That's my Game! Big House on Coach John McLendon - Father of Black College & Fast Break Basketball
John McLendon was a mentor and a great friend to my dad, Clarence "Big House" Gaines. McLendon presented my dad when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a Coach in 1982. There are many stories that I can tell you about Coach Mac, but I prefer you hear my father's voice and thoughts about Coach McLendon.The video "Big House & Coach Mac" was created for a middle school presentation. I made a point of telling the kids that you can't learn about Big House without knowing about Coach McLendon (My father's comments about Coach Mac start at 6 minute mark). Dad talks about how McLendon shared his knowledge, their joint recruiting trips as rival coaches, fast break basketball, NAIA District 29 (District for all Historical Black Colleges and Universities in 1950's & 60's), McLendon's great Tennessee A&I teams, and the significance of getting beat like a drum by one of McLendon's teams when he was coaching at North Carolina College for Negroes, now NCCU.
Big House on his relationship with John McLendon: "It was an excellent relationship. It was a heck of a learning experience for me about basketball and life. John was 8/9 years older and he helped me develop a sense of professionalism that really paid off. It wasn't a matter that these men of color couldn't play (coach) basketball, they just needed an opportunity."
Shortly before my father died, his book, "They Call Me Big House" was released. Chapter 6 is dedicated to Coach Mac - "Coach John McLendon Changes the Way Basketball is Played." Excerpts from Chapter 6 follow:
The inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, might not recognize his game of slow walking and precise passing as it is played today. The improver of basketball, Coach John McLendon, would recognize the fast-breaking, running and shooting game that is typical of today's college and professional teams. He would smile and say. "That's my game!"
While in college, John was not allowed to play varsity basketball because of segregation rules barring on-court competition between blacks and whites. Instead of playing, he sat down with famous Kansas coach Forrest "Phog" Allen to learn about the game. When John wasn't quizzing Coach Allen, he was talking to the man himself, Dr. Naismith, who had been hired by Kansas as a professor of physical education.
John's first job after college came in 1935 when Dr. Naismith helped him get a job as coach of the black team in a mixed-race high school. Two years later, John found a job as assistant coach at the North Carolina College for Negroes (now named North Carolina Central University) in Durham. In 1940, he was named head basketball coach.
It was in Durham where I first got to know John in the fall of 1945. I had known about him when I was a student at Morgan State, but I had done little more than nod at him before and after games.
Physically, John McLendon was an unimposing man, only 5'8" and 135 pounds. No basketball coach in his right mind would have picked him for even a junior-varsity high-school team. Shoot, he wouldn't have been picked for a schoolyard pickup game. John was too short, too skinny, and too mild looking.
But John had quick eyes. He saw everything that was going on around him, which is necessary in a basketball player. The best thing John had going for him was his mind. He had one of the best-organized basketball minds I have ever seen. He was able to motivate his players to do just about anything possible with a basketball. His championships prove that.
He also had the ability to convince college administrators to do just about anything he wanted. The (CIAA) tournament he helped create proves that. John had a great mind for behind-the-scenes maneuvering that would go far beyond just organizing the CIAA tournament. In a few years, he would use his skills of organizing and pressuring to suggest changes to the white basketball sanctioning bodies that would result in them finally accepting black basketball teams into their tournaments.
It was after John's team whipped my team's butt 119-65 in 1949 that I made him my friend rather than my opponent. I decided then and there that I might not be able to beat him on the basketball court, but I could learn a lot from him about how to beat other people.
What I learned-what everyone in basketball learned-was how to play the high-speed style of basketball. Until John McLendon came along, when a team sank a basket at one end of the court, they leisurely trotted back to defend their goal. While the defending team was easing into position, the attacking team was walking back up the court with the guards eyeing the defense and making a selection about which moves their team would employ to get close to the basket. It might be 30 seconds before the attacking team even walked close enough to the goal to begin attacking the basket.
John read over the rules and saw a way he could put his stamp on the game. He saw nothing in the rules that prevented him from drastically speeding up the game. As soon as the ball came out of the net after his opponent had scored, one of his players would retrieve it and then toss it up the court to a teammate, who would pass it on to a shooter running full tilt toward the basket. He called it a "fast-break."
John McLendon turned a somewhat mild passing game into a running game. The effect was dramatic. Coaches had to change their practices to include a lot more running and conditioning just so their teams would not become exhausted before the game was over. We had to teach how to defend on the run, how a defensive player could take away the ball from a fast-moving, advancing player without fouling him.
John could play the opposite kind of game, too. Dean Smith, retired coach of the University of North Carolina, is credited with the invention of the game-slowing four-corners offense. Dean and John were not coaching contemporaries, but John McLendon's North Carolina College Eagles were using that four-corners offense a good 15 years before Dean Smith's Tar Heels. John was using both the fast break and the four-courners offenses against every team he played in the '40's and '50s, before Dean Smith was even elevated to head coach at UNC in the '60s.
I feel confident in saying that what is accepted as standard basketball in today at both the college and professional levels was introduced into the game by John McLendon.
The best decision I ever made in my career was teaming up with John for recruiting trips in the late 1940s and early 1950s. John thought we were riding together to save gas money, but the truth is that I wanted to get him alone to talk about basketball plays, strategy on the court, and how to motivate players to do exactly what I wanted them to do when I wanted them to do it. John seemed to have no trouble with all those coaching skills, while his opponents were standing around scratching our heads as his teams ran up the score on us.
How good was John McLendon as a basketball coach. His teams won 264 and lost only 60 while he was at North Carolina College (NCCU). He won eight CIAA tournaments between 1941 and 1952. He moved on to Hampton Institute and won 32 and lost only 14. Then he moved on to Tennessee A&I State University in Nashville, where he won 149 games and lost only 20. While at Tennessee State, he won three straight National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) championships.
