Brown Basketball
Legends
CHN's
Jon Teitel breaks in the new year with another set of interviews with former Ivy
League stars. This week he focuses on three
of Brown's all-time greatest athletes. Jim Turner was the 1986 Ivy
League Player of the Year. Michael Cingiser was not
only a three time All-Ivy Leaguer but he also was a coach at Brown for
10 seasons. Joseph Tebo was an All-Ivy League performer back in
the 50's.
Jim
Turner: Brown, 1982-1986, 1-time All-Ivy 1st-team, won 1 Ivy
title, 1986 Ivy Player of the Year.
1. If your playing days are already over, what are
you up to these days? I currently work as the Head of Debt Capital
Markets in North America for the French bank BNP Paribas. After
graduating from Brown in 1986 as Ivy Player of the Year and an Academic
All-American, I took a job in the Analyst program at Lehman Brothers.
After playing against future NBA players, I realized I needed to
concentrate on earning an MBA, and I earned an MBA from the Fuqua School
of Business at Duke University in 1990.
2. What was the best
moment of your college career? The best
moment was winning the Ivy title in 1986: it was the first time that a
Brown men’s basketball team had done so.
3. What are the
major differences between Ivy League play and other Division 1 play?
I woke up at 6:20
AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so I could get to my work-study
job at the campus cafeteria from 6:30-9:30 AM. I once had a sluggish
start in a game at Rhode Island because I fell soundly asleep during the
bus ride to the game. I do not think that Carmelo Anthony had that
issue when he played at Syracuse.
4. Who was the best player you ever played
against? Otis Thorpe of Providence College
(who went on to have a 17-year career in the NBA): my freshman welcome
to college basketball was this huge granite block of a man dunking on me
(I was just an 18-year old boy standing 6'9" and weighing 195 pounds).
The picture of the dunk was plastered on the front page of the sports
section of the Providence Journal. Three years later when Brad
Daugherty of North Carolina (future 5-time NBA All-Star) went to dunk on
me, I demonstrated that I had learned my freshman lesson: I hightailed
it away from the rim so as not to be in the picture!
5. What advice do you have for current Ivy League
players who are not sure what to do if they cannot make it to the pros?
One of my teammates is now the Attorney
General for the state of Rhode Island (Pat Lynch). You should go to an
Ivy League school for a career: pro basketball is a less likely outcome
(although certainly not impossible: look at Matt Maloney of Penn).
6. How did playing Ivy League basketball have an
influence on you? I arrived on campus as a
very naive kid on financial aid from a one-parent family. I left as the
Ivy League Player of the Year and member of an Ivy champion, and went on
to have a successful financial career after graduating. In short, Brown
changed my life.
7. What is the biggest change in the game that you have noticed from
the time you played until now? The three-point shot: I never would have
seen the ball in the paint had it been around when I played, as it gives
guards a large incentive to shoot from behind the arc.
Michael
Cingiser: Brown, 1959-1962, 3-time All-Ivy 1st-team, 2-time
All-American Honorable Mention, won 1 Ivy title as a coach.
1. What professional teams have you played for
since graduating? I graduated from Brown in 1962 and was drafted by the
Boston Celtics that year in the ninth round (the same year that the
Celtics picked future Hall-of-Famer John Havlicek in the first round).
2. If your playing days are already over, what are
you up to these days? I spent over 30 years teaching English and
coaching (21 at the high school level and 14 at the college level: the
last ten of those at Brown from 1981-1991). I retired in 1997 and have
been obliging my golf obsession ever since, as a player, caddie, and
caddie master.
3. What was the best moment of your professional
career? I did not play professionally, but there are two best coaching
moments: a 1968 playoff win against an undefeated team in the Nassau
County (Long Island) high school basketball tournament, and breaking the
first Penn/Princeton stranglehold on the Ivy League championship in 1986
(Cingiser led Brown to a 10-4 conference record en route to Brown’s one
and only men’s basketball title).
4. What was the best moment of your college
career? In the final game of my senior year, we beat a tournament-bound
Rhode Island team by 27 points in front of a sellout crowd at Marvel
Gym.
5. What are the major differences between the
professional game and the college game? Less and less at the
professional and major college level: neither resembles the basketball
of Red Auerbach, Red Holzman, John Wooden, Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, Joe
Mullaney, Don Haskins, etc. Due to the proliferation of games on
television, both professional and major college basketball have evolved
to a boring sameness: they see what the most successful teams do and
copy them. Each team defends the pick-and-roll the same way, breaks
zone presses the same way, attacks the 2-3 zone the same way, defends
out-of-bounds plays the same way, uses timeouts the same way, etc.
Virtually all of this sameness is based on physical strength and
athleticism, rather than on technique or finesse. Television’s impact
does not stop at scouting: the ESPN syndrome of dunks, three-point
shots, and fights reinforces the importance of only those abilities, so
the chest pass and mid-range jump shot are extinct at both the
professional and major college levels. I contend that if a game between
two top-20 college teams was shown on television, the cameras stayed off
the coaches, and the teams played shirts and skins, practically no fans
neutral to the two participating teams would be able to identify them.
There are no stars left in college: they all left for the NBA, and the
playing styles are so similar that they do not identify the teams (where
have you gone Loyola Marymount?!). The exception that proves the rule
is the world champion Detroit Pistons. They are a throwback team
because their star player is the leader because of his defensive
ability, not because he soars, slams, or excites. The rest of his team
takes its lead from that, and they do the fundamental things without
concern for individual scoring. They show up only on Sportscenter as
team contributors, not as high scoring stars.
