COLUMBIA -- The mutual reclamation project of a disrespected coach and his wounded program is only 10 months and 18 games old. That’s easy to forget sometimes, isn’t it?
This is all so new, even now, this wild ride from punchline to national coach-of-the-year candidate and one of the country’s top-five teams. This is still very much in the getting-to-know-you stage, so Frank Haith never can predict when he’ll learn something new about the kids he’s coached into national relevancy. For instance, he still chuckles about the red scooter his 6-foot-8 center, Ricardo Ratliffe, rides around campus.“You ever see that movie ‘Friday’?” Haith says. “Ricardo is D-Bo.”The last time the head coach learned something new came just now, back at the TV studio at his weekly television show. Someone asked Steve Moore about his favorite superhero, and Haith, like most anyone who’s seen the “S” logo on the big man’s left arm, mumbled “Superman” under his breath and then watched in shock as Moore answered Johnny Bravo.Bravo, Moore explained, has good hair and is a ladies man.Haith is 46 years old. He’s never heard of Johnny Bravo.“But hey,” Haith says, “if he works out a lot, that’s good.”Haith chuckles a bit to himself, and why not? Less than a year ago, he was in Miami, happy, no idea he’d be in this seat, in this town, in this job, working so hard for a fan base that rejected him so harshly in the beginning.Turns out this isn’t the first time Haith has coached through disrespect.• • • Frank Haith was with a reporter, back in Miami, showing off the school’s brand-new practice facility. You have to understand what this moment meant. Miami basketball has a worse history than Kansas football and historically operates with the resources and interest of a glorified club team.Heck, Miami didn’t even have basketball for 15 seasons between 1971 and 1986. So when the school built a 30,000-square-foot practice facility nice enough that DeMarcus Cousins raved about it before signing with Kentucky, well, Haith thought this might be the boost of relevance his program needed.One problem. A security guard stopped Haith’s tour with the reporter. Haith didn’t have his faculty I.D.“Come on, man,” Haith said. “I’m the head coach.”Disrespect is a lifelong constant for Haith, in matters both large and small. His father essentially wrote him off as a boy. Dad had other kids to raise. Once, in college, Haith asked his father for a loan so he could stay in school. No.Haith had to find another way, and eventually worked a deal with the school that he could sleep in a gym closet. He made the dean’s list.Haith made his first recruiting trips in a Ford Pinto. He was a graduate assistant at Wake Forest during the time when other grad assistants around the league included Jay Bilas, Tommy Amaker and Quin Snyder. All those guys played in the ACC. Haith came from Elon College, where he hadn’t even made the roster.He wanted to coach, though. Truth is, he felt born to coach. Dad was never around, so Haith’s only male role models were coaches. He knew what that influence could mean. Shoot, he lived what that influence could mean, so how could he not want to pay it back?Coaching is a hard gig. Long hours. Short pay. Haith heard the whispers, knew the stereotype about young black coaches and understood that the quickest way to make it would be to brand himself as a recruiter. Haith wanted to be something different, though, so he branded himself as a worker.He tells the story of sleeping in the gym closet with pride. Anything to coach, he did. He sought out bosses who wanted him to coach, too. At Texas, Rick Barnes put Haith on the weekly teleconferences that landed on game days, assigned him speaking engagements, made sure he got equal time floor coaching.None of that mattered when Haith got the Missouri job, though. A group of students sent what they termed “a peaceful but adamant rejection of Frank Haith” to various media outlets. Die-hard fans blasted him.The school decided to promote him to fans as a nice guy with good values, but even that got muddied when a portion of a Yahoo report detailed Haith’s relationship with a booster who admitted to providing improper benefits to athletes. The NCAA hasn’t officially ruled on Haith, though it did clear the basketball player alleged to have received money to play while the investigation continues.Haith tries to smile through the initial backlash from fans, the Yahoo report, all of it. He worked for this, he’ll tell you, even if nobody else can see that. None of this bothers him, he says. He doesn’t listen to it, doesn’t hear it — and he’s entirely unconvincing as he goes on about how the people who trash his record at Miami don’t know what they’re talking about.You know, just because you’ve been disrespected before doesn’t mean you get used to it.• • • Kim English answered the phone last April and heard a familiar voice.