Tom Talks: Coach Tony Bennett’s Virginia a worthy NCAA champion

The complaints about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament are puzzling. It’s as if the tournament should have been shunned because the most entertaining teams – Duke, North Carolina and Gonzaga -- failed to reach the Final Four. Without Zion, fans aren’t trying.

I like Duke’s Zion Williamson, too. But this tournament was outstanding, and not because the team I picked to win, Virginia, won. Yeah, if Wofford had advanced, fans would have had a major underdog for which to cheer. But Mike Young, the Wofford coach, did advance. Virginia Tech hired him. Good move by the Hokies.

Tense and taut games pervaded the tournament. Tense and taut games pervaded Virginia. Were the Cavaliers lucky? Teams that win the tournament invariably are. Even though I favor college teams that move as if they’re in the NBA, I love Virginia’s game.

Remember the class with which coach Tony Bennett handled his team’s first round loss to Maryland-Baltimore County a year ago? Bennett has tenets. This is how his team will play. Sure, he adjusts. But how often do the Cavaliers surprise you? They do what they do, and they do it very well.

I’m biased. I came to know Bennett when he backed up Muggsy Bogues on the Charlotte Hornets. A second-round pick in 1992, Bennett laughs about his NBA career now. But he was a solid back-up point guard.

The Hornets played the Chicago Bulls in the playoffs in 1995, and a Chicago security guard wouldn’t let Bennett into Charlotte’s locker room. Guy didn’t believe Bennett was a player.

That’s a value judgment, son. I showed the guard my media credential and told him Bennett indeed was a player. For whatever reason, the guard believed me and not Bennett.

I talked to Bennett when he was at Washington State before going to Virginia in 2009, and we’ve talked several times in his 10 years at Virginia. He’ll turn 50 this summer. Yet he’s the same guy every time we talk.

Bennett is unpretentious and upbeat, and when he tells you something, you believe it, unless you’re a security guard in Chicago. He has long been one of the best coaches in college basketball. But he needed a strong NCAA tournament to prove that what worked from November through February worked in March and April, too.

The Cavaliers won their last four NCAA tournament games by four, five, one, and, in overtime, eight points. You win all those close games, it’s not a coincidence. They played with poise. They played as if they believed that what Bennett taught them would work, so trust it. And they did. And it worked.

We live in a world that moves faster every year, if not month. We like to watch athletes sprint relentlessly down court. We want what we want and we want it now.

Bennett’s teams dictate their pace. I love the defense they play, and I love that Bennett can find players willing to move at his speed. And I found his team relentlessly entertaining.

Congratulations on your national championship, Tony Bennett. If you show up in a Chicago locker room now, you won’t need me to get in.

The Kemba quandary

If you can’t win half your games, the only reason you’re going to the playoffs is because mediocrity is contagious. By losing their final game of the regular season the Charlotte Hornets finish 39-43. By winning their final game of the regular season, the Detroit Pistons finish 41-41. A .500 record is good enough for eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

That’s the record – 41-41 – I picked for the Hornets before the season began. So, call me an optimist.

The Hornets finished well, and learned that several first and second-year players can play. But they face one of the most challenging off-seasons they have ever had.

Charlotte has one star, point guard Kemba Walker, and on July 1, he becomes a free agent. Walker said before the season that he loves Charlotte, and I believe him. I also believe that, for the first time in his eight-year career, he would love to play for a team that can compete.

Walker did not miss a game all season, and he averaged 25.6 points. He’s passing wonderfully, running his offense beautifully. He goes to the basket and when defenders converge, he either takes them on or finds an open teammate. Against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday, he scored 43 and added a team-high five assists.

His career already has been extraordinary. He came to Charlotte and the NBA in 2011, the same year Cam Newton came to Charlotte and the Carolina Panthers. Ron Rivera also came to the Panthers that year. For Charlotte, it was a good year.

Walker and Newton led their teams to the national championship in college. Who is better at his job: Walker or Newton?

No player in Charlotte’s NBA history has improved as rapidly and as consistently as Walker has. He came to town with a New York City jump shot. You didn’t know where it was going, only that it probably was not going in.

But it’s a pretty shot now. Through will and work, Walker has lifted his game. Not a loud guy, he became a vocal leader. He’s a three-time all-star. And he’s barely 6-feet tall. Whenever you’re tempted to give up on Charlotte basketball, you look at him. Despite the sub-.500 record, he makes the Hornets interesting.

The problem for Walker, for the franchise and the fans is that Walker isn’t enough. He can’t win without assistance. Jeremy Lamb is a nice player who had a career year. But if Lamb is your second best option, your roster lacks options.

