John Chaney, the legendary Temple University basketball coach, the very face of the school on North Broad Street for a generation and an icon of his sport, passed away Friday, age 89.
Chaney had led Temple to five appearances in the NCAA Elite Eight, the last trip in 2001, the year Chaney was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In addition to 17 trips to the NCAA tournament with the Owls, Chaney won a Division II national title at Cheyney University.
Known for his sometimes fiery temperament, his early morning practices, his unique matchup zone defense, his aversion to turnovers, and his fierce devotion to offering a hand to lift those who most needed a lift, Chaney retired in 2006 after winning 741 games between Cheyney and Temple.
“A man who lived his life the way he wanted, and will be remembered for his service,” said Simon Gratz High coach Lynard Stewart, who played for Chaney at Temple.
A flat-out funny man. His press conferences always were can’t-miss affairs — not just the time Chaney stormed into a John Calipari press conference after a Temple-Massachusetts game, famously yelling at Calipari, “I’ll kill you.”
His morning practices, usually from about dawn to 8 a.m., were part of the Chaney experience. The Owls would be working on something, proceeding as normal, when Chaney would say, “Hold up, hold up …” And then this man would take his players for a journey lasting many minutes, offering not just life lessons, but applying life to basketball.
He liked his basketball plain. Simple passes. Being in the right spot, passing to the right man.
“He’s open for a reason,” he’d tell guards who passed to a big man who dropped the ball or missed an open shot.
“Guard him like a windshield wiper,” he’d tell a forward charged with a big defensive assignment during the NCAA tournament, where a matchup with Temple was a dreaded ordeal for an opponent.
Off the court, Chaney made his greatest impact as a public face of opposition to NCAA initial-eligibility standards. Great Temple players such as Eddie Jones and Aaron McKie, now the Owls coach, were ineligible to play as freshmen. Chaney didn’t just take them, he championed them.
Dan Leibovitz, a Chaney assistant coach, now associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, watched his boss up close and quickly came to believe he was in the presence of genius.
“People think of the complexity of the zone,” Leibovitz said. “But in basketball his genius was really simplicity. We were great because of the simple things, and they were non-negotiable, and they were the same from the first practice to the last day of the season.”
Everyone knew their roles, from stars to managers.
“His experience in the game, his wisdom in the game, it became little bit of the cliche in sports, but he really did have the ability to almost see things in slow motion, and see all ten pieces on the floor,” Leibovitz said, remembering some days when they’d lose a game on the road, get off a flight. No film of the game to watch yet.
“We’d walk in the gym, put the players on the floor in the street clothes and just recreate the situations,” Leibovitz said. “He would move the pieces. There were some in the game that could do, but there aren’t many.”
His former assistant added, “I do believe his greatest mission was to try to change our players’ lives. They didn’t always understand what was in front of them, but he did. It was a daily fight, and i think it was part of a larger cause.”
Fran Dunphy, who succeeded Chaney as Temple’s coach, talked to him last week for his birthday. Chaney had been in the hospital.
“I was hoping he was going to get home and be with us for a lot longer,” Dunphy said. “So the reality hit and it’s a tough situation, but I think about the life that he led and the people that he touched, and what an honor it was to know him and what an honor it was to succeed him.”
“It sounds crazy, and it sounds pollyanna-ish, but he’s one of those guys you thought, he’s just going to be around forever,” said Phil Martelli, a great Chaney rival when Martelli coached St. Joseph’s. Martelli had faced Chaney’s teams at Cheyney when he played at Widener.
“There are a lot of healthy egos in basketball, but when you slice it down, there are few new things,” Martelli said. “The Princeton offense, and John Chaney’s zone defense, they were new … The thing that got you, you’d think, ‘I’ve got this.’ You really had no idea of the answers, because you didn’t know the questions. You couldn’t even put together a scout team to try to simulate it.”
There were battles, famously. Goon-gate wasn’t pretty, Chaney looking to send a message during a St. Joe’s game, a broken bone the result. And going after Calipari — that film clip lives on.
“Coach Chaney and I fought every game we competed – as everyone knows, sometimes literally – but in the end he was my friend,” Calipari said Friday. “Throughout my career, we would talk about basketball and life. I will miss those talks and I will miss my friend.”
“The man was at the top of his profession, and not afraid to voice his opinion, whether it was the popular opinion or not — you’re going to get a lot of interest,” Ray Cella said of being in charge of the Atlantic Ten weekly teleconferences from 1990 to Chaney’s retirement.
First up every week, John Chaney. Each A-10 coach got 10 minutes.
“He always got 15,” Cella said, adding that he didn’t always agree with every Chaney opinion, but “I respected the man more than I could tell you. If I had a kid who could play basketball, I’d sent him to Temple. I knew he would be taken care of. The man wasn’t afraid.”
“I feel like a huge chunk of of my professional life and history just died,’’ said former Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno. “He ended every conversation with me, regardless of content, with, ‘I love you.’ “
Leibovitz said he’d stand at practice listening to his boss quoting history and great work of art, poetry from Langston Hughes and Yeats — “and put it in context, so he could teach from it. It was remarkable.”
This was a man who was told to go to the wood shop, that academic classes weren’t for him at Ben Franklin High. His own basketball coach, Sam Browne, saw it differently. Chaney never forgot this man who believed in him. “My great white father,” Chaney called Browne.
Yet no Big 5 schools recruited the Public League player of the year, which meant Chaney went to Bethune-Cookman. Racial quotas in the NBA sent this man to the Eastern League, the next best option, where Chaney was a star.
Even during pickup games when he began coaching Temple, Chaney was Chaney. “Timeout,” he once yelled during a lunchtime game, seeing no other options.
“I talked to him on his birthday, last Thursday,” Leibovitz said. “We had a good laugh. I said he had proven you could drink all the beer and eat all the ribs and all the peanuts and still live to be 89.”
Staff writer Joe Juliano contributed to this story, which is developing and will be updated.
