RICHARD PITINO – Page 9 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Message Seems Clear to Vikes GM, Coach

Posted on May 21, 2020May 21, 2020 by David Shama

Enjoy a Thursday notes column that even includes Montana travel.

The Vikings’ Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer are believed to be the only general manager and head coach combo in the 32-team NFL working on one-year contracts.

It appears ownership wants to see how the 2020 season plays out before deciding on the futures of Spielman who has been the GM since 2012 and Zimmer who was hired in 2014. The two have led Minnesota to two division championships, two playoff wins, and one NFC title game appearance in six years.

While the Vikings have done some offseason payroll trimming to create cap space, it’s unlikely money is preventing ownership from making extended contract commitments to their longtime leaders. The Wilf family, including Zygi Wilf, wants excellence on the field including the biggest prize—a Super Bowl appearance for their franchise which last appeared in the big game in 1977.

Former Viking defensive lineman Bob Lurtsema first met Zygi when he played in New York for the Giants. He quickly learned Zygi is a passionate pro football fan. Lurtsema said this week: “Money is not an obstacle (with the Vikings). He will do anything to have a winner. He’s a fan.”

Lurtsema isn’t surprised the Vikings haven’t re-signed defensive end Everson Griffen this offseason. He said Griffen, who played 10 seasons with Minnesota before declaring free agency earlier this year, became preoccupied with sacks in 2019 and made too many “critical mistakes.” Lurtsema believes Griffen sometimes was not in position to make the correct move coming off the line of scrimmage. “I wouldn’t have signed him (again),” Lurtsema said.

Numerous sources are praising the work ethic of Vikings 2020 first round draft choice Justin Jefferson, who is expected to replace departed star wide receiver Stefon Diggs. “He (Jefferson) sounds like an old-time player with his attitude,” Lurtsema said.

The Vikings will have a changed wide receiver roster in training camp that also includes fifth round draft choice K.J. Osborn and free agent signee Tajaé Sharpe.

Adam Thielen, who in 2020 starts his seventh season as a standout WR with the Vikings, can be a leader and he said this week the first step is to earn trust with newcomers. “I know that I’ve been able to learn from some veterans that have come before me of how they handled…things, and how they helped me become the player that I am,” Thielen said.

Thielen acknowledged it takes time for a quarterback and receivers to become most comfortable with each other. This will be quarterback Kirk Cousins’ third season with Minnesota. “He has a better understanding of where I am going to be, and how I am going to run my routes, and I have a better understanding of how he likes certain things done,” Thielen said.

Hopkins boys’ basketball coach Ken Novak told Sports Headliners it was he who first made the connection between Jeff Mailhot and Gophers head coach Richard Pitino. Earlier this spring Mailhot, who is a Minneapolis native and was an assistant coach last season at Iona, asked Novak to contact Pitino about the opening on the Minnesota staff created by the departure of Rob Jeter to Western Illinois. “Jeff was interested in the job,” Novak said.

Pitino announced Monday he had hired Mailhot, who has over a decade of college coaching experience including junior college teams. CoachStat.net once named him the top junior college assistant coach. Mailhot played for Novak at Hopkins and later was an assistant coach for the Royals. Word is Mailhot found himself looking for another opportunity when Pitino’s father, Rick Pitino, took over this spring at Iona, and wanted his own assistants.

As a Minnesota native, Mailhot presumably will have a focus on recruiting the state. Novak believes his protégé will be a high-level recruiter. “First of all, he gets along with everybody,” Novak said. “He does well with relationships. He’s got a work ethic. He loves the game of basketball.”

Novak has seen a number of his Royals players go on to play for the Gophers, but none for awhile. He hopes the Mailhot hire will re-ignite the Hopkins-Gophers connection. “I will encourage them (Hopkins players) but I won’t push them,” Novak said.

Chet Holmgren, the five-star basketball player at Minnehaha Academy who is among the most coveted college recruits in the country for the class of 2021, lives in the Hopkins school district but Novak said there has never been discussion about him playing for the Royals. The 7-foot Holmgren has a sister, Alexandra Holmgren, who is over 6-foot-5 and played volleyball for the Royals last season as a sophomore.

It was 20 years ago this week that the Timberwolves’ Malik Sealy died in a car crash after leaving Kevin Garnett’s birthday party. In Sealy’s honor, the team retired his No. 2 jersey.

Steve Erban’s Stillwater based Creative Charters, organizers of Gophers, Kentucky Derby and other fan trips for decades, has a new offering of a Montana experience featuring fly fishing, golf and more this summer. Early Bird specials with a May 25 deadline are available. More at Creativecharter.com., or by calling 612-801-7141.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s possible the Lynx, Timberwolves, Twins, United, Vikings and Wild could all be playing games this summer, and causing a logjam on local television. Because of virus concerns, broadcasters might be describing road games from television monitors away from the playing venues.