His basketball coaching was amazing, but so where his negotiating skills. The road to integrating the NAIA championship was rocky, and the deft political maneuvering the black coaches used to accomplish it is interesting. And right in the middle of all of that was my friend, John McLendon.
The first crack in officially sanctioned segregation in college basketball appeared in 1946, just after thousands of young black men began to reenter society after fighting in World War II. In one of the first postwar college tournaments, a forward playing for a majority white school from Iowa was not allowed to participate in an National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball (NAIB) tournament because he was black.
The callous treatment of the black player, who was a war veteran, outraged some NAIB members, including Al Duer, the white athletic director of George Pepperdine College. Almost immediately after the tournament was over, Duer wrote to the NAIB executive secretary that he was "ashamed" the player had been excluded from play.
By 1947, the pressure increased when the United States Olympic Committee told the NAIB that its members would not be allowed to participate in the upcoming Olympic trials because of their stance against black players.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back--in a good way. In a vote taken just two days before that year's tournament was to begin, the NAIB board voted to allow black players on the court. In that tournament, a reserve guard playing for Indiana State University became the first black player to play in an NAIB postseason tournament. The coach of that team in 1947 was John Wooden, who would go on to win 10 NCAA championships, including seven in a row starting in 1966.
But discrimination did not end just because the NAIB decided to allow a black player on the court with white players. Allowing one or two black players on a white team was much different than allowing entire teams of black players from small black colleges into the tournaments. That was still banned by the both the NCAA and the NAIB.
In 1950, three coaches from the CIAA--Eddie Jackson of Howard University, Harry Jefferson of Virginia State College, and John McLendon of North Carolina College-- started lobbying both the NCAA and the NAIB to allow black colleges to play in their national tournaments. These three coaches started with a very large endorsement. They secured the unanimous support of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) to allow black colleges to compete in postseason tournaments with the white college teams.
There was resistance from both associations. The NCAA's board of directors flatly turned down the idea when they were approached by the three black colleges. The excuse the NCAA gave was that the organization had no mechanism to include small schools. The real reason might have been even more basic and something that Jackie Robinson would have understood. One NCAA official told Coach McLendon that "the fans might not accept or appreciate the kind of game you play, and your coaches might not be competent enough."
The black college coaches where not going to simply walk away. Instead, they approached the NAIB, which was then headed by Duer as executive secretary. To move matters along, Mack Greene, the athletic director at Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, applied for membership in the NAIB.
Duer and Greene met several times in 1951, with Duer warning that basketball fans in the NAIB's hometown of Kansas City might not be ready to see a team of black players on the floor in a national tournament. Greene replied, "Some few fans may be lacking in the training for tolerance and decency, but we believe they have a conscience, and we know their conscience is on our side."
On March 12, 1952, the NAIB's board of directors approved membership for all black colleges that met the same standards as white colleges. They also approved recognition of a tournament then sponsored by the black colleges and agreed that the winner of that tournament would be eligible to compete in the NAIB National tournament in Kansas City.
Greene wrote to the coaches at small black colleges a letter in which he said, "the door is now open to all colleges for Negroes to world competition in basketball. Let's prepare ourselves for all that it means!"
While it is true that that NAIB opened the door to the small black colleges, they also installed a screen door through which all the black colleges had to pass but that the white colleges could bypass.
To handle the application of the black colleges to the NAIB, their executive committee created an at-large district--District 29--into which all of the black college teams were placed. I don't think that most of us black coaches thought much about it at the the time, but what the NAIB really did was create a more palatable type of segregation. All of the black colleges, no matter where they were located geographically, were put into District 29. In effect, rather than allowing the black colleges to compete against the white colleges on a regional basis, the black colleges decided their own national championship team, then sent that team to the Kansas City championship play-off. The black colleges eliminated each other to get one national-champion school, while all of the other members of the NAIA (which changed its name from the NAIB in the middle of this (1952) sent regional champions.
The winner of that first District 29 championship in 1953 was Tennessee A&I State University, coached by Clarence Cash. When the team--described in a magazine as having "extra protective cutaneous pigmentation"--took the court, they were met not with boos but rousing cheers of welcome, as loud or louder than the 31 white teams at the tournament received.
The Tennessee State team won its first and second rounds but was defeated in the quarterfinals.
Once allowed to compete on a national level, the small black colleges proved their worth. Tennessee State, coached by John McLendon, won the NAIA national title in 1957, 1958, and 1959, the first time in college basketball history that any team--white or black---had won a national championship three consecutive times. It was only four years earlier that the first black team had even been permitted on the Kansas City floor.
The success of the NAIA tournament in Kansas City did not go unnoticed by the NCAA. In 1957, the board that had once told black coaches that fans would not appreciate their kind of play formed their own small-college tournament with no racial restrictions. The tournament would eventually become the Division II, or small-college, championship.
The NCAA would not have changed their stubborn stand on even creating a tournament for small colleges if not for that handful of black coaches and an even smaller handful of white college and sports administrators who realized the time had come to let black athletes play against white athletes.
If not for coaches like John McLendon, Eddie Jackson, Harry Jefferson, and Mack Greene--men who were never given the chance to play or coach at the highest levels of college or professional basketball themselves--there might never have been national college tournaments for black players to showcase their talents for the professional scouts.
My friend John McLendon later added another first to his resume by becoming the first black professional coach, joining the George Steinbrenner owned American Basketball League's Cleveland Pipers in 1962. His contributions to basketball were recognized in time, and he was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979. He died in October, 1999. I am proud to have known him and to have called him my friend. Whenever the CIAA tournament rolls around in February, I still look for him, though I know he is not there. All of us in black college basketball greatly miss the man who changed the game forever.
Books and Articles on Coach John McLendon:
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