6. What are the major differences between Ivy
League play and other Division 1 play? It’s not only Ivy League and
Division 1: there is also a difference between mid-major conferences and
other Division 1 teams. The success that so many of the mid-majors have
had in the NCAA Tournament has to do with playing a different game than
the majors have played against and seen all season. It mirrors the
Dream Team’s incompetence in the Olympics, where our players neither
recognize nor understand what the other teams are doing. The Ivies and
mid-majors have to play throwback basketball to succeed. They rarely
have a player to whom they can give the ball and get out of the way:
they all need to be a part of every action to succeed.
7. Who was the best player you ever played with?
Growing up as a player in the New York area, I played on the playgrounds
and in summer leagues (before stifling NCAA rules castrated them) with
and against many of the best of that era. However, the most fun I ever
had as a player was in six or so games I played alongside Dick McGuire
(the then-retired Hall-of-Fame point guard for the New York Knicks).
Every time he threw me a pass, it hit my hands like a feather and always
put me in position to shoot or take it to the basket. In one of those
games, I scored 41 points…in the first half!!
8. Who was the best player you ever played
against? Hard to say, but I had the honor of having two shots blocked
by Bill Russell, been stripped three times by Lenny Wilkens, and been
dunked on thunderously by Connie Hawkins and Julius Erving.
9. What advice do you have for current Ivy League
players who want to make it to the pros? Obviously, the NBA is a long
shot, but playing overseas can be rewarding and fulfilling. About six
of the players whom I coached at Brown went to Europe, Asia, or South
America to play. All did so with an ulterior motive: get a business
degree (at Trinity College in Ireland), learn Japanese, or perfect
Spanish speaking and comprehension. I once found myself sitting in the
home of a recruit and his parents. His father was dominating the
discussion, and finally demanded to know how many of my former players
were in the NBA. I told him none, but that there were a couple of dozen
in the ABA. He retorted that the American Basketball Association had
merged with the NBA long ago, to which I responded that I meant the
American Bar Association. Mom was thrilled, dad not so much. The kid
went to Texas, where he tried to walk on.
10. What advice do you have for current Ivy League
players who are not sure what to do if they cannot make it to the pros?
Assume you will not make it, and prepare for a career you will enjoy.
Then work your butt off to prove your assumption wrong: that’s a win-win
situation.
11. Who was the best coach you ever played for? I
only played for two coaches (Bob Jahelka in high school and Stan Ward at
Brown), and each of them had a profound influence on my life. Each had
my and my teammates’ best interests at heart, and neither put their
personal success before the educational value of participating in b
asketball.
I love and miss them both.
12. Who was the best coach you ever played
against? Unquestionably Joe Mullaney of Providence College (his 314
wins is #1 in school history, and he led the Los Angeles Lakers to the
1970 NBA Finals). Not only did he confound teams with his combination
defense, he maximized the skills of his players for the benefit of the
team. The best coach I ever coached against was Pete Carril of
Princeton, which surely makes me just one member of a very big club.
13. What players had the biggest influence on
you? Hall-of-Famer Tom Gola from La Salle (a 4-time All-American and
the NCAA’s all-time leader with 2201 rebounds) and Sihugo Green from
Duquesne (a 1954 1st-team All-America guard who led his team
to the NIT title and was picked by the Celtics ahead of Bill Russell in
the 1956 draft): both had great all-around games.
14. What are the best changes in the game that
you have noticed from the time you played until now? There are several:
widening the lane from six to twelve feet, the three-point line,
breakaway rims, a smaller ball for the women, the international
proliferation of the game, and the incredible athleticism of the
players.
15. What are the worst
changes in the game that you have noticed from the time you played until
now? There are several: television timeouts, elimination of the dunk in
warm-ups, elimination of the traveling and palming call in the NBA
(witness how many calls went against the United States in the Olympics
because we had to play the real basketball rules), the relaxing of those
rules at the college level, the over-the-back call whether or not there
is contact.
Joseph
Tebo: Brown, 1955-1958, 1-time All-Ivy 1st-team.
1. What professional teams have you played for
since graduating? The Springfield Acorns: Do not try to find them in
any history book.
2. If your playing
days are already over, what are you up to these days? My present job is
President/CEO of Trusonic (a company that provides business music and
messaging).
3. What was the
best moment of your professional career? When the lights went out and
the heat went off at the Springfield Armory!
4. What was the
best moment of your college career? Graduating
5. What are the
major differences between the professional game and the college game?
The college arenas were heated.
6. What are the
major differences between Ivy League play and other Division 1 play?
Smaller guys who are much slower.
7. Who was the
best player you ever played with? Hall-of-Famer Bob Cousy
8. Who was the
best player you ever played against? Chet Forte of Columbia (National
Player of the Year in 1957)
9. Who was the
best coach you ever played for? Gerry Alaimo (Brown coach from
1969-1978)
10. Who was the
best coach you ever played against? Hall-of-Fame Dartmouth coach Alvin
“Doggie” Julian
11. What advice do
you have for current Ivy League players who want to make it to the
pros? Shoot…a lot!
12. What advice do
you have for current Ivy League players who are not sure what to do if
they cannot make it to the pros? Get a job.
13. What players
have made the biggest influence on you? John Lee of Yale (3-time
All-Ivy 1st-team)
Learn
more about the author Jon Teitel and how to contact him here.
