Forty Minutes of Hell (15 page)

N
olan Richardson brought
a feeling of urgency to the 1989–90 regular season. Arkansas entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed in the Midwest Regional. Wins over Princeton, Dayton, North Carolina, and Texas landed Richardson in his first of three Final Fours. The Razorbacks dropped the semifinal game to Duke 97-83, finishing the year 30-5, including 14-2 in the SWC.

The Final Four appearance gave Richardson a new measure of respect, both nationally and within the state.

Arkansas's last season in the old Southwest Conference was 1990–91, and they finished it by winning the regular season at 15-1, then taking the SWC Tournament championship. They scored over one hundred points in an astounding eighteen games. The Razorbacks went into the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed, but Kansas ruined their hopes of a Final Four repeat, beating the Razorbacks 93-81. Arkansas finished 34-4.

Also in 1991, assistant coach Mike Anderson and his wife welcomed the birth of a daughter. They named her Yvonne.

In 1991–92, Arkansas finished its first season in the SEC at 13-3, winning the conference. That first year included a 103-88 rout of Kentucky at Rupp Arena. The final game for the trio of Day, Mayberry, and Miller took place when Memphis upset Arkansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Razorbacks finished 26-8. Day, Mayberry, and Miller, whose combined four-year record in Fayetteville was 115-24, became first-round NBA draft picks.

 

Richardson has always had
a disdain for what he calls “book coaches,” a reverse snobbery. When Larry Gipson was a new assistant at Tulsa, he delivered detailed scouting reports about upcoming opponents in Richardson's office. Gipson was no fool. He'd coach his own national championship junior college team in the 1980s, and years later he'd win the Division II national championship at Northeastern State of Oklahoma.

Gipson recalls, “Nolan would look through the report for a while and snort. Then he'd toss it back at me. ‘Book coaches,' he'd say.”

Richardson acknowledges that there's plenty to learn from a book about basketball. “But it's getting it from a book to the players' heads,” he says. “That's the key. That's coaching.”

He pioneered a run-and-trap system, but he may have trapped himself into a stereotype. “For years, the theory has been that if you play fast, you aren't really coaching,” he says. “But my experience is that it takes more discipline for kids to play fast. For example, as good as Ralph Tasker's teams were in Hobbs, in some ways his press was predictable. I wanted my players to think on their own, not be robots. It takes
more
discipline, and smarter players, to play with that kind of freedom.”

One of the primary paradoxes of Nolan Richardson is that he
disdains an academic approach, yet wants to be respected by “book coaches.”

He was irritated by the status bestowed upon Rick Pitino. While Richardson was winning with a
Star Wars
pace before Pitino was ever a head coach, Pitino has put out several videotapes and DVDs about coaching. He's even written self-help books for coaches. Richardson has shown less interest in marketing his playing style or coaching philosophy, but he's never turned down an offer to make an instructional video or book. He simply has never been approached.

Wally Hall of the
Democrat-Gazette
says, “Nolan
was
an X and O coach, but he put it in during practice and had everyone programmed. Then he pushed the button in the game. But you had to go to practice to see the strategy.”

Todd Day, who became the school's all-time leading scorer, says, “Nolan was the king of up-tempo, pressure basketball. We hardly practiced offense. It was defense, defense, defense.” Day claims that practice was much different than game day. “Nolan was a great motivator on game day,” he says, “but the strategy was implemented in practice.”

In this respect, Richardson mirrors Don Haskins, whose game-time philosophy was to avoid complicating things—victories were won during practice, Haskins believed. Haskins disdained the concept of “game coaches.”

Richardson heard the way successful black coaches were described by the media, and it stung. Black coaches had the talent, the horses. They were great recruiters and could relate to the players. Rarely was a black coach acknowledged as a strategic genius.

“I've studied the so-called X and O guys, and people are now emulating what Coach Richardson did since junior college,” says Mike Anderson, listing the prominent programs that are clear descendants of “Forty Minutes of Hell.” Richardson rarely gets credit for the changes that he helped bring about. “I know that sometimes hurts him,” Anderson says.