If you’re Walker, what do you do? Do you accept an offer from the Hornets, who can pay you more than anybody else?

If you stay, what happens? The Hornets spend so much time in the lower-middle class of the Eastern Conference standings that they live there. Teams with promise merely pass through.

General manager Mitch Kupchak had a good draft last summer, his first with the Hornets. The draft pushed Charlotte all the way from below average to slightly below average.

But Walker turns 29 in May, closer to the end than the beginning. Yet he has several prime seasons remaining. How should he spend them? If you work as hard as he does on the court and in the off-season, don’t you do it to succeed?

In Walker’s eight seasons, the Hornets have twice made the playoffs, losing in four to Miami and losing in seven to Miami. So Walker’s resume is: eight seasons, two trips to the playoffs, three playoff victories.

The Hornets lost their best player, Big Al Jefferson, in the first quarter of Walker’s first playoff series. White clad Miami fans were screaming, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were waiting, and Walker (and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist) were fearless. Walker has never backed down from anybody.

Somebody told me once that I would tell my grandkids I saw Larry Johnson play for the Hornets. Love Johnson’s game, but I’m more likely to tell them I saw Walker.

Asked after Wednesday’s loss to Orlando if he’d remain a Hornet, Walker said, “I’m not sure yet,” and “I don’t know.”

If you’re Walker, what do you do?

Do you stay in the city you love?

Or do you tire of being a spectator every spring and find a team that, with you, can go deep in the playoffs? If you’re as competitive as Walker, you would love that, too.

Why I love the Masters

I know somebody who, after years of trying, had his name called in the Masters lottery and received four tickets to Wednesday’s practice round. I like to talk to people that have never been.

They all say the same four things. Augusta National is hillier than I thought. I don’t even like pimento cheese, but the sandwiches are great, and cheap, too. Augusta National is prettier than I thought. How can I get back there?

I’ve covered the Olympics, multiple Super Bowls and Final Fours, two World Series, a Stanley Cup, several championship fights and, oh yeah, the Putt-Putt national tour. I loved the latter. Athletes – don’t say they’re not – wore visors and golf shoes with the spikes removed.

Golf is not my favorite sport. I prefer the NFL, NBA and college basketball, and boxing.

But I love the Masters. I love being there. I show up early, and walk the course by myself until I find players that look interesting, and follow them.

Nobody treats the media, or fans, as well as the Masters does. They could fill the course with fans, and make yet more money. But there’s a tipping point, a point at which a crowd grows so big you’re reluctant to be part of it. At Augusta National, that doesn’t happen.

Concession prices are remarkably reasonable, rules are sensible. Some of the rules aren’t written.

If you scream, “Get in the hole!” an official or marshal will tell you to stop yelling, and the fans around you might, too. If you need to scream, leave the grounds, walk across the street and do it in one of the chain restaurants. Or, better, go home.

The Masters encourages gentility. They give so much, and they ask that fans give back. Don’t throw things on the ground, don’t scream because you see Tiger or Phil, and accept that you’re in a place that forgot time, and appreciate it.

One year, at the tournament I ran into a Charlotte friend, Felix Sabates. A customer of Sabates had dropped out of the foursome in which he was supposed to play, so Sabates had an opening. He asked me if I wanted to play.

I hadn’t played for years, but this was an amazing opportunity, like taking batting practice at Fenway Park or moving around a 20-by-20 boxing ring at Madison Square Garden.

I told Felix no. I said that my game probably would be so bad I’d defile the course.

I wrote about it, and figured readers would say, “That had to be a tough decision, and I admire it.”

I was wrong. Readers said, “You know what I’d give for a chance to play there? Everything. I knew you were a moron, and this proves it.”

The Masters is grand, vast and special, and everybody who dreams of going should enter the practice-round lottery.

Life spins faster every year. But the Masters moves at its speed. It always has, and I hope it always will.

The cell phone scourge

I knew that cell phones were going to be a problem when I saw a woman talking on a cell phone conversation as she jogged along the water in San Diego.

What could she possibly have said?

“Hi, how are you? I’m running and talking on my cell phone, and I still did a 16-minute mile.”

I knew the problem could not be stopped when I ran into a guy on a cell phone at a Charlotte bookstore. Book stores are sacred. They sell quiet. Books are quiet. I had hoped the man on the phone was asking somebody about a book. He wasn’t. He was talking about a missed free throw.

