NEW YORK — The concentric circles of John Feinstein’s life unfold the information of his dying Thursday.
First, John’s brother, Bob, handed alongside the unhappy information to Gary Williams, the legendary former Maryland coach. He first met Feinstein in 1978, when Williams was a 30-something-year-old coach at American College and Feinstein was a younger Washington Submit basketball beat author. Williams and Feinstein remained shut over time.
Williams then referred to as La Salle head coach Fran Dunphy. Williams felt dangerous calling on a recreation day however felt Dunphy wanted to know. Dunphy helps arrange the Coaches vs. Most cancers charity breakfast, an occasion held yearly in Philadelphia on the Palestra the morning after Choice Sunday, and Feinstein was booked as a visitor speaker for this yr’s gathering.
Dunphy took Williams’ name whereas not solely making ready for an Atlantic 10 event recreation in Washington, D.C., but additionally processing the potential ultimate day in his 33-year head teaching profession. Dunphy, 76, lately introduced his retirement, and Thursday’s recreation towards Saint Joseph’s might be his final evening on the sideline. After speaking to Williams, Dunphy made just a few calls of his personal, telling these he felt wanted to know. One went to longtime sportswriter Dick “Hoops” Weiss. Dunphy needed Weiss to listen to the information from him.
Weiss, sitting baseline at Madison Sq. Backyard, answered the decision throughout the first half of a recreation between St. John’s and Butler. He acquired up, slipping out from press row, and ducked into the bowels of the world. Weiss first met Feinstein on the 1977 NCAA Regionals, when Weiss was a youngish columnist for the Philadelphia Day by day Information and Feinstein was a senior at Duke. The 2 grew previous as shut pals, seeing the earth spin rapidly, from broadsheet to broadband.
“He was bigger than life,” Weiss mentioned, his laptop computer closed.
Feinstein, the epochal American sportswriter who died Thursday at age 69, was giant sufficient to fill 45 books, hundreds of columns, countless hours on radio and tv, and huge sufficient to ship ripples of telephone calls and remembrances throughout the sports activities panorama on Thursday.
However too giant to suit into any easy sketch.
“He was liked on the highest degree and hated on the highest degree,” Mike Krzyzewski mentioned by telephone. “He knew that, too, and he was OK with it. He was certainly one of a sort.”
A product of contradictions, actually. Those that knew Feinstein say he was most likely too good to be a sportswriter. His father, Martin Feinstein, was the primary government director of the Kennedy Middle and hoped his son would go to Harvard. Feinstein thought-about going to Yale, however as an alternative went to Duke as a member of the swim group. After breaking an ankle, he joined the varsity newspaper, by chance starting what would turn out to be probably the most prolific careers in journalism historical past.
When Feinstein began on the Washington Submit after commencement, he labored first because the evening police reporter, assembly an editor who noticed countless expertise and would turn out to be a career-long mentor. That editor was Bob Woodward. Feinstein coated courts in Prince George’s County subsequent, however quickly moved over to the Submit sports activities division in 1979, masking Maryland soccer and basketball.
John Feinstein the sportswriter was a large. Nowhere was this felt greater than in faculty basketball, maybe probably the most parochial main sport of all of them. He had opinions. These opinions mattered.
“In my lifetime, he was the man,” Jim Boeheim mentioned Thursday. “Some folks write stuff that’s opinionated, however don’t have anything behind it. He was opinionated about every thing, however no less than these opinions had been rooted in one thing. He believed what he mentioned, even in case you disagreed with it.”
For a coach with 48 profession NCAA Event wins and 5 Closing Fours, Boeheim carried a tricky rap for components of his Corridor of Fame profession. Some excellent Orange groups went residence too early in March, and Feinstein, by no means one to undergo timidity, took goal at him. He wrote at one level that Boeheim was the worst NCAA Event coach in faculty basketball.
The worst.
