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    Beyond the Boxscore

    Phi Slama Jama, the best team to never win a championship, and how one momentblocks Guy Lewis

    Chris Baldwin
    Mar 30, 2011 | 11:49 pm
    • Phi Slama Jama towered over the opposition.
    • Houston coach Guy Lewis led the Cougars to five Final Fours.
    • Clyde Drexler doesn't let not winning a college championship haunt him.

    They are the best team to never win a championship and Clyde Drexler can live with that.

    For while Phi Slama Jama inexplicably never cut down the nets, despite rolling to three consecutive Final Fours, this University of Houston juggernaut always had a title or six.

    "We attracted more nicknames and fanfare than any team in America," Drexler laughs, recalling the days when dunks ruled. "Those teams had a real aura about them. Everyone always noticed when we walked in a gym."

    ESPN recently did an attention-attracting documentary on the legacy of The Fab Five, another title-less team that changed college basketball more than a good dozen champions have. But long before The Fab Five, there was Phi Slama Jama bringing seismic shifts to the game that are still felt today. With the Final Four returning to Houston, the legacy of that run is being celebrated in a New York Times takeout and a number of events, including a Thursday night NCAA Salute-tied-in Jim Nantz-produced dinner at the Wortham Theater Center that will honor the still under-recognized architect of Phi Slama Jama and two other UH Final Four squads: coach Guy V. Lewis.

    But to see the full scope of Phi Slama Jama's impact, you have to step back from Houston and note how this group resonated far beyond the Bayou City and even the borders of Texas.

    Usually, NBA teams influence the college game. Phi Slama Jama changed the pros.

    I'll never forget how Magic Johnson extolled the virtues of Phi Slama Jama in one of my first interviews with him as a young journalist in East Lansing. Mich., after he retired from the NBA.

    "I loved those Phi Slama Jama teams," Magic said. "They knew how to entertain."

    Magic became the sweet-passing ringleader of the LA Lakers Showtime run in the 1980s, but even as he lived the fast-breaking California high life, he kept an eye on the high flyers in Houston.

    And how could he not? If you played basketball, you couldn't help but get into Hakeem (then Akeem), The Glide, Michael Young and Larry Micheaux's traveling show. Not long removed from an era when the dunk was outlawed in college basketball, Phi Slama Jama set all sorts of records for rim rattling and by the time the 1982-83 season rolled around, they were taking apart teams as much as beating them, leading the country in victory margin.

    A still somewhat-raw Hakeem Olajuwon would get 10 blocks in a game and then do it again, several games later.

    "We intimidated teams," Drexler says. "There was a lot of talent on the floor."

    In the 1983 Final Four, Phi Slama Jama would come from eight points down in the second half and explode past Louisville's The Doctors of Dunk squad 94-81 in what's still considered one of the most entertaining Final Four semifinal games of all time. Olajuwon's line? A mere 21 points, 22 rebounds and eight blocked shots.

    A championship seemed like a given. Then Lorenzo Charles' dunk-from-an-air-ball, Jim Valvano's crazy sprint, North Carolina State and — let's be honest — Guy Lewis' stall happened.

    If it haunts, Drexler would never admit it.

    "You want to win a college championship," Drexler says now. "But making it to three straight Final Fours might be an even greater feat than winning one. Especially back in those days. You only played other really good teams in the tournament."

    A Good Guy

    Never finishing the deal in college never stuck to Olajuwon or Drexler, but it's certainly impacted Lewis' legacy. Basketball aficionados in Houston understand what a pioneering coach he was, but Lewis still somehow isn't in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

    And while the latest Hall of Fame class will be announced in Houston Final Four weekend, there will be no storybook hometown moment. Lewis was not selected as one of the 12 finalists.

    You get the idea that proud UH alum Jim Nantz is making one more attempt to right the long-time Hall wrong by choosing to highlight the now 89-year-old coach in what's essentially the college basketball version (or as close as he could get) to the Super Bowl kickoff the CBS commentator held in H-Town in 2004.

    "Guy Lewis is one of the great coaches of all time," Nantz told me in one his Houston visits. "If you really step back and look at his legacy, it's mind boggling."

    Twenty seven straight winning seasons, 592 wins overall, five Final Fours worth of amazing. Coach of three of the Top 50 NBA players of all time — Olajuwon, Drexler and Elivin Hayes — amazing. Dreamed up The Game of the Century at the Astrodome amazing.

    But numbers could never completely define the man who would tell sports writers who denounced Phi Slama Jama's style that the dunk was "a high-percentage shot." The man who'd motivate with stories in an era when so many coaches still relied on fear.

    "Coach would tell us at the beginning of every season that he was going to the Final Four no matter what," Drexler laughs, with Lewis referring to the fact that he'd be at the coach's convention held Final Four week whether the Cougars were there or not. "He'd say it was up to us, if we wanted to come along or not."

    In a time in America when a coach could make the kind of societal impact that Duke's Mike Krzyzewski only thinks he makes now, Lewis became the first Southern coach to integrate his team. He wanted to win sure. But all coaches want to win and Lewis took one of the first stands when prejudice still ruled in sports.

    Should coming up one win short in several Marches overshadow that?

    The joys of Phi Jama Slama and Guy Lewis' story will get plenty of Houston run this Final Four week. The problem is, they need more national run.

    Phi Jama Slama was never just a Houston story. And it's time to recognize that.

    "People talk to me about that team all across the country," Drexler says. Certain teams just capture imaginations.

    The best team to never win a championship is much more than just that.

