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Floyd wants to fill a void Ex-Bulls coach says he's ready to return to the college gamePosted: Tuesday March 04, 2003 6:21 PMUpdated: Tuesday March 04, 2003 7:42 PM
Tim Floyd treated himself to a special Christmas present late last year when, after months of searching, he finally tracked down a shuffleboard table that had been sitting in a tavern in Norco, La., since 1939. Floyd, who built winning college programs at Idaho, New Orleans and Iowa State before taking over for Phil Jackson as coach of the Chicago Bulls, had the table refurbished and delivered to his lakehouse in nearby Sones Chapel. "When I was coaching in Idaho, there was a place called the Corner Club where my staff and I used to go, and they had a shuffleboard table there," Floyd says. "I guess I developed a liking for taking 50 cents from my assistants on that table." Floyd has scarcely been heard from since his tumultuous three-and-a-half-year tenure ended in Chicago on Dec. 24, 2001. That has been by his design. Last spring, Floyd says, he was contacted by eight different colleges about head-coaching vacancies and was offered an assistant coaching job with the San Antonio Spurs. He chose instead to take the year off and lay low, shuffling between his place in Sones Chapel and the condo he and his wife bought in New Orleans. (Yes, Fishheads, he's a fan of The Radiators and has even been known to pop into Tipitina's to see them play. Favorite song: Doctor Doctor.) Floyd still watches basketball game tapes and has observed practices at more than a dozen schools (when I talked to him last week he was on his way to Lubbock to study Bob Knight), but for the most part he has been fishing, playing golf and spending time with his family. "I've been to more antique shops with my wife than a man should ever have to," he says with a chuckle. Now for the good news: Floyd is tanned, he's rested and he's ready to return to college basketball. "I honestly wasn't burned out in any way," he says. "I just wasn't ready to start up again in March with everything you have to do in a new job. Now I'm regrouped and refocused on what I want to do with my career, and that's to get into a situation where I can teach and coach again." Floyd is one of the few men who could go 49-190 in a disastrous stint as an NBA coach and still find himself in high demand. He is not necessarily the most well-connected guy in his profession, and he is so unslick that he doesn't even have an agent (which is why you don't see his name in the papers as a potential replacement every time a coach goes on a three-game losing streak). Floyd is, however, a preeminent defensive coach who learned at the knee of the great Don Haskins, and he has a long track record of signing players who were underrecruited and getting them to overachieve. About the worst you could say about Floyd is that he can be thin-skinned when it comes to criticism from the media, but if three years of taking arrows in Chicago hasn't thickened him up, nothing will. College coaches haven't had much success in the NBA lately, but as John Calipari and Rick Pitino are now proving, a losing record in the pros does not preclude success in college, in part because NBA credentials are so appealing to recruits. (Naturally, this also bodes well for Lon Kruger, the former Florida and Illinois coach who was fired by the Atlanta Hawks.) Floyd says he's not afraid to go to a program that hasn't won in a while, nor is he limiting himself to any particular area of the country. "Who I'm working for will be very important," he says. If you had spent three years toiling for Jerry Krause, you'd say the same. So as the coaching carousel starts turning later this month -- and early indications are that it could be quite a busy spring -- you can expect Floyd to find himself a seat somewhere. "I feel like I have something to give young people," he says. "I'm really eager to get back to work." College basketball is eager to have him back. Other Hoop Thoughts(In honor of retiring Mount St. Mary coach Jim Phelan, I will wear a bow tie for the remainder of this column.) Mail CallGonna switch things up this week and lead off with the weekly Radiators Roll Call, the list of your favorite songs from the greatest band from New Orleans, site of the 2003 Final Four. I received disturbingly few submissions this week -- come on, Fishheads, it's March! Here goes: Lookin for a Ride (Greg "Lex" Gunther, New Orleans), Let's Radiate (David Alperin, Olney, Md.) and Falling Through the Bottom Line (Clark Ohnesorge, Northfield, Minn.). Special recognition goes to New York's own Keith Derman, who deftly combines hoops and the Rads by suggesting several tunes fit for college basketball coaches: Lowlife (Matt Doherty), Screwloose (Bob Knight) and Murder in My Heart for the Judge (for the litigious Nolan Richardson). I got a ton of e-mails from people, uh, analyzing my top 10 list of candidates for college basketball's player of the year. The only thing everybody could agree on was that I was wrong