Brian and Basketball

By Larry Bashe

Let’s get this out of the way up front, shall we? I love Brian McLane. He’s the man I someday hope to be when I grow up.  So, everything you’re about to read has, shall we say, a certain bias baked into it.

That said, there a few things I’d like you to know about my friend, every one of which have at their core one essential thing: basketball. Because while Brian is a man of many passions – family, politics, empathy for others and religion chief among them – basketball is high on that list as well.

As a youngster, Brian’s passion for the game was first ignited, apparently, by his deep and abiding love for his hometown NBA team, the Syracuse Nats. Then later, at Westhill High, he served as statistician for the Syracuse Orangemen under Coach Fred Lewis, a collection of student athletes that featured, among others, such soon-to-be lifelong friends as Dave Bing, Sam Penceal, George Hicker and Jim Boeheim.

Later, even as he was carving out a name for himself in local and state politics, Brian coached a semi-pro team sponsored by the local 7-Up bottler and was widely regarded as one of the finest young basketball minds in the city. In fact, even now, to watch a game with him – and, believe me, he and I have watched hundreds of games together – is less like sitting beside a fan and more like sitting next to some combination mad scientist/uber mathematician.

Believe me, Brian doesn’t so much cheer during a basketball game as he plots and strategizes. He parses. He triangulates. And, at least in his mind’s eye, he diagrams.

In fact, watching a game with him is not unlike taking a master class in game strategy.

It's interesting, many of the most important people in Brian’s life today he's met, in some way or another, through basketball. His friend, Rex Trobridge, for example, who played backup center on some of those great Bing/Boeheim teams of the early ‘60s, and who was one of the many varsity players who used to help Brian get to class by carrying him up one staircase and down the next, once said of every varsity player’s favorite tutor during that era, “We (players) might have gotten Brian around campus, but, believe me, he got us through school.”

Another close friend, Joe Reddick, one of the greatest high school players in Syracuse history, also met Brian through basketball. While still in high school, one day while his team was scrimmaging the varsity from Brian’s school, Joe tried to save a ball from going out of bounds. In doing so, he ran headlong into Brian as the latter sat there watching intently from the sideline, sending his body and Brian’s – along with, of course, Brian’s wheelchair – crashing to the ground in a mix of man and machine. As Joe – again, the finest player in the city – helped Brian – a young man who’d never taken even a single unaided step his life – get back into his chair, he did so unaware that the two were in the process of building a bond that lasts to this very day.

Meanwhile, yours truly met Brian though basketball as well – in our case, because of our mutual love for what back in the day he and I both considered the single greatest sporting event the world has ever known: the annul Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York.

But of all the basketball moments I ever shared with Brian, the one that remains nearest and dearest to my heart was the trip we made together to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield the year my friend and classmate, Jim Boeheim, was inducted.  It was September 10, 2005, and Jim was being recognized in part because he was great player at S.U., but mostly because over the years he’d become a legendary coach there.  What’s more, he was being inducted that day by his longtime backcourt mate in college, the remarkable Dave Bing.

I was in my glory watching things unfold that day, I remember, but no more so than Brian.  A few times during the festivities I’d glance over his way and watch the glow that seemed to radiate from within Brian as his beloved Orange were being celebrated with the greatest honor in basketball’s most hallowed cathedral.

It was then that I realized that while there might, indeed, be a handful of people in this world who love S.U. basketball as much as Brian McLane, no one – and I mean no one – loves it more.

It’s funny, and I had somewhat half-shaped this notion at various points over the years, but the thought never fully crystallized until I sat down to write this this morning.  No one will ever truly understand what former coach Fred Lewis meant to the S.U. program, and no one will fully grasp the extent to which, in the early 1960’s, he almost single-handedly ushered in the six-decade long era of Syracuse basketball greatness that continues to this day. Because right off the bat, Lewis – who'd cut his teeth and learned the game under the legendary Clair Bee – infused the program with a level of generational talent it had never known before.

He, first and foremost, convinced once-in-a-lifetime talent Dave Bing to come to Syracuse from the streets of Washington, DC, despite the fact the previous year the Orange had just set a school record for consecutive losses .  He then did the same with guys like Sam Penceal and Vaughn Harper, who he found in the most unforgiving, dog-eat-dog environment the basketball world has ever known, the playgrounds of New York City. And he also beat the bushes and uncovered a handful of small-town Upstate New York gym rats with otherwise unassuming names like Boeheim, Hicker and Trobridge.

But around that time he also got one other boy, and did so almost completely by accident. One day in 1964, Lewis happened to meet the son of mutual acquaintance, a first-generation Irish immigrant named Andy McLane. Andy’s second youngest, a well-scrubbed lad in a wheelchair with bright eyes, an engaging personality and a razor-sharp mind, was named Brian. And as Lewis talked with little Brian that day, he saw something in the young man, and did so long before, it would seem, just about anyone else. On the spot, Lewis asked him if he wanted to act as statistician for his varsity team during home games at Manley Field House that season. He couldn’t pay him, the coach cautioned.  But he could really, really use his help.

That was nearly sixty years ago.

So, for my money – and this is the thought that crystalized today and the one I leave with you with now – while, yes, Fred Lewis was an incredibly successful coach at Syracuse during his brief but glorious run, he was something so much more important to the school and its program. Because when you consider that among the handful of youngsters he brought into the Orange fold were Dave Bing, Jim Boeheim and Brian McLane – the school's greatest player, greatest coach and greatest fan in its long and glorious history – the man was, without question, the greatest recruiter who ever walked the face of the earth.

I love you, Brian.  Thank you for everything. And God bless you, my friend.

Larry

Larry Bashe, Syracuse University Class of 1966, is a retired but longtime trustee of the school.  A highly successful investment banker in New York, he now spends his days as an active and engaged philanthropist, as a frequent lecturer and guest speaker, and as a conspicuously active Orange alum.  He helped fund the Brian McLane Accessibility Fund, conceived and endowed by George Hicker, he provided the seed money for the construction of the Brian McLane Men's Basketball Lounge, and he donated to a fellowship program at the Maxwell School in his friend's name, one that offers financial support to young men and women seeking a career in public service, especially those with a focus on accessibility.  Larry also remains, as he freely admits, just about the biggest S.U. fan not named Brian McLane.