[msb-alumni] John Chaney, 89, Died on January 29, 2021; Temple Hall of Fame Coach With More Than 500 Wins
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2021 17:10:24 -0500
BlankIf my memory serves, he was a color commentator on SiriusXm during the
NCAA tournament
games.
Steve
John Chaney, 89, Is Dead; Temple Hall of Fame Coach With More Than 500 Wins. By
Richard
Goldstein.
He won more than 500 games and six Atlantic 10 tournament championships with
Temple, and he
took his teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament's regional finals five times.
John Chaney, the famously combative Hall of Fame coach who took Temple
University to 17
N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, largely recruiting high school players from
poor
neighborhoods who were overlooked by the college game's national powers, died
on Friday. He
was 89. His death was announced by Temple. The university did not say where he
died or
specify the cause, saying only that he died "after a short illness."
Chaney was 50 when Temple hired him, giving him a chance to coach major-college
basketball
after 10 seasons and a Division II championship at Cheyney State College (now
Cheyney
University), outside Philadelphia. He coached at Temple, in Philadelphia, for
24 seasons,
winning more than 500 games and six Atlantic 10 tournament championships and
taking his
teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament's regional finals five times. He did that
despite having
only one consensus all-American, the guard Mark Macon, who led the Temple team
that was
ranked No. 1 at the close of the 1987-88 regular season.
Chaney was voted the national coach of the year in 1987 and 1988 and elected to
the
Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2001.
His tie often askew as he shouted in his raspy voice at his players and the
referees, Chaney
was a consummate battler. He insisted that his players show discipline on the
court -- he
regarded turnovers as basketball's greatest sin -- and that they pursue their
studies and
conduct themselves properly, however chaotic their lives might be.
Having grown up poor in the segregated Depression-era South and in
Philadelphia, Chaney
viewed himself as a mentor to young men who often came from broken homes.
"Sometimes I'm a little nasty," he once told The Orlando Sentinel. "But
underneath I still
carry with me a strong feeling of concern for youngsters. I'll do just about
anything to
convince a youngster he can be a winner, and not just a winner in basketball
but a winner in
life. I want players to take up my value system."
Macon, who later played in the N.B.A. and became an assistant to Chaney at
Temple, said in
an interview with Comcast SportsNet that Chaney was "my mother and my father,"
adding, "He'd
tell me the right thing to do and not to do."
But Chaney's outrage at what he perceived as injustice sometimes raised
questions about his
own standards of behavior.
Incensed by what he saw as an effort by John Calipari, then the coach of his
Atlantic 10
rival Massachusetts, to intimidate referees, he charged at Calipari after
Temple had lost to
his team by one point in a 1994 game, shouting "I'll kill you" as onlookers
held him back.
On the eve of a 2005 game against St. Joseph's, Chaney said he would send "one
of my goons"
after the team's players, whom he accused of using illegal screens to free up
shooters. The
next night he inserted a 6-foot-8-inch, 250-pound bench warmer, Nehemiah
Ingram, into the
game. Ingram committed a flurry of fouls, one of which leveled a St. Joseph's
senior
forward, John Bryant, breaking his arm. Chaney was suspended for one game over
the outburst
at Calipari and for five games after the St. Joseph's incident.
Always outspoken, he railed against what he perceived as culturally biased and
racist
standardized academic testing requirements imposed by the N.C.A.A. for
basketball
eligibility. He expressed disdain for the administration of President George W.
Bush and
spoke out against the Iraq war.
John Chaney was born on Jan. 21, 1932, in Jacksonville, Fla., and grew up in a
low-lying
house that often flooded. His stepfather, seeking work in a defense plant,
brought the
family to the Philadelphia area during World War II. Chaney was voted the most
valuable
player of Philadelphia's public high school basketball league in 1951, but his
family was
too poor to buy a suit for him for the award ceremonies. He wore his
stepfather's suit, its
sleeves and pants hanging down.
He became a small-college all-American at the historically Black
Bethune-Cookman College in
Florida, then played briefly for the Harlem Globetrotters and played for teams
in Sunbury
and Williamsport, Pa., in the semipro Eastern League, where he was named the
most valuable
player.
Chaney was the first Black basketball coach in Philadelphia's Big Five --
Temple, Penn,
Villanova, St. Joseph's and La Salle. His first Temple team went 14-15, but
that was his
only losing season with the Owls. His 1987-88 squad finished with a 32-2 record
and went to
a regional final.
But Chaney's teams were barely above the .500 mark in his last four years at
Temple. He had
a record of 516-253 at Temple from 1982 to 2006 after posting a 225-59 record
at Cheyney
State from 1972 to 1982. Information on survivors was not immediately available.
While Chaney's temper memorably got the best of him at times, he apologized for
the Calipari
and St. Joseph's incidents. But even after his retirement, he seemed to enjoy
reprising his
provocative image.
In a 2010 interview with The Temple News, a student newspaper, Chaney was asked
if he had
any regrets. "The only regret I have is that I exposed so much of myself to the
media," he
said. "Certainly, I regret the language I used with Calipari. I should have
waited until
after the game was over and then took him outside and beat the hell out of him."
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