By CHUCK POLLOCK, Sun Senior Sports Columnist
When I started at the Olean Times Herald in January of 1973, I knew Frank Layden to be the colorful men’s basketball coach at Niagara University who, behind the dazzling scoring of Calvin Murphy, steered the Purple Eagles into the 1970 NCAA Tournament, an event which back then contained only 25 teams.
It amazed me that pre-Eastern Eight/Atlantic 10 not only St. Bonaventure, behind All-America center Bob Lanier, but also Niagara, barely 90 miles apart, were viewed as two of the country’s elite teams.
I became a columnist for the Bonnies in the second half of that 1972-73 season, and soon realized Larry Weise, coach of SBU’s Final Four team, three years earlier, was all business.
Layden, who died last Wednesday at age 93, was one of the most spontaneously-funny people I’ve ever met. He could have been a stand-up comedian.
BACK THEN, St. Bonaventure, Niagara and Canisius had no league affiliations, instead they formed their own group, the Little Three, and their games were a big deal.
Every meeting evoked an advance story and while the TH’s Bob Davies handled those of the Bonnies, Mike Abdo wrote the pieces on Niagara with Layden and those with Canisius under John Morrison, John McCarthy and Nick Macarchuk.
Abdo tended to work all night and wasn’t particularly concerned with when he called a coach. One night, Layden famously told him, “Mike, I talk to you in bed more than I talk to my wife.”
Back in the days when high schools held sports banquets with celebrity speakers, Layden was particularly popular. One year he was at Bradford High and I was there to do a piece on his speech. But I also knew I was toast. Sure enough, he sent about four zingers my way — all about my being a member of the media — that left the audience in hysterics.
But Layden’s gift was, his humor was never mean-spirited, but merely vastly amusing.
HIS EARLY coaching career was bizarre, to say the least.
As a member of Niagara’s varsity hoops team, he played in only a few games, but get this, he coached the freshman basketball team AND the baseball team at the same time.
Eventually Layden became the Purple Eagles head coach and besides making the 1970 NCAAs, he led Niagara to a pair of NITs including the 1972 finals.
The Bonnies entered the ’70 NCAAs, 22-1, their lone loss a two-pointer to Villanova. In the tournament, Weise’s crew beat Davidson and North Carolina State, then destroyed Villanova, 97-74. But disaster struck in the late going as Lanier tore up his knee and was lost for the rest of the year though Bona earned a berth in the Final Four with eventual champion UCLA, New Mexico State and Jacksonville.
Meanwhile, Niagara, en route to a 22-7 season, beat Penn, but lost to Villanova and N.C. State in that ’70 tourney.
In 1979, the New Orleans Jazz hired Layden to oversee the NBA team’s relocation to Salt Lake City. It turns out, he might have been an even better general manager than coach as he acquired three crucial Jazz players: Karl Malone, John Stockton and Darrell Griffith.
In 1984, Layden was voted both NBA Coach and Executive of the Year.
At one point, Frank weighed over 300 pounds and the rumor was he’d lost major weight by running a marathon, though that was never verified. But, he did manage to lose 85 pounds for health reasons.
After he left coaching, Layden did two stints with the lead in the play That Championship Season serving as coach of a Pennsylvania high school basketball team that won a state title.
But the last year he coached the Jazz, Frank pulled one of his most famous stunts. Utah was playing the Lakers in a post-season game and during a meeting at the scorer’s table, Layden pulled a comb from his pocket and slicked his hair straight back mimicking the style of fastidious L.A. coach Pat Riley. The crowd went wild and even the stoic and intense Riley had to laugh.
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
