Texas Longhorns Basketball: In The Words of Bud Kilmer…
“You are the dumbest smart kid I know.”
I have no clue about Sheldon McClellan’s academic prowess, but since he graduated from my alma mater, Bellaire High School, we’re just going to assume that he was blessed with the intellect of Jonny Moxon and could’ve gone to Brown University had he so desired. This seems like a logical presumption.
McClellan, of course, will now no longer be going to Texas. The Horns’ leading scorer (if you disqualify Myck Kabongo from the race) this past year, he appeared to have the talent to develop into a go-to guy and future NBA player, but his relationship with Barnes steadily disintegrated to dust over his two seasons on the 40 acres.
Barnes pushed McClellan mercilessly, but McClellan either never got the message or eventually tuned it out. Whatever it was, the two clearly didn’t mesh. What’s interesting to note about it, though, is that fans love to talk about how they want a coach who is demanding, who holds players accountable, who doesn’t put up with anybody who fails to execute their assignment. Well, Barnes did exactly that with McClellan, but since it didn’t lead to immediate results (and ultimately, no results going forward for UT), he was crucified for not giving McCellan the freedom to just play.
It’s a tricky dynamic, the coach-player relationship, a true chicken-or-the-egg riddle. How much responsibility falls on each party? Who’s at fault when it fails? Like pretty much everything, the answer most likely lies somewhere in the middle, but ask most fans who’s to blame here, and they’ll probably tell you that Barnes one-upped Kilmer and actually followed through on his threat to sabotage his player’s path to Brown.
“The hard work of so many, sacrificed by the disrespect of a few.”
A safe assumption is that Barnes utilized this quote during the infamous 2009 – 2010 season. The infuriating numbers are burned into the memory banks of Texas fans everywhere at this point: 17-0 out of the gate; No. 1 ranking; 7-10 finish; No. 8 seed in the tournament; 81-80 loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That team featured four NBA players (Damion James, Avery Bradley, Jordan Hamilton, Dexter Pittman), three guys who would play professionally outside of America (J’Covan Brown, Gary Johnson, Dogus Balbay), and one future FBI-investigated point-shaver (Varez Ward), and yet despite their hot start, they never fully jelled, their chemistry compromised by, at least in Barnes’ eyes, a me-first attitude that was prominently displayed by the likes of Hamilton and Brown (It should be noted that both guys returned the following year more polished and less selfish, serving as key cogs in one of Barnes’ strongest teams at Texas).
Because of that disaster, Barnes had this line locked and loaded whenever selfishness threatened the greater good of the team—and he unfortunately had to use it when word surfaced that Myck Kabongo was under NCAA investigation. Like those stats from a couple of years ago, the details of Kabongo’s compliance complications have been rehashed to death: A trip to Cleveland; airfare paid for by Tristan Thompson; an (illegal?) workout for a trainer that was set up by Lebron James’ agent; Lebron James’ agent taking Tristan and Myck to a strip club after the workout (this is completely made up, but I’m intent on carrying out the Varsity Blues theme); less-than-forthcoming testimony to Texas compliance officials; a 23-game, season-sabotaging suspension.
There’s no telling what the 2012 – 2013 season would’ve looked like had Kabongo not been suspended. The guess here is that they would’ve closely resembled the 2011 – 2012 squad, when they were led by a single talent (J’Covan Brown), competed hard in every game, and snuck into the Tournament as a bubble team, where they were quickly bounced in the first round. In the end, though, we’ll never know.
And with that, we send Myck off to the NBA with good wishes while also borrowing this other applicable Kilmer quote: “Hope it was fun!”
“Let’s go, let’s go! Let’s go now! I’m walkin’ out that door. I want you all to trust me, and follow me out there…let’s go after that title now!”
The old saying goes that a leader with no followers is just a man out for a walk. And that’s exactly what Bud Kilmer was as he left the locker room at halftime of the winner-take-all showdown with Gilroy when, after pushing and pushing and pushing, his team finally had enough and quit on him.
That scene (and really, the way the rest of the movie plays out) provokes a lot of questions. Most notably, what happened to the rest of the coaches? Where did they disappear to? Who wrapped up Wendell’s knee and gave him crutches after he refused to take the shot? And since there was nobody to communicate with in the coaches’ box, why was Lance wearing a headset on the sideline? Moxon tells us he never played football again—why didn’t he start in the playoffs the next week? And where did Tweeder get multiple beers from in the immediate aftermath of the win? Was he stashing them in a stray playbook Shawshank-style, the same way Moxon kept his book concealed when he was the backup?
This could go on and on, but as a Longhorn fan, the scene evokes one question above the rest: Could this same thing happen to Rick Barnes?
In a way, with the recent transfers of Sheldon McClellan and Jaylen Bond—and with another one potentially looming in Julien Lewis—it’s already begun. It just hasn’t culminated in a halftime revolution…yet.
Like Kilmer, Barnes has undeniably achieved great success in Texas, but 15 years is a long time to be in one place, and the program appears to be headed in the wrong direction. And though his hardnosed methods have proven effective in the past, you have to think he’ll need to reinvent himself—at least in some capacity—to get things turned around. Can he do it? Does he possess the self-awareness that’s required to learn from his mistakes and evolve? That remains to be seen.
In the meantime, unlike the rest of Longhorn Nation, I’ll continue supporting him, believing he can get it done, hoping one day there will be a Rick Barnes statue that’s too heavy to move.
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You can contact Brent Stoller at hookemheadlines@gmail.com