Elvin vs. Alcindor in The Game

From the Houston Chronicle, December 18, 1998
by Fran Blinebury:

There are the numbers. Fifteen seasons of 20 or more wins. Three seasons when the win total was at least 30. A career record of 592-279 in 30 years on the job. Fourteen trips to the NCAA Tournament and a 26-18 mark in the big dance. Five trips to the Final Four. Two times playing for the national championship. Twenty-nine players drafted by the NBA, 11 of them in the first round.

There are the names. Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon, Don Chaney, Clyde Drexler, Otis Birdsong, Louis Dunbar, Gary Phillips, Ken Spain, Rob Williams, Michael Young.

There is The Game. Jan. 20, 1968. A seminal date in college basketball. Houston 71, UCLA 69 before 52,693 at the Astrodome.

That is a Hall of Fame resume. Yet Guy Lewis is not enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Hasn't even made it past the screening committee to get his name on the ballot.

"It's one of the great injustices in the game today," said Hayes, the Big E and a member of the Hall of Fame. "The time is overdue when Guy Lewis should be recognized."

Yet on this year's list of 11 nominees, the four coaches up for election are the well-known names of Denny Crum, Gene Shue, Chuck Daly and longtime Italian coach Caesar Rubini.

It serves no productive purpose to pick apart the accomplishments of the nominees. Each has his merits. Crum has won a pair of NCAA championships at Louisville. Daly won back-to-back NBA titles in Detroit and coached the U.S. Olympic Dream Team to the gold medal in 1992. Shue has taken part -- as a player and coach -- in more NBA games than anyone. Rubini is regarded as one of the top coaches in international circles. The point is merely that Lewis' record can match up to any of them.

"Just look at the numbers," Hayes said.

More than just wins and losses

Then look beyond the numbers and you will see Lewis as a visionary who might have done more to change and shape the college and pro games than anyone.

It was Lewis who integrated the game in the South, when he convinced a couple of Louisiana kids named Hayes and Chaney to leave home and play their college ball at a major university in Houston.

"It was an experience that changed my life," Hayes said. "But it was also something that, by Guy Lewis taking the first step, eventually went on to change a lot of other lives.

"Growing up where I did in northeastern Louisiana, playing and going to school at a place like Houston wasn't something that ever crossed my mind. Here was a person who changed your perception of reality and the way things ought to be. Here was a man giving you an opportunity when everybody else was just pushing you to the back of the bus."

When Lewis opened the door to black players at Houston, the domino effect was felt from coast to coast. And when Lewis toiled behind the scenes to put together the famous "Game of the Century" showdown against mighty UCLA, he took college basketball on a quantum leap. That magical night at the Astrodome transformed the game from a secret passion for hoop aficionados into a national mania. He proved Texas was a viable market for basketball and today there are three NBA franchises in the state.

Yet Lewis remains on the outside of the Hall of Fame.

Not even placed on ballot

How?

Nobody bothered to submit Lewis' name until 1992 and in each of the past two years, the Hall's seven-man screening committee has not put him on the ballot.

"It could be a classic case of someone who just falls through the cracks in the system," said Hall of Fame spokesman Robin Deutsch.

Why? Maybe it is our preoccupation with winning it all. Because despite five trips to the Final Four and two appearances in the title game, Lewis' teams never won the national championship. But should that gap devalue all of a man's accomplishments?

Maybe it is the silly old notion that all Lewis did was roll out the balls and watch his players run up and down the court.

“That stuff still bothers me," Hayes said. "Because I scored over 27,000 points in the NBA doing the same things that Guy Lewis taught me right out of high school."

Maybe it is the stigma from the 1983 championship game loss to North Carolina State when Lorenzo Charles caught Derek Whittenburg's air ball and slam dunked the Cougars' dreams. One game, one loss. Other respected coaches who were in Albuquerque that night say they would have employed the same strategy as Lewis, trying to run down the clock with an exhausted team.

There are 197 individuals enshrined in the Hall of Fame and 47 are coaches. Names such as John Wooden, Phog Allen, Hank Iba and Bob Knight.

Guy Lewis belongs with them. There are the numbers. There are the names. There is The Game. And so much more.

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