WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Shortly before he had lung cancer surgery last September, Rollie Massimino was talking basketball. Right after the operation, he was discussing hoops.
“About the only time he wasn’t talking basketball was when they put him under (anesthesia),’’ Hall of Famer Billy Cunningham said.
Cunningham got to know the always-effervescent Massimino well during the 1970s and ‘80s in Philadelphia, when the former was coaching the 76ers and the latter Villanova. Cunningham retired from coaching in 1985, the same year Massimino led the Wildcats to a stunning victory over Georgetown for the NCAA title.
So when is Massimino going to join his good friend in retirement? It could be a while for this basketball lifer, who last week was declared cancer free.
At 77, Massimino is coaching Northwood University, a business school of 726 students nestled among palm trees in West Palm Beach. Although there will be nobody filling out brackets for it, Massimino’s No. 1-ranked Seahawks are the favorite to win it all in the NAIA Division II National Championship that starts Wednesday just outside Branson, Mo.
Nothing can top the legendary 66-64 upset over seemingly invincible Georgetown, when the Wildcats played what has been dubbed the “Perfect Game,’’ but it would special in its own right if Massimino can win a second national title.
“It would be wonderful,’’ said Massimino, in his seventh year since he started the basketball program at the school and sixth in which the Seahawks have played games. “It’s not really me, but it’s everyone that has been a part of this since we started this from scratch (in 2005) and we used to practice out there on the tennis court on baskets with chain-link nets.’’
Massimino might downplay his role. But his players have dedicated the season to him and are trying to bring him a championship six months after he got the health scare of his life.
Last September, Massimino noticed he had blood in his urine and immediately went in for a checkup. He had stage-two lung cancer. Massimino said he never smoked cigarettes and only has dabbled with cigars.
Cunningham, who has a home in Florida and long has played golf with Massimino, immediately went into action. He arranged for a private plane to take Massimino to Philadelphia, where he was examined at the University of Pennsylvania and where he soon would have surgery.
“Very scared,’’ Massimino said of how he then felt. “They didn’t say anything (initially about his prognosis). They said they had to see what was in there. . . .
"My wife (Mary Jane) and I, we’ve been married 53 years and have 17 grandkids and five children. . . . We said (to each other), after this was all over with the doctors, what would we have done if by chance they said it had spread and I couldn’t coach anymore. That’s all I kept asking the surgeons was, ‘When can I go back to my (players)?’ That was all that was on my mind.’’
Massimino’s cancer surgery went well, and it was not long before he was on the phone in his hospital room calling down to Florida for updates on player workouts. But chemotherapy didn’t go well.
Massimino got very ill, saying he was “throwing up” and “everything shut down’’ in his body. He landed in the hospital for a week. Doctors then permiitted Massimino to go off the chemotherapy, and he gradually began to improve during the basketball season, not missing a game for the Seahawks.
Massimino returned to Philadelphia on Feb. 27 for a CT scan, and he was determined to be cancer free. He still must have checkups every six months for the next 2-1/2 years, but that was great news to hear heading into the national tournament.
“For the six months, I’ve got a clean bill of health,’’ Massimino said. “I can yell and scream like I always have, which is a great relief. We’ve got so much to be thankful for.’’
That Massimino is now doing so much better has produced plenty of relief from his many friends in basketball. Cunningham, who took basketball-talking walks with Massimino in Philadelphia after the surgery, calls it “just wonderful.’’
Other close supporters during Massimino’s health troubles included Villanova coach Jay Wright, once an assistant under Massimino at Villanova and UNLV, Mike Fratello, another former Villanova assistant who went on to become a successful NBA coach and broadcaster, and Dick Versace, a close friend who once coached Bradley and the Indiana Pacers.
“We were all very concerned when he had come back up (to Philadelphia) to be examined,’’ Wright said of Massimino’s Feb. 27 appointment. “But then he came to our office (at Villanova) and told us he was cancer free. Larry Brown (the Hall of Fame coach who has a home in Philadelphia) and Doug West (a Villanova assistant who had played for Massimino there) were there.
