LITTLE ROCK — Sidney Moncrief remembers a time when basketball wasn’t so complex.
Whether it’s college recruits attaining celebrity status before getting to campus, maintaining respect for coaches, the Razorbacks basketball program going to its first Final Four or the NBA’s All-Star Game not being all about show business, the former Razorback and NBA All-Star touched on a variety of topics Monday at the Downtown Tip-Off Club luncheon at the Wyndham Riverfront hotel in North Little Rock.
Moncrief, 53, said the rest of the country can learn from Arkansas on how to handle youth basketball.
“Little Rock is a place where people help each other,” said Moncrief, who is the Managing Partner for One Team Pacific Sports Consultant Group in Dallas, which conducts team building workshops with basketball as its platform. “They don’t exploit each other and in AAU, it is clean. I travel all over the country and that’s not always the case.
“When I was recruited, I had been to California and Tulsa and didn’t have good experiences in camps because people poked fun at Arkansas. I wanted to do something special for the state of Arkansas and change perceptions. [Assistant coach] Pat Foster convinced me that Arkansas was the place for me.”
For Moncrief, it started with his coach at Hall High School, Oliver Elders, who was in attendance on Monday. “He was one of the most respectful men to play for,” Moncrief said. “It was always ‘yes sir, no sir’ and if he saw you wear a hat in the building, he frowned on you.
“I remember one time, I had a game where I scored 30 points and felt on top of the world and he pulled me in to watch the tape and when he turned on the TV, he showed me how poorly I played defense and showed a lot of things that I could do better.”
Moncrief credited his coaches at Arkansas, notably Head Coach Eddie Sutton and assistant Foster, with helping build the mental toughness in him to play 11 years in the NBA.
“Coach Sutton had no limits in his practices and took it to the breaking point,” said Moncrief, Arkansas’ No. 2 career scorer with 2,066 points. “He gave me the mental toughness to play in the NBA.” Moncrief said his best memories as a Razorback were beating UCLA in the Western Regional Semifinals in the 1978 NCAA Tournament and going to the Final Four that year.
“They were the powerhouse and we were a nobody,” Moncrief said of beating UCLA.
“The best part was coming back home and having a parade in Little Rock.”
Moncrief was a five-time NBA All-Star with the Milwaukee Bucks and was named Defensive Player of the Year in 1983 and 1984, and he said there is a big difference between the NBA All-Star Game that was played Sunday in Los Angeles, which he attended, and the ones he played in during the 1980s.
He said his first All-Star game in 1982 in East Rutherford, N.J., was, “not a big event,” but noticed changes a few years later when the Slam-Dunk contest and Three-point shootout were added.
“You didn’t have all the rappers and big parties back then,” Moncrief said.
On the current state of the Razorbacks, who are 16-10 overall and 5-7 in the SEC, Moncrief said they need to achieve some stability in recruiting. He said he’s also disappointed in the lagging attendance.
“In the 1990s, it was at a fever pitch,” he said. “I went to a game in the past year and it felt like a morgue.”
Sports, Pages 15 on 02/22/2011