This situation—whites getting credit, blacks getting ignored—is not unique to coaching. Pete Maravich adopted a flashy, black playground style—something that Earl Monroe and Nate “Tiny” Archibald from the same era could do—and brought it to a mostly white conference and audience. Maravich became the subject of books, films, and instructional videos. While Monroe and Archibald won NBA championships, Maravich got more notoriety and bigger paychecks.

Richardson responds to this kind of snub by attacking the club that won't grant him full membership. “I remember Jud Heathcote from Michigan State raving to me about his match-up zone defense,” he says, “and he was getting all kinds of attention. But I played nearly exactly the same zone.”

This is a Richardson trademark. Attacking the attacker, or disdaining the disdainer. In an interview with the
Sporting News
, the writer Bob Hille wrote, “…[Richardson] always seems to be saying he doesn't give a damn about what you think of him, yet always finds time to defend himself against criticism or perceived slights.”

Richardson could be hypersensitive if the slight came from a rival or antagonist. Frank Broyles sent an interoffice memo to Richardson that, according to Richardson, said, “I envision you being athletics director here someday.”

Richardson remains angry about the memo. “He signed his name
Frank.
He didn't even have the decency to write his last name.”

 

Richardson rarely drank and
never frequented bars in Fayetteville. Instead, the coach and his wife immersed themselves in laid-back lunches and weekend barbecues during the Day, Miller, and Mayberry years. The team could generally be found hanging out on the couches in their coach's condominium, especially after Yvonne died.

Around that time, Richardson bought a ranch outside of Fayetteville from former Olympic track star Mike Conley. The ranch,
with its horses and sprawling hills, also became, for the Richardsons and the players, a place to escape.

“I think Rose wanted some of the team around as much as possible,” Todd Day says, “and that was because Yvonne was gone. Rose had less to fall back on, and she was such a long way from El Paso.”

Richardson's hands-on approach with his players sometimes had hilarious results. During road trips, bed checks and curfews were routine. One night before an important game, Richardson decided to make the rounds himself. He checked on Oliver Miller's room last.

Miller was not a typical Richardson-style player. Nearly 6'10", Miller tipped the scales at close to three hundred pounds. The Fort Worth native was also unusual in that his parents were moderately well-off compared to most of the team. Miller's weight was as baffling as Bruce Vanley's had been at Tulsa. But Richardson admired Miller, who relished, and often won, his battles with LSU's Shaquille O'Neal.

During that evening's bed check, while Richardson was saying good-night to a couple of freshmen at one end of the hotel hallway, a Domino's Pizza man hurried by.

The deliveryman tapped on Oliver Miller's door. Richardson saw money change hands, as well as four large pizzas.

The coach took a deep breath, walked down to Miller's room, and knocked.

Nothing. Richardson knocked again, louder. “It's your coach. Open the door.”

“Just a minute,” Miller cried.

Richardson paced the hallway. When the door popped open, Miller scurried back inside and sat down.

“Lights out in ten minutes,” Richardson said. “And turn down that TV.”

“Sure, coach,” Miller said, muting the sound. “I'm almost ready for bed.”

Behind Miller was a pile of sweat suits and practice gear. “What's under those warm-ups?” Richardson said, moving around Miller.

“Nothing, coach.” Miller stood and shifted, as though setting a screen.

Richardson reached below Miller's feet and uncovered the cardboard boxes.

“Oh!” said Miller. “Right. I ordered those for the rest of the team. They're not even for me.”

“Great,” Richardson said, sliding the pizzas past Miller. He whipped out his rooming list. “I'll take them down to the guys and you can get some sleep.”

“Wait!” Miller cried as the coach closed the door behind him.

 

Any observer of a
Nolan Richardson practice could sit in the back row and be shaken by his booming voice, a tool he would wield like a hammer. He'd demand respect from the strongest kids, instill fear in the weaker ones.

Respect was more important than affection, despite the open-door policy at the Richardson ranch. “I never worried if the players liked me,” Richardson says. A major component to his big recruiting pitch was what he'd tell their mothers: “If you send me a boy, I'll send you back a man.”