“I told you I’d coach you one day,” Frank Haith said. “I made a mistake the first time. I didn’t make a mistake this time.”English and Haith go back four years, maybe more, back to when English played at Notre Dame Prep in Baltimore and Haith wanted him at Miami. English was going to sign, too, but then DeQuan Jones — the same player later named in the Yahoo report, actually — took the scholarship.You have to understand English’s head when Haith called. He had shot 37 percent for a team coached by Mike Anderson and was defined by selfish play and a long fade toward the finish. College basketball was no longer fun. English wanted out, immediately, overseas if not to the NBA.Haith recruited English that night, and English told Haith about what needed to be fixed. Haith promised to get the chemistry right if English promised to work hard and be sure his teammates worked hard.“He had to trust in us,” English says. “Just like we had to trust in him. It’s mutual.”Right away, Haith focused on providing structure and promoting teamwork. The players spent two days in August without basketballs or a court, working with Navy SEALs on team building. Some of the drills happened in the pool, and some of the Tigers can’t swim. It worked.Haith is meticulous. The guys say they spend far more time preparing for the opposition, and understand far more about what’s expected. English’s shots come from certain spots and certain sets, for instance, just like Marcus Denmon’s shots come from different spots and different sets.The players had their own meeting, no coaches, before the season started. They aired out their differences, and it sounds too simplistic, but they essentially decided to be better teammates. It started immediately, in pickup games, guys being more unselfish and playing harder defense. Even now, if you watch a dummy drill in practice, you will notice them making extra passes.English remembers watching Mizzou games during his senior year of high school. Always looked obvious to him that Anderson was coaching the previous coach’s players. He could just feel it.“Now,” he says, “it doesn’t have that feel at all. It all feels — and I would think looks — like we’re all Frank Haith guys.”• • • So the mutual reclamation project is going just fine, thank you. Those Missouri basketball players who faded and underachieved under their old coach are 17-1 under their new one.English was taking too many bad shots, and now he’s averaging 15 points and hitting more than half his three-pointers. Ricardo Ratliffe was too often unfocused and now he’s on pace to set the national record for field-goal percentage. Phil Pressey was out of control and now leads the Big 12 in assist-to-turnover ratio.As for Haith, he was the guy who failed in his old job and didn’t deserve his new job, and now he’s coaching the second-most efficient offensive team in the country. Players who chose to play for someone else are playing better for him than they ever did for the other guy.The only question is how long this will last, or how it will end. Missouri’s toughest game so far is Saturday, on the road against a Baylor team presumably ticked off after being blown out at Kansas — eerily similar circumstances to MU’s only loss this year at K-State.MU fans can remember a time when Quin Snyder looked like a great hire, too.It’s just that if you judge Haith solely on what he’s done, push preconceived notions away, how could he be any better?In a few years, Haith envisions his team being much bigger. More physical. But if the mark of a good coach is one who gets the most out of what he has, well, what more could you possibly want?Missouri is outrebounding Big 12 opponents with English playing power forward. It leads the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio, ranks second in field goal percentage, and has wins over the current first-place schools in both the Big Ten and Pac-12. Anderson wouldn’t be doing this.People can have their questions about Haith, and that’s fine. This is the Show-Me State, after all.But they probably would be surprised to know Mike Krzyzewski said Haith did the best coaching job in the ACC last year.• • • You should hear the story about what happened after MU beat Illinois. Haith walked over to Bob Knight, who had broadcast the game on television, to introduce himself and say how much he admired the former coach.Knight told him MU was the best-coached team he’d seen this season, and interrupted when Haith talked about having great players willing to work hard.“Don’t give me that (stuff),” Knight said. “I’m a coach. I’m not the media. I know what a coach does. I watched your team. You coached your team.”Haith then talked about his coaching mentors and his time as an assistant at Texas. Knight interrupted again.“Rick Barnes isn’t an offensive coach, so don’t tell me that,” he said.Haith smiles when this story comes up. He didn’t want to mention it but chuckles when he hears it. There’s one place he won’t hear disrespect, and you’re damn right he’s proud of that. Damn right he’s proud of the distance between where he started and where he sits.No more sleeping in gym closets.“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got a little bit of money now.”Read more University Of Missouri
Posted on Thu, Jan. 19, 2012 11:24 PM
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COMMENTARY
Frank Haith and Missouri basketball’s unlikely journey
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To reach Sam Mellinger, call 816-234-4365, send e-mail to smellinger@kcstar.com or follow twitter.com/mellinger. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.
