I’ve made it no secret that I miss Nolan Richardson’s brand of basketball at Arkansas. The current state of basketball isn’t what it used to be. A winner and a champion at every level, I miss Mr. Richardson on the Razorback sidelines, and I miss being a nationally competitive basketball program.
Mr. Richardson was recently announced as the coach of a Tulsa investment group seeking a WNBA franchise. Said Oklahoma City businessman David Box, “He’s so positive and he’s such a good guy and he’s a great basketball coach.”
Former Arkansas assistant coach Mike Anderson, now the head coach at Missouri, guided the Tigers to a 31-7 record last season, including a Big XII tournament championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.
Reading the Arkansas Blog this morning I saw where Max Brantley offered this excerpt from Taylor Branch’s new book, “The Clinton Tapes,” which features secret conversations between Mr. Branch and President Bill Clinton.
Even the president’s worst enemies beseeched him to make Arnold the first [Supreme Court appointee], and loudest among the cheerleaders spoke the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Clinton pointedly called that newspaper his chief tormentor for decades, and digressed to say that its owners, with a smug agenda carried over from their ardent defense of racial segregation [this seems to be inaccurate; Hussman didn't own the paper when it stood with segs in the Little Rock school crisis, though it often found itself at odds during the Hussman era with black organizations for its editorial positions] also crusaded shamefully against Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson. Headlines derided the coach (“Nolan wrong as rain”), while stories mocked his looks, diction and coaching style, which the paper variously called “rat balll,” “ghetto ball” and a “Globetrotters” carnival. “They did everything but call him a ‘nigger,’” said Clinton, adding that for him — and for Hilllary, too — a crowning satisfaction of Arkansas’s first national basketball championship last month was getting to watch the Democrat-Gazette eat all the hateful things it had written about the victorious coach.”