    Editor's note: Jim Nantz's Guy Lewis tribute benefits the Nantz National Alzheimer Center at Methodist Hospital. Read the CultureMap story that broke the news of the event.

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    Beyond the Boxscore

    Houston in line to get more Final Fours after 2016: NCAA officials expect it tobecome a regular

    Chris Baldwin
    Apr 5, 2011 | 7:07 pm
    • The success of Bracket Town meant almost as much to the NCAA as the success atReliant Stadium.
      Photo by Bruce Bennett
    • NCAA official Greg Shaheen praised Houston's Final Four efforts.
    • Kemba Walker wasn't the only one who flew high at this Final Four.
      Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

    When even NCAA officials are making jokes about the lowest-scoring NCAA Championship Game since 1949, you know they had a good time in Houston.

    That's what happens in the Final Four wrap-up press conference Tuesday. Greg Shaheen — the highest-ranking NCAA official in the room — opens his portion with a crack about the offensive woes Monday night.

    Shaheen notes that if more people had the motor shown by Houston Final Four Local Organizing Committee interim executive director Doug Hall then "we might have had a game last night where both teams scored 60 points."

    "You were on overdrive," Shaheen says to Hall.

    Yes, there is a whole lot of love in the room when the Houston LOC and the NCAA meet for the last time before this 2011 Final Four becomes part of the record books — and thoughts begin to slowly turn to the 2016 Final Four that will be held in Houston and the 2015 regional at Reliant Stadium before that.

    It does not figure to end in 2016 though. Shaheen — the NCAA's interim executive vice president of championships and alliances — tells CutureMap he expects there will be even more Final Fours in Houston in the future.

    "I don't see any reason why Houston wouldn't become a regular part of our rotation," Shaheen says.

    Shaheen would be the first to say that the NCAA's Basketball Committee will make the final call like usual on future sites, but he says the committee is thrilled with Houston's performance.

    "This is what a showcase event should look like," Shaheen says of a Houston event that set the Final Four record for total attendance (145,747 at the two nights of games) and also drew an estimated 140,000 to the Big Dance Concert Series (the concert figure is based on an "approximation" of the number of people who came through Discovery Green during all three concerts that lasted several hours each) and another 49,000 to Bracket Town at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "This is what a national championship should feel like.

    "It should be exhausting the next morning and be a seamless effort."

    Later Shaheen quips, "UConn is not the only winner here."

    Instead, Texas might be the biggest winner of all. For the Lone Star State has emerged as the NCAA's big event darling. Texas will host three Final Fours in a six-year stretch (Houston in 2011 and 2016, Dallas in 2014). And that type of dominance is not expected to end anytime soon either.

    "In the modern era, for both the men's and women's championships, I don't know that any state has emerged like Texas," Shaheen says. "And I think you have to include San Antonio (host of the 1998, 2004 and 2008 Final Fours) in that equation as well. There are a lot of things Texas offers the championships that are unique."

    Standing off to the side in the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency — which served as the headquarters for the coaches convention during Final Four week, housing all the big names who weren't coaching in the games — Robert Dale Morgan is sure of what makes Houston such a lure.

    Morgan, the president and executive director of the 2011 Houston Final Four LOC, held a similar position for Houston's 2004 Super Bowl and many credit his vision with helping the city see its big sports event potential, with a Super Bowl, Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Game, Major League Soccer All-Star Game and now a Final Four all having been held here since 2004. Not that Morgan wants that recognition.

    He chooses to sit in the crowd rather than on the stage at the wrap-up press conference. He probably could have blended in to, wearing a Houston Final Four hat with his suit, if so many people on the stage didn't point him out. Bob Beauchamp, chairman of the Houston Final Four LOC, calls Morgan, "the best in the business."

    "Having six million people who care," Morgan says in explaining how Houston's positioned itself as the host city with the most. "Having a dozen Fortune 500 companies. And oh by the way, we have really great weather 300 days out of the year."

    Trash Talk Between Friends

    Houston hands off the Final Four to New Orleans, next year's host. The transition is a bit of intentional symbolism by the NCAA which wants to recognize how closely the two cities are linked and the Bayou City's role in helping after Hurricane Katrina.

    This will be the fifth Final Four that New Orleans has hosted and the city's LOC executive director John Koerner can't help but point out to Houston, the new city in "the rotation," how great every one of the NCAA Championship Games held in the Big Easy has been.

    "New Orleans has hosted some of the most memorable finals ever," Koerner says. "We had Michael Jordan's shot, Keith Smart's shot, Chris Webber's infamous timeout and Hakim Warrick's block at the buzzer."

    And from its first Final Four, Houston has? Well, a whole lot of clangs — and Butler's record-low 18.8 percent shooting.

    Not that anyone in the NCAA is holding it against the Bayou City. The organization credentialed 1,387 media members for this Final Four, loved the visibility brought about by having it in one of the America's biggest cities. Even if you have to wonder how much everyone was into it locally. The TV rating in Houston for the unsightly Butler-UConn national championship game only ranked 30th out of the 56 major media markets.

    Shaheen's not dwelling on that. Instead, he's sticking around Houston to take in more of the city without the pressures of the mega event.

    "I don't have a flight home," Shaheen says, knowing that Southwest Airlines' grounded jets have made it much harder than usual to land one last minute. "So I'll be staying here two, three, four, five more days. I may be looking to get an apartment and just become a resident."

    Shaheen laughs. Who says NCAA suits don't have a sense of humor?

    When they are happily in Houston, they sure do.

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