A Season Inside Read Online Free PDF Page B

What if Biedenbach came in briefly and he missed him? He waited. His suit, the only one he owned, was beginning to stick to him, the weather in North Carolina being warm in the springtime. The assistants kept saying they knew Biedenbach was coming in. Barnes nodded, famished and exhausted, but stubborn.
    At six o’clock, the assistants went home. They were sorry they had made a mistake about Biedenbach coming in. He must have gotten tied up because he hadn’t called in either. Barnes decided to wait just a little longer. Finally, at 7 P.M. , he gave up. Eleven hours was enough. He walked to the gym door, opened it, and in walked Eddie Biedenbach.
    Barnes had never met him, but he knew him from pictures. “Excuse me,” he said, “but you are Coach Biedenbach, aren’t you?”
    A look of horror crossed Biedenbach’s face. “Oh my God,” he said, “you’re Rick Barnes!”
    Biedenbach had forgotten the appointment. He felt so guilty he offered Barnes the job—for $2,500 a year—on the spot. That was all Barnes wanted. The wait had been worth it. From Davidson, he went to George Mason as Joe Harrington’s assistant coach and then to Alabama and Ohio State for one year each. When Harrington resigned in the spring of ’87 to take the job at Long Beach State, athletic director Jack Kvancz knew exactly who he wanted to hire.
    “When Rick was here as an assistant, I always thought he would be a great head coach,” Kvancz said. “When Joe left, I talked to some other people, but I knew I wanted Rick.”
    Harrington knew that too. The day he took the Long Beach job he called Barnes on the phone. “Pack your bags, Barney,” he said. “You’re gonna be a head coach.”
    He had held the title for six months by the time October 15 rolled around. He had already made it clear to his players that if they missed class, missed a meeting, missed anything, they would be in trouble. But the first practice was different. This made it real. The first game was five weeks away. For the moment though, Barnes was a rarity: a head basketball coach who had never once been second-guessed.
    There were, of course, many schools where October 15, while significant as the first day of practice, was not that big a deal. No midnight practices, no first years or last years, just another season with high expectations.
    One of those places was Duke. After struggling his first three years, Coach Mike Krzyzewski had put together one of the top programs in the country. In the four previous seasons, the Blue Devils had gone 108–30. They had played for the national championship in 1986; and in 1987, a so-called rebuilding year after the graduation of four seniors off the ’86 team, they went 24–9 and made it back to the round of sixteen.
    Now, with four starters back from that surprising team, there was Final Four talk around Duke again even though nationally, few people ranked Duke in the top ten. Top Twenty yes, top ten, no.
    But Duke was a confident team and no one on the team was more confident than Billy King. He had come to Duke three years earlier as a good-field, no-hit freshman. In other words, he could guard people, but he couldn’t shoot. That reputation had grown—in both directions. King was, to put it kindly, an awful shooter. He had hit less than 50 percent of his free throws in his career and anything other than a layup was an adventure for him.
    But oh could he play defense! He guarded point guards and power forwards and everyone in between. King was 6–6, quick enough to handle a little guy, big enough to handle people up to 6–8. He and Kevin Strickland, his roommate from day one at Duke, were the twoseniors on this team. Realistically, King knew that a player who can’t score in college isn’t too likely to play in the NBA. He would get his degree in political science in May and hoped for a career in television. With his good looks, easy smile, and quick, sharp wit, King was a natural for that profession. Or almost any