You know that indignant look you give people? We all have one. I used my best. I leaned near the guy and stared. He saw me. I’d love to say that he apologized and hung up. He merely walked to another aisle.

Most sports want you to use phones. And when gambling is legalized in almost every state, even N.C., phones will become even more important. It is how we will place bets. There might be gambling ambassadors, people who tell you how to bet. The Las Vegas Sands has gaming ambassadors, who help with everything.

When was the last time you went to a sporting event in which cell phones didn’t star? Go to a Charlotte Hornets game, even a good one, and watch people talk and film and perhaps even watch.

The Carolina Panthers repeatedly enhance the Wi-Fi at Bank of America Stadium. I get it. One reason the NFL is so successful is fantasy football. When I hear a shout in the press box, I figure somebody’s fantasy football team did something well, or that his or her opponent’s team did.

Our phones connect us. But don’t you respect it when you find a sport that goes the other way?

Augusta National Golf Club bans phones at the Masters. They catch you talking on the course, on the phone, and they can take your phone, your badge and one of your children.

Those of us in the media register our phones when we report to the press center. We need the phones for work. But the phones stay in the press center. Out on the course, the rules apply to all.

One day I watched a guy, non-media, go so deep into the brush off one of the holes that it was as if he was on safari. What did he say on the phone, that he just saw a giraffe and two lions?

The man looked around not once, but twice, pulled out his cell phone and, as he began to talk, took a knee.

Without cell phones, fans are free to clap. They’re not recording a scene so others can see it. They’re watching, presumably noticing details, so they can convey to others what they see.

And nobody gets to hold a phone to his mouth and say, “Hey. Guess where I am? I’m with Tiger. Yeah, Tiger is, like, 10 yards away. What? I’ll ask.

“Hey, Tiger! Tiger! Tiger Woods! You got a minute to talk to my friend?”

Tiger is thrilled about the cell phone ban, incidentally.

I would ban cell phones from golf tournaments, bookstores and the workout areas of gyms.

If you to talk on a cell phone while you run, have at it. But you see the woman about to pass you on your right? She’s phone-free. And she’s walking.

Short takes: A laser at Tom Brady, really?

▪  A man has been accused of pointing a laser at New England quarterback Tom Brady during the New England-Kansas City AFC championship game in Kansas City. In Missouri, that counts as disturbing the peace. You know what’s surprising about the culprit? He’s 64. What’s he do in his spare time, order pizzas and send them to the hotel rooms of Kansas City’s opponents? If I’m the Chiefs, I ban him for life…

▪ Steve Clifford returned to Charlotte on Wednesday, and his Orlando Magic defeated the Hornets. Orlando is a playoff team in this, Clifford’s first season with the Magic. They improved their record by 17 games their record over last season.

Clifford, 57, coached five seasons for the Hornets. He rarely had as much firepower as opponents, so he stressed defense. His players responded. They played tough defense, avoided mistakes and they just hustled.

Last season, however, the Hornets failed to. It was a lost season for the coach and his team. Clifford wore out, was exhausted, and doctors told him he needed to step away. You can’t live your job, and he had been. He suffered headaches and fatigue, and missed 21 games before he was cleared to return.

But even then, the Hornets did not respond the way Clifford’s first four Hornets teams had. The hustle and the defense were not nearly as thorough, or intense.

A long-time coach once told me that there comes a time when players stop listening. They hear a message they’ve heard before, and it fails to move them. Perhaps that’s what happened with Clifford in Charlotte.

New Charlotte general manager Mitch Kupchak let him go. The move was good for the man and the franchise. Kupchak fired Clifford last April. Orlando, where Clifford had been an assistant, hired him in May.

Clifford is one of the best coaches Charlotte has had, and that includes the Hornets and the Carolina Panthers. I don’t know anybody who dislikes Clifford, and I don’t know anybody who does not appreciate his talent.

Sometimes a change is required…

▪  Magic Johnson lasted almost as long on his 1998 talk show as he did as president of the Los Angeles Lakers. He stepped down this week. Maybe the Lakers get Anthony Davis next season. Even with LeBron James, they’re a mess (and, no, I don’t blame LeBron). Interestingly, the last game LeBron played for Los Angeles this season was against Charlotte. LeBron and company won 129-115. Had LeBron not played…

▪ The Alliance of American Football might be gone. But if you want to see the league, go to Spartanburg. The Panthers signed four Alliance players. The league was a good idea. There’s more football talent than there is space for football talent on NFL rosters. Every summer, I’ll see a player at training camp and think, “He’s going to make the team.”

There’s no room. The Alliance made room. It gave them a chance.