“He was just electric. We put him on our radio show, and we had a big crowd (the show is held before fans at a local establishment). It was just vintage Coach Massimino. You could tell he had gotten an energy boost.’’
Last fall, when a recovering Massimino had to miss the first several weeks of practice, Wright was among several coaching friends who flew to South Florida to talk to Northwood players. But Wright soon had to get back to his team at Villanova.
As for Versace, he’s retired. So he came down from his Chicago home in late September and ended up working with the Seahawks until late October. During practices, he served as co-coach with Ken Gabelman, Massimino’s top assistant.
“Cancer is a major wake-up call, and we were very concerned,’’ Versace said. “We were concerned when he had to take the chemo. He didn’t have the energy level then to do what he loves to do, and we just kept our nose to the grindstone. We talked to him every day about what was going on in practice.’’
Finally, Massimino was able to return to the Seahawks, not long before they opened the season Nov. 4 with an exhibition at Maryland. Versace never will forget the emotion when Massimino first addressed his players.
“It was a tough moment,’’ Versace said. “He talked about what your body goes through and how (cancer) just drains you. Everybody had tears.’’
When Massimino first returned, he spent nearly entire practices sitting in a chair. Somebody was assigned to guard the chair to make sure a player didn’t run over the coach.
Massimino gradually began to feel less fatigued and began to leave his chair more. Finally, there was one practice around midseason when Northwood players figured the old Massimino was back.
“There was a day when he came into practice yelling and screaming at us,’’ said guard Jon Dunn, the team’s leading scorer with a 21.5-point average per game. “It was a just a relief. Although he was yelling at us, it was kind of good to hear. We needed somebody to get after us, anyway. We were kind of being lazy.’’
That, however, was not a trend. The Seahawks are 30-3 and have been ranked No. 1 for much of the season in the small-school NAIA Division II.
Massimino said he still doesn’t have quite the energy he did before the cancer diagnosis. He usually gets into the office around noon rather than the early in the morning.
“But I’m still Rollie,’’ he said. “Rollie is still Rollie.’’
When the Seahawks open play Wednesday in the seven-day, 32-team tournament, those who know Massimino figure he’ll be bouncing all over the place on the sidelines just as he did during his Villanova heyday. Since Northwood’s first game is against host College of the Ozarks, some are already offering comparisons to Villanova’s legendary 1985 run.
“In 1985, we opened the tournament by having to play Dayton in their arena,’’ said Dwayne McClain, a star on that team who was a Massimino assistant at Northwood for three years until he became head coach this season at nearby Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches. “So there’s a similarity.’
Then again, the Hoyas, featuring senior center Patrick Ewing, were heavy favorites to win it all in 1985 and Villanova was a No. 8 seed. One could say Northwood is now much more like Georgetown.
“Pretty much,’’ said Massimino, agreeing with that premise. “I’d rather be the underdog.’’
After all, succeeding as an underdog is what has made Massimino famous. His Wildcats, who won six straight games in 1985 after entering the tournament at 19-10, beat the Hoyas thanks to shooting 78.6 percent, including 9 of 10 in the second half.
“When we’re walking through airports, people will ask for his autograph,’’ Gabelman said of Massimino. “They want to talk to him. And they find out that he’s just an ordinary person.’’
Not too many days can go by when Massimino isn’t reminded of his greatest moment. No doubt it will be replayed yet again as another NCAA tournament is about to get under way.
“Well, it’s made my private life very public,’’ said Massimino, who coached at Villanova from 1973-92. “We had a wonderful run. . . . It really was a perfect game, except for 17 turnovers. But I still haven’t watched the whole film of the game because I’m afraid we’re going to lose.’’
Even though Massimino claims he’s never seen a replay of the ending, he often jokes with McClain that he should have been called for traveling after he received an inbound pass with two seconds left and fell to the floor, enabling the clock to run out. McClain, who scored a game-high 17 points, disagrees.
There were plenty of stories flowing about 1985 when nine players from the team showed up in South Florida in February to show their support for Massimino. They attended a game and stayed at Massimino’s house, where Mary Jane cooked pasta.
