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Profile of New Coach Darryl Dawkins
The irreverent former Sixer is a coach, at least
for now.
Can Dawkins be serious in new role?
Time has passed, something Darryl
Dawkins rarely did himself, and now the
man comes back to the Philadelphia area nearly a
quarter-century after his first appearance,
still looking for a place in this world.
Dawkins, the former professor of Interplanetary
Funkmanship, has been hired to coach the
Pennsylvania ValleyDawgs of the United States
Basketball League next summer. For those who
observed Dawkins during his 14 seasons in the
NBA, this doesn't seem like a very good idea.
It isn't exactly like putting the fox in the
henhouse. It's more like putting Snoop Doggy
Dogg behind the wheel of the police car. There's
a chance he could stop some crime, but you
wouldn't bet on it.
Put it this way: If Dawkins is indeed the coach
-- and six months is a long time from now --
don't expect the ValleyDawgs to lead the league
in curfew.
Dawk will be 42 in January, nearly 10 years
removed from his last NBA game. He played five
seasons in Italy, and came back for a brief
stint in the Continental Basketball Association
and then a short whirl with the Harlem
Globetrotters, lasting three months on a
"lifetime" contract with the Globies.
The Globetrotters represent many things, but at
the core they are a basketball team that
practices and plays nearly every day, and that
demands discipline and precision from its
employees. Clearly no place for Dawkins.
"He wasn't one of those 110 percent guys," said
Gene Shue, who was the 76ers' coach when an
18-year-old Dawkins was drafted out of high
school in 1975.
Dawkins was a big kid with immense talent, but
he was better known for giving nicknames to
himself (Chocolate Thunder) and his more
memorable dunks ("The Sexophonic Turbo Delight"
was one), for inventing two planets that
reflected his psychic disposition (Chocolate
Paradise and Lovetron), and for his rather
unconcerned approach to the demands of
professional basketball.
In his rookie year, playing on a wild team that
included Lloyd Free, George McGinnis, Fred
Carter and Doug Collins, Dawkins looked around
the locker room during one halftime break and
noticed several of his teammates with lit
cigarettes. Dawkins went to the drink cooler and
got a beer.
"Darryl, what the hell are you doing?" Shue
said.
"I saw these guys smoking," Dawkins said. "I
thought I might as well have a beer."
Today, Dawkins would be considered good,
wholesome entertainment in the NBA, if such a
league existed. He never went to jail, never
hurt anybody on purpose, never kicked a
cameraman, and never got a tattoo or dyed his
hair. He did pull a couple of rims from the
backboard, but that would be OK today, too.
Someone would just blame it on Mayor Rendell.
"I felt I was a little ahead of my time,"
Dawkins said recently. "My biggest problem was
they told me basketball was a game, and a game
is something you play for fun. So, I played for
fun.
"I enjoyed playing basketball every year of my
life until I met Harold Katz. He made my last
two years in Philadelphia miserable. If I missed
a shot, it was because I didn't want to play, or
wasn't concentrating, or had been out with some
girl. Hell, Harold was coming home later at
night than I was, but he didn't have to play. I
probably would have gone to Russia to play to
get away from him."
Dawkins came close. He went to the New Jersey
Nets in 1982, had a couple of productive years
under Larry Brown, but then drifted into the
margins of basketball. What could have been an
amazing career slipped away.
He returns to us now as a curiosity, as someone
who might be able to sell a few tickets to
minor-league basketball games. The ValleyDawgs
will play their home games at Lehigh University,
an expansion franchise in a league that moves
its teams around in search of a quick buck, or
any buck at all.
"Critics said I never lived up to my potential
and all that," Dawkins said. "But I came out of
high school and stayed in the NBA 14 years.
There are guys with big names -- like Toby
Knight or Bo Ellis or Keith Lee -- who didn't
last more than two or three years. So, I must
have done something right."
He did. He stood 6-foot-11 and weighed 285
pounds. In professional basketball, that's the
best line to have on your resume.
And Dawk was great fun. Even the coaches he
drove crazy liked him. How could you not -- in
retrospect?
"We'd be in the huddle, down by one, and Billy
Cunningham would be explaining this and that,"
Dawkins said, "and a nice-looking girl would
come by and I'd nudge Lloyd Free and say, 'Hey,
World. Did you see that girl there?' And Billy
would scream at me and say, 'Damn it, Darryl.
Get serious.' "
Well, it took a few decades, but Darryl is ready
to take Cunningham's advice. He wants to be the
coach in the huddle doing the explaining.
Dawkins helped his wife coach a girls' high
school team in New Jersey. Currently, he is
coaching the Winnipeg Cyclone in something
called the International Basketball Association.
Next, the ValleyDawgs.
Dawkins sees these jobs as stepping-stones. He
would like to get back in the NBA someday, maybe
as an assistant coach. After that, who knows?
Now, the time is finally right to be serious.
It will take someone with a harder heart than I
to say it's a little late.
©1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.