about something. Plenty of readers sent in names of people whom I left off the list. And while most e-mailers voiced their parochial interests, the tally does serve as a useful gauge of which candidates are credible. Hanging chads and all, the voting broke down like this: Brian Cook, Illinois (17 votes); Steve Blake, Maryland (13); Troy Bell, B.C. (9); Jason Gardner, Arizona and Ron Slay, Tennessee (8); Keith Bogans, Kentucky (7); Joe Shipp, Cal (5), Emeka Okafor, UConn (3), Luke Ridnour, Oregon, Dahntay Jones, Duke, and Andre Emmett, Texas Tech (2). Seven other players received one vote each. Oh, and for the record, since my idea was to copy the week-to-week guessing game accorded the Heisman, I want to revise my own list of candidates and put Marquette's Dwayne Wade at the top following his sterling 28-point, eight-rebound and seven-assist performance at Louisville last week. Thanks also to all those who suggested new eponyms for my version of college football's Heisman Trophy. The tally: Maravich, 10; Alcindor, 6; Smith (as in Dean), 4; Jordan, 3; Walton, McGuire, Valvano, Gathers, 2. I also got a few votes for Henry Iba, but his name is already, fittingly, on the award that goes to the nation's best defensive player (and thankfully there's only one of those). The cleverest suggestion on this came from John Folkers of Arlington Heights, Ill., who notes that since so many Heisman winners have been flops in the NFL, college hoops should name its version after Danny Ferry, Steve Alford, Pervis Ellison or Mark Macon. The crassest suggestion came from Amanda Winton of Norman, Okla., who in an obvious and shameful ploy to get her name and hometown mentioned in this space, suggested we call our award the Davis Trophy. Come on, Amanda Winton of Norman, Ok., did you really think that would work? Back to the player-of-the-year discussion. A couple of you (such as Matthew Krachey of Arcata, Calif., and John D. Johnson from Cochise, Ariz.) made the salient point that my list did not include any players from the two national championship favorites, Arizona and Kentucky. If you think about it, that's a huge compliment. That neither of those teams has a single player with meteoric statistics goes a long way toward explaining why they'll probably be playing each other on April 7. (Though I do think Luke Walton would have been a leading candidate if he had been healthy all year.) My inclusion of Florida forward Christian Drejer on my all-disappointment team spurred some dissent from Gators fans as well as some of Drejer's countrymen from Denmark. To answer your questions, yes, I know Drejer was hurt, but he has been perfectly healthy for two months now. He's still playing scared and doesn't look anything like a player who was supposed to have been a lottery pick last year. As for additions to my all-disappointment team, Duke's Chris Duhon got the most votes, with four, followed by Tahj Holden of Maryland (two). Those receiving a single vote included David Harrison, Colorado; Tom Coverdale and George Leach, Indiana; Jason Frasier, Villanova; Rick Rickert, Minnesota; and Britton Johnsen, Utah. I'm still receiving a trickle of insightful comments about my column calling for a woman, specifically Tennessee State AD Teresa Smith, to be hired as a men's college basketball coach. Responding to people who disagreed with me, Mike Bien of Ridgecrest, Calif., wrote: "Do people actually listen to the interviews the players give? Every one of them listens to the mom about where to go school. I think someone like Teresa would be a mother's dream." In an effort to serve as the monster.com of gender equity, I'd also like to let all principals and athletic directors out there know that there's another well-qualified woman candidate ready for hire. Her name is Meghan Sheehan of Santa Monica, Calif., and she used to play hoops for Marquette. Meghan despairs that even though she was "destined" to coach men, she'll never get that chance. Anyone out there man enough to prove her wrong? Finally, I'm going to gingerly (and probably foolishly) take the bait dangled before me by Kevin Sullivan of College Station, Texas, who wants me to weigh in on the case of Toni Smith, the Manhattanville College player who has generated so much attention by turning her back on the American flag during the national anthem. Frankly, I'm not interested in reading scores of e-mails from readers staking out a position on this, but I will say this: If Geno Auriemma or anyone else thinks they would be able to discipline one of their players for refusing to face the flag, they are seriously ignorant of how our society works. Isn't it ironic that the very people who profess such outrage at Smith's actions are the same ones most eager to curtail her right to free speech? Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Hoop Thoughts appears every Tuesday during the regular season. Davis' first book, Equinunk, Tell Your Story: My Return to Summer Camp, is available through Chandler House Press.
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