“Coach Massimino always has looked out for us, and now it’s our time to look out for him,’’ McClain said. “He’s been a father figure to me for 30 years. (The 1985 team) really bonded us for lives.’’
Now, it’s being repeated on a smaller scale. Versace calls Northwood a “microcosm’’ of Villanova.
Northwood players talk about going over to Massimino’s house for team dinners, just as the Villanova players did. And the Seahawks’ roster includes two sons of 1985 Villanova stars.
McClain’s son, Dwayne McClain II, is a freshman on the junior varsity. Ed Pinckney’s son, Austin Pinckney, is a freshman who is redshirting this season following ankle surgery. In addition, Northwood is recruiting Bryce Pressley, the son of 1985 star Harold Pressley, out of Sacramento, Calif.
“He’s still running a lot of the same plays he did for us 27 years ago,’’ McClain said. “But he has changed with the times. Back when we played, if you missed a dunk, Coach would take you out in a heartbeat and you might not come back in the game. Jonathan Dunn missed a dunk (in a recent game), and Coach just shrugged his shoulders.’’
McClain figures Massimino will be coaching “as long as he can still get to the gym.’’ Wright said: “He’s a ball of energy. I don’t see him stopping."
Massimino said no way will this be his last season even if the Seahawks win the title. If he remains healthy, he said, he would like to keep going for about two more years, which would take him to the doorstep of 80.
What Massimino would do then, who knows? He tried retirement before and quickly got bored.
After stints coaching UNLV from 1992-94 and Cleveland State from 1996-2003, Massimino figured his coaching days were done at 68. So he moved to South Florida and began playing golf regularly with the likes of Cunningham, hockey legend Bobby Orr and Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly, who died in 2009.
While McClain said that Massimino being an “awful golfer’’ also played a role, Massimino soon realized how much he longed for coaching.
“I just missed being a part of it,’’ Massimino said. “Chuck Daly always called me a ‘lifer.’ That was my nickname with those guys. . . . But wouldn’t have done this if I hadn’t had the opportunity to start from scratch.’’
Massimino began at Northwood in 2005-06 with six players practicing on the tennis court and with no games. By the next season, an on-campus gym had been built and the Seahawks took to real wood. Wright brought Villanova down for the first game, with the Wildcats winning 97-60 on Nov. 11, 2006.
Playing at their level, though, the Seahawks began to excel. They’ve been to the past five NAIA Division II tournaments, losing last year in the semifinals. They’re 10-0 during his tenure against NAIA Division I teams, the main difference in the levels being Division I teams get 10 scholarships and Division II outfits six.
Northwood has beaten an NCAA Division I school three straight years in exhibitions, the victims being Florida International, Florida Atlantic and Fordham. It might be much more difficult next year to keep that streak alive since the Seahawks are expected to play at Kentucky and Michigan State.
“It’s been a really fun experience to watch the whole place grow to what it is now,’’ said Massimino, whose team plays in a 1,000-seat gym that often is close to being full and often plays before local residents and sports legends John Havlicek and Bob Griese, in addition to Orr. “I’m proud of (the coaching longevity). I’m literally probably the oldest guy (still a college head coach). But I really just love the game and I love the kids. I pretty much coach the same way (from his Villanova days). I yell the same way, but I think I’m more subdued in terms of what I used to expect.’’
In other words, Massimino now will tolerate an occasional missed dunk.
But the wins keep piling up. Add his 167-36 record at Northwood to what he did at NCAA College Division Stony Brook from 1969-71, Villanova, UNLV and Cleveland State, and Massimino’s career mark is 682-427.
“He truly needs to be thought of as being in the Basketball Hall of Fame,’’ said Cunningham, who was enshrined in 1986 thanks to his legendary NBA playing career and who, as a coach, led the 76ers to the 1983 title. “He’s won at every level. It’s just a wonderful story. He’s nearly 80 years old, and he still has as much passion for the game as he ever did.’’
Yes, he’s still Rollie.
Chris Tomasson can be reached at christomasson@hotmail.com or on Twitter @christomasson