That respect—or fear—doesn't die easily. Todd Day returned to Fayetteville with his agent one year, and as he walked into the arena, Day appeared to be frantically scratching his ears. The agent asked him what the trouble was. “I'm trying to get these earrings out before coach sees them,” Day said.

Don Haskins said, “I think there was an element of fear because Nolan got his guys to play so hard.”

After Haskins retired, he was invited to come watch the Razorbacks practice. Because of his own grind-it-out style, his typical practice agenda was primarily based on stopping the opponent's fast break. He'd stress both the clogging half-court defense and his annoyingly
patient offense. A Richardson practice—the laboratory for “Forty Minutes of Hell”—was as foreign to Haskins as a three-piece suit.

“Everything was done full-court,” Haskins said. “Shooting drills, man-to-man offense, hell, you name it. They started on one end, and they raced like hell to the other. There wasn't a single thing that didn't involve the length of the court.”

Haskins prided himself on knowing exactly what his players should be doing at all times. “Nolan was different,” he said. “He wanted them to rely on their own instincts. That would make them very difficult to scout, because nobody could tell when they were going to trap.” The pace of practice, according to Haskins, was exhausting. “I've never seen so many guys running so hard for so long. And they didn't dare complain.”

As the Razorbacks began to scrimmage, something happened that initially had Haskins perplexed. One of the Razorback guards caught the ball behind the three-point line. Richardson yelled, “Layup!”

“What in the hell is Nolan yelling
layup
for?” Haskins wondered. “That wasn't a goddamn layup. That was a twenty-footer.” Each time the player received the ball behind the arc, Richardson hollered the same thing: “Layup!”

Haskins was aware he had cut Richardson's scoring average in half in the early 1960s—Richardson could now finally joke about that remarkable statistic. But Haskins was unaware that even Richardson's free-throw percentage, something unrelated to style of play, dropped. Before Haskins's arrival, Richardson was shooting a respectable 64.5 percent from the free throw line. Under Haskins that first year, he dipped to 56 percent. His senior year, his shooting confidence further shaken, he finished at an abysmal 54 percent.

Sitting in the second row of the Arkansas arena, Haskins had an epiphany. “Nolan was making that guard think it was an easy shot,” he said. “He meant the three-pointer for that kid was as easy as a layup! That stuck with me, the way Nolan can instill confidence.”

Richardson's deliberate injection of confidence in his best shooters was a direct reaction to his own career, the way Haskins had clamped down on him.

Richardson would tell the Razorbacks, “I'm an old-school guy. I'm not a damn psychologist.”

“But in reality,” says Pat Bradley, Arkansas leader in career three-pointers, “Nolan could have had a PhD in psychology.”

Richardson wanted his shooters to be brazenly confident. Yet the Haskins-like intimidation remained an important factor. “The team loved him,” says a man who was close to the Razorback program for years. “But there was also fear. You can't discount that. Nolan was very, very tough and sometimes mean.” Many of Richardson's former players use the word “fear” as often as “love” when describing him.

Pat Bradley says there was another peculiar Richardson trait in practice—his kindness to freshmen. This was also the only time Don Haskins showed any generosity on the court. “He'd encourage the freshmen all season,” Bradley says. “Once they were sophomores, though, look out.”

Still, at the heart of Richardson's motivation during practice was the constant us-against-the-world speech. How would that sit with someone like Pat Bradley, a white kid from Massachusetts? “I think nearly everyone has inside them,” Bradley says, “a feeling for the underdog. I know for me, I was constantly trying to prove I belonged in the SEC, and Nolan never stopped appealing to that. I believed in
him
, because he believed in
me
in a way that nobody else did.”

Clint McDaniel, who would star for Richardson's best teams, says the coach's charismatic power pushed the players beyond their limits in practice. “Have you ever seen somebody sprain both ankles at the same time?” McDaniel asks. One substitute, Reggie Merritt, did just that, coming down hard on someone else's high-tops. Merritt, however, refused to be carried off the court by the trainer. “Merritt kept
trying to play. He was so pumped up he refused to stop,” McDaniel says, “but when he tried to walk, he just kept falling over. That's the kind of motivator Nolan was.”