``Fab Four'' -- march straight over to St. V-M and enroll. They have made up their own minds about the coach's character, and it doesn't match the assessment of the Rainbow Coalition.

A dynasty is about to be born that will change the face of basketball not only in Ohio but also across the nation. This will become a traveling road show that will take St. V-M from coast to coast, put them on national TV and spur fundamental questions about the proper place of athletics in high school.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association will eventually rework its bylaws because of it, and governing bodies in other states will begin to take a fresh look at their rules as well.

The pairing of LeBron and Dambrot is a match made in hoops heaven. LeBron will get a sophisticated, intense tutor, a man who is essentially a college coach. And the coach who was forced to start back at the bottom will get one of the best amateurs of all time.

Their unlikely alliance will eventually thrust LeBron up into a searing national spotlight that will win him $118 million in endorsement deals before he plays a single pro game.

More whispers

Once the Sunday-night quartet commits to St. V-M, rival coaches begin to hurl another R-word at Dambrot -- ``recruiting.'' Dambrot insists his Sunday-nighters came en masse simply because they knew they'd be getting into a winning program.

The whispers begin again when Dambrot's assistant coaches turn out to be Dru Joyce II and Lee Cotton. Dambrot insists the deal was above board, that the men were proven AAU coaches who would have been at every game anyway. And if things don't go his way, Dambrot figures, he wants the fathers on his side, rather than sniping in the stands.

During LeBron's freshman year, Dambrot works his mostly black team hard. He praises and prods and pushes, and manages to turn the players into not only skilled individual ballers but a cohesive unit.

By the fall of his freshman year, LeBron has grown to 6 foot 4. But he is still a willowy 170 pounds. Remarkably, he manages to lift his team onto those modest shoulders and carry it to a state title and an undefeated season.

``When a freshman dominates in high school, it's usually based on size and strength,'' Dambrot says, referring to Wilt Chamberlain's dominance at Overbrook High in Philadelphia and Lew Alcindor's at Power Memorial in New York.

``LeBron's dominance was based on mental ability and skill.... The physical dominance came last. That's why I laugh when people say he can't shoot the jump shot. If he had never grown past 6-4, he'd still be a pro.''

LeBron is also easy to coach. Unlike most superstars, who tend to hog the ball on offense, James' greatest individual skill is passing. And he loves to spread the wealth.

During his sophomore year, James' body begins its march toward its eventual 6 feet 8 inches, 240 pounds. Although he isn't killing himself in the weight room, his dimensions are suddenly expanding like a superhero's, particularly his upper legs. Underneath those baggy shorts, James has gigantic thighs that help create his amazing explosiveness.

In Year 2 of the James era, another mostly black St. V-M team marches to a second state title, losing only once, a regular-season game to perennial national power Oak Hill Academy. LeBron is named Ohio's Mr. Basketball, the first of what will become a record three straight times.

Wanting more

Dambrot can ride this train for two more years and quite likely claim two more state titles. But he begins to believe his job at St. V-M is finished. He is now 51-1. What more can he do at the high school level?

After LeBron's second season, the head coach at the University of Akron, Dan Hipsher, asks Dambrot whether he would be interested in an assistant coaching position. Dambrot dashes back to the college ranks -- eight years, four months and 20 days after being fired at Central Michigan.

As a recruiter for Akron, Dambrot still occasionally hears the whispers. But his long-ago tirade certainly doesn't hamper his efforts to pick off the cream of the local high school crop. Upon their graduation in 2003, two of St. V-M's best players, Joyce and 6-foot-8 Romeo Travis -- both black -- become Akron Zips.

Then, on March 10, Dambrot's career comes full circle. The man who hired him, Hipsher, is fired after a sub-.500 season. Keith Dambrot is named head basketball coach at the University of Akron. He is given a five-year, $550,000 contract to do exactly what he wants to do.

His exile has lasted more than 11 years.

Clearly, Dambrot has gone a long way toward rehabilitating his image. But he knows things will never be the same. Once you're accused of racism, shaking the label is nearly impossible.

``When you try to defend yourself, it just sounds defensive,'' he says. ``So it's better to let others speak for you.''

The others aren't hard to find.

``I think he got a raw deal at Central Michigan,'' says Tyrone E. Wilson, a former coaching colleague and president of the NAACP chapter in Jackson, Mich. ``I still hold him in high regard.''

Wilson stands by the words he wrote years ago in Dambrot's defense:

``It is my commitment to this society, through the NAACP, to identify and fight against racism. I know it when I encounter it. I also know Coach Dambrot. I know him very well. He is not a bigot.''

Another black man, Ricardo Hill, who played for Dambrot at Ashland and went on to become a banker in Cincinnati, credits his former coach with not only turning him into a small college All-America but serving as ``a role model in my aspirations for climbing the corporate ladder of success.''

Dambrot still stays in touch with many of his former players. He still moves easily among inner-city youths.

And LeBron James has him on speed dial.

[Guest Guest_Z.I.P.]

Whoa! This appeared in WHAT newspaper? Bob Dyer, of course is the paper's "curmedgeon beat" reporter, not a sportswriter, so that may have made it possible as a human interest story only. Whatever, it's too bad the Pulitzers already went out this week.

Awesome!

Oh, and Thanks Miss You. The Beacon shut off my access to their wrapper cause i can't register for their ads.

[mnhouse]

awesome post.. great job... excellent read!

[Guest Copyright]

awesome post.. great job... excellent read!

I don't know that I would credit someone who cut-n-pasted an article that someone else wrote with an "awesome post." "Awesome 'paste,'" maybe...

[mnhouse]

for those of us who don't get the stinkin' urinal it is an awesome post because it is something that we would not have seen otherwise. i always appreciate when people post quailty articles, not worhtless 2 bit posts about how "politically incorrect" another post may have been. but thank you for your worthless time.

ROCK ON>>>> GOOO ZIPS!