So this is how it’s done. Lefty Driesell awoke on New Year’s morning, coughed a time or two — he had a chest cold — and said to himself, “I’ve had enough of this. I think I’ll retire.”
Just like that, he did. Walked away from the line of work that had consumed 41 of his 71 years. He coached basketball, has since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Lived it, breathed it, preached it, cussed it, loved it.
Friday afternoon he made it official. In a small conference room at Georgia State, athletics director Greg Manning, who played for Driesell at Maryland, called the gathering to order, and the process was begun. His wife, Joyce, was there to see it through.
You have to be a special woman to be married to a coach, and Joyce has had 50 years with Charles, his baptismal name — in case you’re curious. There’s a story that she once became suspicious of Lefty, and why he was spending so much time in a motel in Petersburg, Va. Turns out he was heavily into the recruiting of Moses Malone, then a high school sensation, and Lefty has always had the reputation of being an accomplished recruiter. But he lost Malone to the NBA.
“Let’s not have any crying,” Joyce had cautioned him before Friday’s news conference. Obediently, he didn’t shed a tear. He handled it so well that you couldn’t tell if he was breaking up inside, or relieved. It was all so sudden that some wondered if he’d discovered he was seriously ill. He laughed his way through that. “Just a bad cough and a cold,” he said.
“I’ve been working 49 years,” he said, counting the time he sold encyclopedias and worked an assembly line in a Ford plant. “We had a Christmas card from one of my old players, and his wife wrote that he was 60 and retiring. That got me to thinking.”
Driesell spoke of it to his wife, and she said, “Do what you want to do, but I don’t want you staying home yelling at me instead of the players.”
They have a beach house at Virginia Beach, near Norfolk, where they grew up, and Joyce wants to go home. “I’ve got a house for sale at St. Ives,” Lefty said, “in case anybody’s looking.”
Lefty played his last season at Duke in 1954 and six years later took the coaching job at Davidson College, a peaceful Presbyterian school that had never put much emphasis on basketball. He left for Maryland after six 20-plus winning seasons and three All-Americans where never before had there been a whisper of one. Then to James Madison, then the most most unexpected stop in his career, Georgia State.
This was like trying to fit a giant into a dwarf’s clothing. Inner city school, no campus, two winning seasons ever, seats for around 3,000 — remember, this is a fellow who had coached in cavernous Cole Field House — little to build on. What could he have been thinking?
“I like to build things up,” he said. That was the trail he had blazed, bringing Davidson, Maryland and James Madison into the present, winning more than 100 games at each and taking them to the NCAA tournament. Georgia State became his last challenge.
He’s a jolly good fellow whose sense of humor never fails him. He was known to all around Georgia State as “The Man,” as his successor, Michael Perry, said. In his four-button jacket, his head waxed and gleaming, Lefty’s protege was there to take over. The foundation has been laid; the beat goes on.
“It’s a sad day but an upbeat day,” Lefty said. “I’m looking forward to it, now that I’ve done it.”
So that’s how it’s done. Out of the blue the sky opens, you cough a cough, and it comes to you. Time to go. No tears, no dreary, blubbering scenes, just a light-hearted hail and farewell.
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