With parts of the country having different infection rates and policies on containing the virus, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer could use neutral playing sites instead of scheduling games in all cities with franchises. The Twin Cities, with its proven support for hockey and numerous indoor rinks and practice facilities, along with the Xcel Energy Center as a site for games, might be a hub for NHL scheduling this summer.

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Rod Carew Overcame Abusive Father

Posted on May 14, 2020May 14, 2020 by David Shama

Rod Carew’s new book is on sale and it’s no ordinary tale about a sports hero. In One Tough Out: Fighting Off Life’s Curveballs (Triumph Books), the former Minnesota Twins second baseman describes his remarkable life and the obstacles he overcame to become one of the greatest hitters of the last century and a Cooperstown Hall of Famer.

Early in the book Carew, now 74, talks about his negligent and abusive father Eric. Living in poverty in Panama, Carew’s mother Olga earned $1 per day as a housekeeper. Eric spent much of his modest paycheck on booze.

“Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs,” Carew writes in the book with co-contributor Jaime Aron. “Previous owners wore them for as long as they could. By the time I got them, there wasn’t much left. At one point, my only pair of shoes had soles that flapped against the bottom of my feet when I walked. At school, I walked alongside a wall in hopes that no one would notice. I had to make do until my mother could find me a replacement.”

Eric worked on a tug boat and was a big man at 6-foot-3. Rod was often sick and weak so his father belittled him, calling the child “Sissy.” Carew speculates his father decided in his twisted view of parenting that physically abusing his son would toughen him up.

“Early on, he would shove me into a broom closet and keep me trapped inside for hours,” Carew recalled in the book. “His next step toward making a man out of me involved his fists. Nights when he drank heavily, his fists weren’t enough. His arsenal grew to include a rope, a strip of wood, the knotted cord from an iron, and the wide leather belt around his waist. These weren’t isolated incidents.”

Those beatings and rejections by Carew’s father were traumatic but his mother saved his self-esteem and at an early age put thoughts of success in his head. Olga and Eric had other children but she favored the boy and told him he was special.

“Long before Earl Woods prophesized greatness for the boy he named Tiger, my mother was infusing me with the confidence that I would grow up to make a mark on the world,” Carew said.

Olga, too, was physically abused by Eric. She eventually escaped to New York City and earned enough money in a factory to bring Rod to a new life as a 15-year-old in 1961. It was the beginning of a journey that would document success experienced by few ballplayers. First playing for the Twins and later the Angels, Carew won seven batting titles, played in 18 consecutive All-Star Games and collected 3,053 hits.

During Carew’s life, he has not only overcame a difficult childhood, but endured the tragic loss of a daughter to leukemia. In 2015 Carew fought his own health battle when his heart stopped, but remarkably he received a heart transplant from a 29-year-old he had met years before.

Carew’s life more than earns the title of his autobiography. “There’s no quit in this man,” Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson says on the book’s cover.

Worth Noting

Ross Bernstein, the Golden Gopher hockey mascot from 1989-1991, is a prolific speaker to business groups and has averaged about 120 keynote addresses per year but because of the COVID-19 epidemic is doing virtual presentations this spring. The Twin Cities-based Bernstein has spoken on seven continents and also authored 50 sports books.

Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle describes second-year men’s hockey coach Bob Motzko as “low ego, high output.” The Big Ten Conference announced Motzko as its men’s hockey Coach of the Year this week.

Motzko has an impressive 11 Academic All-Big Ten honorees this winter, although none has a perfect GPA like Lindsey Kozelsky from the Gopher swimming and diving team. Kozelsky, an elementary education major, is one of 23 Big Ten student-athletes to have such a distinction.

Vikings coach Mike Zimmer joking from home in Kentucky about how he is coping with the disruption of leading his team: “We’re just hoping it’s not my other eye that goes.”

The Gophers’ 37-year-old Richard Pitino ranks No. 7 in a listing of the 40 best under 40 college basketball coaches in the country, per an Espn.com story yesterday.

Zack Johnson, a 2015 Spring Lake Park grad, could play against his hometown Vikings later this year if he can make the Green Bay Packers roster. The 6-6, 301-pound guard signed with the Packers as a rookie free agent this spring after an All-America career at North Dakota State.

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‘The Last Dance’ & Minnesota Connections

Posted on April 30, 2020April 30, 2020 by David Shama

For me there is a Minnesota connection to the story of the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls team that is back in the news because of the “The Last Dance” series on ESPN that began April 19 with the first of 10 episodes.

So far the series portrays general manager Jerry Krause as the organization’s bad guy for telling the public before the season that Phil Jackson would be out as coach by the spring of 1998, and for taking a miserly stance on compensation for gifted forward Scottie Pippen. Indeed, Krause was a character. I learned that first-hand in the late 1980s when playing the lead role in arranging an exhibition game at Met Center with the Bulls featuring a young Michael Jordan who Larry Bird had already described as “god” in sneakers.

