• Loyalty was never designed to be a one-way street Loyalty was never designed to be a one-way street By ASSOCIATED PRESS Based on the admittedly scant evidence available this week, opportunities for basketball coaches have never been better. Or
• Loyalty was never designed to be a one-way street
Loyalty was never designed to be a one-way street
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Based on the admittedly scant evidence available this week, opportunities for basketball coaches have never been better.
Or worse. On one end of the spectrum, we’re bombarded with breathless updates about the high-stakes courtship of Phil Jackson. One night, he’s having dinner with Knicks boss Isiah Thomas, the next with Lakers owner Jerry Buss. Then we’re told the Cavaliers, Timber-wolves and Trailblazers may also be interested in picking up Jackson’s dinner tab — plus the additional $7 million or so per year some lucky club will have to fork over to sit him down at the end of their bench.
Then there’s the very little-noticed tale of Michael Grant.
At a news conference Thursday, Southern University chancellor Edward Jackson tied the bow on a story that’s been making the rounds on the Jaguars’ campus and reported by the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate for several weeks: That Grant is being canned as basketball coach with one year left on a three-year contract because he interviewed for another job.
Even in a business where guys have been fired for behaving like frat boys (see Larry Eustachy at Iowa State), that takes some chutzpah. Then again, loyalty was never designed to be a one-way street.
Coaches take jobs at every level above high school with an eye on the next one, and so it appeared to be with Grant when he arrived at Southern. Coaches trade loyalties so often these days, it’s practically an unspoken pact. Grant’s resume included impressive stints as an assistant coach at Michigan and Cleveland State, and being from Ohio, it wasn’t surprising that he was interested when the head coaching job at Youngstown State opened in March.
The school’s basketball program and the conference, the Horizon, would have marked an upgrade over Southern and the SWAC, in terms of resources, attention and prestige. Maybe that’s why Grant never bothered to hide his ambition. He was one of three finalists interviewed in early April and afterward told Ohio reporters, “I cannot put it any simpler: I want this job.”
Right about then was probably when Southern decided he wasn’t getting his old job back. Formal notification came Wednesday in a letter from the chancellor. Grant was temporarily appointed assistant athletic director until his termination date, May 15.
The school will have to establish “cause” for firing Grant at an appeal hearing May 9, and he’s given Southern’s lawyers plenty of ammo. Besides his “I want this job” remark, Grant apparently spilled plenty of details about how he’d rebuild Youngstown’s down-at-the-heels program. When he got around to talking about using the two available scholarships there to bring in junior college players, Tony Clayton, a member of the Southern board of supervisors, had heard enough.
“That’s the part that disturbs me more than anything,” Clayton said. “We paid for him to recruit for Southern.”
That’s exactly what Grant was doing. Three kids committed to play for the Jaguars on Tuesday, a fourth on the same day that Grant received his pink slip. His record — 26-31 in two seasons — wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either.
Not when you consider that Southern is traditionally a football school. Or that the Jaguars went 9-20 the previous two seasons. Anyone expecting a quick return to the salad days of the late ’80s and early ’90s — when NBA stars Avery Johnson and Bobby Phills fell into Southern’s lap — was hopelessly stuck in a time warp.
But that probably wasn’t what fazed Grant. He came within two losses at the buzzer of crafting the Jaguars’ first winning season in the last five, and a return to respectability next season was on the horizon. Now, it looks as if Grant won’t get the chance to see it.
