Post by dex on May 5, 2016 9:24:22 GMT -5
COMMENTARY
A bond of brothers
BILL REYNOLDS
The ESPN E:60 documentary is called “Hurley.”
It’s about Bobby Hurley. The onetime Duke basketball star once was one of the true glamour players in the sport, a gifted point guard with choirboy looks and a spirit as gritty as the Jersey City streets of his childhood.
And making his story all the more compelling is that he is the son of famed New Jersey high school coach Bob Hurley, a man once profiled on “60 Minutes,” a man who every year took inner-city kids and turned them into one of the top high school basketball teams in the country.
But that was only part of the story, of course, and in retrospect, maybe nowhere near the most important part. For at its core the story is about both the incredible basketball family that’s the Hurleys, and about Jersey City, too, this place where all the issues of contemporary urban America are played out every day.
So who better to talk to than Dan Hurley, the University of Rhode Island basketball coach, Bobby’s younger brother?
Because Bobby Hurley’s story is Dan Hurley’s story, too, no question about that.
I remember a story about the family in Sports Illustrated in a summer when Bobby was at Duke. Back before he became the seventh pick in the 1993 NBA Draft. Back before his car was sideswiped on a California highway after a game in his rookie year with the Sacramento Kings. Back before that accident essentially complicated his NBA career before it had a chance to begin. Back when his family was concerned whether he would live, not whether he would ever play again. Back before he went on to play four more years in the NBA, even if his career never seemed to recover from that horrific accident. Back before he lost his shirt in the horse-racing business. Back before life became a lot more complicated than throwing a great pass on the break.
There is a certain innocence to that story: the two kids sharing a small room in the basement of their Jersey City row house, their beds so close they almost touched each other.
That was the bond you could see back there in 2012 when Bobby Hurley — now called Bob —became an assistant coach on his younger brother’s staff. The same brother, Dan, whose own college career had crashed and burned at Seton Hall as he tried to catch the comet that had been Bobby’s career at Duke.
For make no mistake: Dan Hurley once paid a very high emotional price for being Bobby Hurley’s younger brother. Or how do you follow a comet? The short answer? You don’t.
I remember a long ago night at Portsmouth Abbey, back in the early ‘90s, back when Bobby was at Duke. It was a pickup game at a camp run by Hurley’s father, and on that night in the small gym, cheered on by adoring campers, Bobby must have had 50 points. Danny? Danny kept passing him the ball.
But it was Dan who gave his brother a job at Wagner to give him his way back into the game. And it was Dan who brought him here to URI, the job that got him the head job at Buffalo.
So there was Bob Hurley in March 2015, shortly after his University of Buffalo team made the NCAA Tournament, the season that got him the Arizona State job.
“I never thought I would be in this position,” he said then. “I owe so much of this from what I learned from Dan and the opportunity he gave me to learn from him.”
And Dan Hurley’s reaction to this documentary?
“It was very emotional to watch,” he said. “It makes you appreciate the journey Bob’s had. The journey the family’s had.”
And his journey, too, of course.
That’s what watching the documentary did for Dan. It put things in a certain perspective. For he had had a certain success in the Big East, but how was anyone supposed to live up to the career his brother had? And once he made his own peace with that there was a certain liberation.
And as he got a little older and into coaching it was more and more about the lessons he had learned in the Jersey City of his youth, and less about the pressures he had felt.
“I grew up in a coaching clinic,” said Dan Hurley, “and I think it was good for the family to see it. Good for Bobby’s kids to see it. Good for my players to see it. Good for everyone to see it.”
Good to see that all journeys come with a price tag, even the ones that end up well.
A bond of brothers
BILL REYNOLDS
The ESPN E:60 documentary is called “Hurley.”
It’s about Bobby Hurley. The onetime Duke basketball star once was one of the true glamour players in the sport, a gifted point guard with choirboy looks and a spirit as gritty as the Jersey City streets of his childhood.
And making his story all the more compelling is that he is the son of famed New Jersey high school coach Bob Hurley, a man once profiled on “60 Minutes,” a man who every year took inner-city kids and turned them into one of the top high school basketball teams in the country.
But that was only part of the story, of course, and in retrospect, maybe nowhere near the most important part. For at its core the story is about both the incredible basketball family that’s the Hurleys, and about Jersey City, too, this place where all the issues of contemporary urban America are played out every day.
So who better to talk to than Dan Hurley, the University of Rhode Island basketball coach, Bobby’s younger brother?
Because Bobby Hurley’s story is Dan Hurley’s story, too, no question about that.
I remember a story about the family in Sports Illustrated in a summer when Bobby was at Duke. Back before he became the seventh pick in the 1993 NBA Draft. Back before his car was sideswiped on a California highway after a game in his rookie year with the Sacramento Kings. Back before that accident essentially complicated his NBA career before it had a chance to begin. Back when his family was concerned whether he would live, not whether he would ever play again. Back before he went on to play four more years in the NBA, even if his career never seemed to recover from that horrific accident. Back before he lost his shirt in the horse-racing business. Back before life became a lot more complicated than throwing a great pass on the break.
There is a certain innocence to that story: the two kids sharing a small room in the basement of their Jersey City row house, their beds so close they almost touched each other.
That was the bond you could see back there in 2012 when Bobby Hurley — now called Bob —became an assistant coach on his younger brother’s staff. The same brother, Dan, whose own college career had crashed and burned at Seton Hall as he tried to catch the comet that had been Bobby’s career at Duke.
For make no mistake: Dan Hurley once paid a very high emotional price for being Bobby Hurley’s younger brother. Or how do you follow a comet? The short answer? You don’t.
I remember a long ago night at Portsmouth Abbey, back in the early ‘90s, back when Bobby was at Duke. It was a pickup game at a camp run by Hurley’s father, and on that night in the small gym, cheered on by adoring campers, Bobby must have had 50 points. Danny? Danny kept passing him the ball.
But it was Dan who gave his brother a job at Wagner to give him his way back into the game. And it was Dan who brought him here to URI, the job that got him the head job at Buffalo.
So there was Bob Hurley in March 2015, shortly after his University of Buffalo team made the NCAA Tournament, the season that got him the Arizona State job.
“I never thought I would be in this position,” he said then. “I owe so much of this from what I learned from Dan and the opportunity he gave me to learn from him.”
And Dan Hurley’s reaction to this documentary?
“It was very emotional to watch,” he said. “It makes you appreciate the journey Bob’s had. The journey the family’s had.”
And his journey, too, of course.
That’s what watching the documentary did for Dan. It put things in a certain perspective. For he had had a certain success in the Big East, but how was anyone supposed to live up to the career his brother had? And once he made his own peace with that there was a certain liberation.
And as he got a little older and into coaching it was more and more about the lessons he had learned in the Jersey City of his youth, and less about the pressures he had felt.
“I grew up in a coaching clinic,” said Dan Hurley, “and I think it was good for the family to see it. Good for Bobby’s kids to see it. Good for my players to see it. Good for everyone to see it.”
Good to see that all journeys come with a price tag, even the ones that end up well.