Krause was aloof that long ago night and certainly didn’t win any personality competitions. Near tipoff time in the basement of the Met he made it known the Bulls wouldn’t be taking the floor without a check for their exhibition game guarantee. The demand to show him the money first was unexpected because the Met was accustomed to settling with promoters after the event, but we paid up and the game went on as scheduled.

Not many viewers of “The Last Dance” know Krause’s early background. H was a part-time sportswriter for the Peoria Journal Star while in college at Bradley. Later he became both a pro basketball and baseball scout including for the MLB Chicago White Sox owned by Jerry Reinsdorf. In 1985 he became general manager of the Bulls, convincing Reinsdorf, who owned both Chicago teams, that he could excel in leading the NBA franchise that had never won a championship.

Krause, who died in 2017, was the team’s GM until 2003, playing a major role in the Bulls winning six NBA titles. A short roly-poly man who loved eating doughnuts and was disparagingly nicknamed “Crumbs,” Krause proved more than capable of the faith Reinsdorf placed in him. It was Krause at the top of the organizational pyramid who dealt with Jordan’s considerable talents and ego, and had to put the right supporting cast around him. The biggest piece Krause ever added was discovering Pippen at a small school, a prospect few knew about, but a player who developed into a superstar to complement Jordan. Jackson was a minor league basketball coach until Krause saw his potential and made him an assistant with the Bulls and later head coach.

While Krause receives criticism for some foolish decisions in banishing Jackson and not paying Pippen what he deserved, it seems the role of Reinsdorf is forgotten. Why was the owner silent when it seemed Krause went off the rails?

The fourth episode in the series shown last Sunday referenced assistant general manager Jim Stack. Later general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Stack persuaded Krause to acquire bad boy Dennis Rodman. Krause listened and brought the erratic Rodman to Chicago where his rebounding and defense were the final piece needed for NBA titles in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Rodman created another Minnesota link in a game against the Timberwolves at Target Center after he fell out of bounds near the baseline. A camera was pointed toward Rodman and he wasn’t pleased (to say the least)—and then he kicked the cameraman in the groin.

So far during “The Last Dance” series there has been no mention of the bad boy’s deed.

Worth Noting

Eric Musselman, who some Gophers fans wanted as head basketball coach a year ago, has the No. 6 ranked national recruiting class for 2020, according to 247Sports. Musselman, whose dad Bill Musselman coached the Gophers in the 1970s, finished his first season at Arkansas this winter after turning Nevada into a top 20 program.

Michigan, at No. 9, is the highest ranked Big Ten school in the rankings that with recruiting all but done at most schools won’t change much between now and next fall. Illinois is No. 14 nationally, and No. 2 in the Big Ten, Indiana No. 23 and No. 3, and Wisconsin is No. 24 and No. 4. The Wisconsin class includes two incoming freshmen from Minnesota, four-star Ben Carlson and three-star Steven Crowl.

The Gophers chose to scholarship just two freshmen for their 2020 class, Jamal Mashburn Jr. and Martice Mitchell. Both are four-star players, per 247, with the website ranking Minnesota’s recruiting class No. 59 in the nation and No. 8 in the Big Ten. Since becoming Minnesota’s head coach in 2014, Richard Pitino has struggled to land players from the state, with Amir Coffey and Daniel Oturu the only local four-star players to become Gophers.

Before the NFL Draft last week it looked like safety Antoine Winfield Jr. and tight end Thaddeus Moss could become part of a small group of sons of famous pro football dads that were selected in the same draft. Didn’t happen, though, because while the Gophers’ Winfield was chosen by Tampa Bay in the second round, LSU’s Moss wasn’t selected in the draft’s seven rounds and has signed with Washington as a free agent. Moss is the son of former Viking great Randy Moss.

After the draft, Betonline.ag made odds this week that seven other teams are more likely to win the NFC championship than the Vikings. The Saints, 49ers, Bucs, Cowboys, Eagles, Seahawks and Packers are all ahead of the Vikings.

The Ravens and 12 other teams had more favorable odds than the Vikings to win the 2021 Super Bowl.

The CORES meeting for Thursday, May 14 at the Bloomington Event Center, featuring Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle, has been cancelled. More information about CORES is available by contacting Jim Dotseth, dotsethj@comcast.net. (CORES is an acronym for coaches, officials, reporters, educators and sports fans).

It was 64 years ago last Friday that the American Association’s Minneapolis Millers opened the corn field-turned into a ballpark, Metropolitan Stadium. The facility was similar to Milwaukee’s County Stadium and was built to lure a MLB team to the area. The Washington Senators arrived after the 1960 AL season and became the Twins. Metropolitan Stadium cost less than $10 million to build and was financed through revenue bonds issued by Minneapolis, Bloomington and Richfield.

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