La. Hall of Famer returns – with Bama

Published 12:26 pm Wednesday, February 17, 2016

BATON ROUGE — Well, this will be quite the oddity at the Maravich Assembly Center tonight.

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame will be coaching in Baton Rouge. It is, after all, the state capital.

Plenty have.

But it puts LSU coach Johnny Jones in a bit of a spot.

The Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer will be coaching … on the Alabama Crimson Tide bench.

Well, this is awkward.

How’d that happen? You’re thinking that must be a misprint, some kind of vile computer glitch or another Alabama conspiracy story.

Tide coach Avery Johnson isn’t in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame ??— he may be one day, but he’s been in Tuscaloosa less than a year. Barely knows who Bear Bryant is.

But after taking the Alabama head coaching job last spring, there was Johnson the very next June being inducted into Louisiana’s Hall of Fame — right alongside bona fide LSU football legend Kevin Faulk — during the festive ceremonies in Natchitoches.

So Louisiana sent a loaner to Alabama

He certainly deserves his home state’s honor.

Maybe if the Hall of Fame selection committee had known they’d be bestowing an Alabama coach with Louisiana’s highest sporting honor, they — full disclosure, I’m a card-carrying member — would have put if off a bit.

But when the voting was done the previous August, Johnson was, by all accounts, retired, or at least relegated to television commentary.

Maybe they — we — should have checked with Jones.

“I knew he had a great interest in coaching at the college level once he was finishing up with the pros,” Jones said.

There was no need to check the fine print in the Hall of Fame bylaws. Going to the Crimson side, distasteful as it may sound to LSU fans, does not disqualify one if otherwise eligible.

Had he been Alabama’s head coach when the Hall of Fame voting took place? — or anybody’s head coach — he would not have been on the ballot. Active coaches have to be 60 to be eligible, and even then there usually has to be an extenuating circumstance to do it before retirement.

So Johnson begins a second life already in his state’s hall of fame.

The New Orleans native is certainly off to an encouraging start in reviving the floundering Bama basketball program.

But if Johnson never wins another game — and, considering his current employer, that surely would be OK with a lot of Louisiana folks — he doesn’t have to apologize for the plaque that honors him in the massive building just off Front Street in Natchitoches.

Never mind that, while a point guard at Southern University, he set the NCAA career record for assists (12 per game) or that his 22 assists in one game is still a record, as well as being the only player with four games of 20 or more.

He played 16 years in the NBA, most notably with the San Antonio Spurs, the team that retired his jersey when he was done, probably for the 1999 NBA championship.

And even that isn’t it.

As an NBA head coach, he was the Coach of the Year in 2006 while guiding the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals and also coached the Brooklyn Nets.

Who knew Alabama was going to lure him away from ESPN and his later role as a popular analyst just so he could possibly come back to his home state (as a senior at St. Augustine in New Orleans, the Purple Knights won the state championship with a 35-0 record)?

But he’ll be in Baton Rouge tonight, though LSU will likely refrain from welcoming back “Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer …”

It may bother some LSU fans, but surely it doesn’t bother Jones.

He and Johnson are close friends.

Jones was the head coach at North Texas in Denton, less than an hour north of Dallas, when Johnson was coaching the Mavericks.

With NBA camps starting well before college’s opened practice, Jones was a constant presence for the Mavericks preseason work.

One day they were just talking hoops when Johnson had an idea for helping Jones’ North Texas program, which often had trouble getting many headlines in the bloated Dallas Metroplex sports scene.

Johnson apparently was not a big fan of the Mavericks’ plan to go overseas for a week or so of preseason work.

“He asked if it would help our team and program if he was able to bring his team to training camp up at the University of North Texas instead of going overseas,” Jones recalled. “I jumped all over it. He was able to bring his team up there, made them check into a hotel for a couple of days.”

They’ve been fast friends ever since.

Maybe one day they will both be in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

But tonight may not be the worst of it.

Both Les Miles and Nick Saban are both technically eligible right now, although Saban just barely as the five years he spent in Louisiana is the minimum requirement.

Interesting, no?

Alabama head coach Avery Johnson talks with Alabama forward Michael Kessens during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Oregon. (Associated Press)