%20(1).png&width=36&height=36&type=webp)
University of North Carolina Athletics
RAMblings - Kuester's Big Night in Greensboro - Rams Club
RAMblings 7.14.09 - Kuester's Big Night in Greensboro
by Lee Pace
Whenever John Kuester’s name has popped up on the basketball newswires over the last three decades—whether as a college head coach at Boston University or George Washington in the 1980s or from seven different NBA assistant jobs the last two decades—my thoughts have always harkened back to early March 1977.
The Tar Heels were locked in another of their titanic donnybrooks of that era with the University of Virginia, this particular one coming in the final of the ACC Tournament.
The Tar Heels were undermanned as the post-season carnival opened in Greensboro, despite having won the ACC regular season title. Tommy LaGarde was in street clothes, the victim of a late-season knee injury. Walter Davis had a broken finger and played only eight minutes, missing his one shot and fighting off severe pain spasms on the bench.
The Heels’ three remaining healthy starters—junior Phil Ford, freshman Mike O’Koren and Kuester, a senior guard—were joined by various combinations of reserves that included Bruce Buckley, Tom Zaliagiris, John Virgil, Rich Yonakor, Jeff Wolf and Steve Krafcisin. Carolina bumped N.C. State by 14 in the semifinals of the ACC Tournament (this during a period when the league had seven teams and the regular season champion received a bye in the first round), but they had fallen eight down with seven minutes to play against Terry Holland’s Cavaliers.
Carolina chopped away at the lead and whittled it to three with just under six minutes to play. Then the Heels took another personnel smack.
Ford had already been hit with three charging calls in the game (one of them eliciting a technical foul in protest from coach Dean Smith), and he picked up his fifth foul on a collision with defender Billy Langloh.
That put Kuester in the prism to lead the offense and direct a mishmash lineup of Tar Heels.
“I looked down our bench and saw LaGarde and Davis and then Ford,” Smith said. “But we had John Kuester. He got lost sometimes with all the so-called stars we had. But he was a star in his own right.”
Kuester took the leadership reins those last six minutes. He defended Virginia point guard Bobby Stokes. He directed the Tar Heel offense. He made four free throws down the stretch. When the Heels inched ahead with 3:20 to play, you could be sure they would be going to the Four Corners delay, and soon after they went to the spread, Kuester hit O’Koren with a back-door layup.
The Virginia threat was averted (even with O’Koren fouling out in the last two minutes), and the Heels went on to a 75-69 win and eventual berth in the Final Four (they lost to Marquette in the title game). Kuester was named ACC Tournament MVP for his late-game heroics.
“John was just great,” Ford said. “He is starting to get some of the credit he deserves.”
“We all just kept our poise,” Kuester said. “Even without Tommy and Walter and then Phil and Mike, everyone kept their poise.”
Kuester played three seasons in the NBA, then embarked on a coaching career that took him through the college ranks and onto the NBA as an assistant. Last week he was named head coach of the Detroit Pistons, returning to the city where he was an aide to Larry Brown during the Pistons’ 2004 NBA title season.
Pistons President Joe Dumars had originally targeted Avery Johnson for the job, but when talks with Johnson broke down, Dumars turned to Kuester, most recently an assistant in Cleveland. Asked if it bothered him that he was not the team’s first choice, Kuester chuckled and said not at all.
“My wife told me I was her sixth choice, and we’ve been married 32 years,” Kuester cracked. “So Joe and I have a real chance.”
Kuester played an interesting role in Cleveland the last two years under head coach Mike Brown, serving as a de facto “offensive coordinator” as the Cavaliers led the Eastern Conference with a 66-16 record in 2008-09. Coordinators are standard in football, but it’s only on occasion that you seen one in basketball, where the head coach usually is the hands-on engineer of every element of the team playbook. But Kuester installed the offensive scheme and took the greaseboard during timeouts in helping the Cavaliers advance to the playoff semifinals.
“The Cleveland job was the first time I had focused on offense in my coaching career,” Kuester said at his introductory press conference in Detroit. “But championships are won playing defense, and it’s not going to be any different here.”
Kuester joins George Karl (Denver) and Brown (Charlotte) as former Smith players now head coaches in the NBA. Bob McAdoo (Miami), Dave Hanners (Charlotte), Pat Sullivan (Detroit), Doug Moe (Denver) and Phil Ford (Charlotte) are assistant coaches. And the front offices of the NBA are well populated with Smith disciples—among them Michael Jordan as co-owner of the Bobcats; Mitch Kupchak as the Lakers’ general manager; Donnie Walsh as the Knicks’ president; and Sam Perkins as Indiana’s VP of player relations.
Kuester still lacks the star-power of his Carolina brethren, but he’s proven before that can be a moot point.