Boeheim held a grudge in the best way you’d count on from a coach who ran the identical protection for 47 years. When the 2 lastly hashed issues out, Boeheim leveled with Feinstein, saying, “C’mon, John. I can’t be the worst.” They cleared the air and grew to be pleasant later.
Each coach of a sure age seemingly has their model of the identical story. So do NCAA directors, convention directors, Submit colleagues and different media members. The factor about John Feinstein was that he was proper. As longtime faculty basketball author John Akers put it Thursday: “The person was an absolute drive of nature. He was simply so rattling intimidating, even amongst his pals.”
A lot of that aura stemmed from “A Season on the Brink,” Feinstein’s 1986 portrait of Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers. Topic to countless imitation within the 4 a long time since, the e book was an unique on the time. As a fly-on-the-wall to the Hoosiers’ whole 1985-86 season, Feinstein attended each apply, each speech and each recreation, residence and away, in a yr that flamed out with a first-round NCAA exit. When agreeing to the entry, Knight envisioned a e book presenting IU as a mannequin program that didn’t cheat and put gamers in school rooms. As an alternative, an intensely human story unfolded, one revealing the gamers’ actual lives and Knight’s varied ranges of dissonance and genius.
Unflinching in its presentation of Knight, the e book was a phenomenon. Knight, incredulous that Feinstein didn’t water down his expletive-laden quotes or tamp down his most risky moments, went on the offensive. All through the subsequent season, he took each likelihood potential to fireside photographs at Feinstein, going as far as to name him the “worst whore I’ve ever seen.” Feinstein, in the meantime, scheduled a e book tour that traveled in unison with Indiana’s schedule, going to every metropolis the Hoosiers performed in. The extra consideration Knight gave the e book, the extra its gross sales spiked.
“Season on the Brink” ended up as one of many greatest-selling sports activities books of all time.
Now, seen by the lens of Feinstein’s passing, it’s not the success of the e book that stands out. It’s the story behind it.
Feinstein was solely 30 when he penned what could possibly be thought-about the most effective American non-fiction works of his technology. He gained the unfiltered entry to Knight as a byproduct of his relationship with Krzyzewski. Feinstein knew the Duke head coach from his days as a scholar in Durham. Krzyzewski, who performed for Knight at West Level and later changed Knight as Military head coach, at all times took a liking to Feinstein as a result of he understood him.
“We had been actually shut pals as a result of he by no means handled me like anyone he was writing about,” Krzyzewski mentioned. “I at all times thought he was good. One of many nice writers. Actually good. His skill to recall information and occasions was unimaginable. It was straightforward to acknowledge early that he was simply distinctive.”
That’s why Krzyzewski vouched for Feinstein with Knight.
That’s why Knight was livid with Krzyzewski, too, when the e book was revealed.
Whereas that relationship was mended, Knight and Feinstein by no means put the items again collectively. The 2 didn’t communicate for a few decade. Finally, there was an opportunity encounter in Hawaii, and so they had a dialog, however what was performed was performed.
“Season on the Brink” modified Feinstein’s profession, each professionally and financially, and set the course for a author who didn’t produce pages, however as an alternative pumped out volumes. Among the many works that {followed}, there was “A Good Stroll Spoiled,” one other basic, this one setting him up for a future of golf books. Feinstein’s fashion was good whereas seemingly easy, the type of copy that bulldozes different writers’ confidence. He produced a list that spanned sports activities, politics and the American disposition.
However once more, there are these contradictions. What was at all times most original about Feinstein’s profession was that he stored components of it rooted the place nobody would count on. He liked the Philadelphia Massive 5 and operated for years as a quasi-Palestra beat author. He liked small college basketball and wrote a whole e book (“The Final Amateurs”) a few season within the Patriot League, a little-followed convention comprised of Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross and different colleges that went with out athletic scholarships till 1998. He spent years as a radio commentator for Navy soccer.
From afar, it was typically arduous to not marvel why.
Krzyzewski supplied a concept. Wildly profitable in his profession, and required to function with unwavering confidence in his opinions and his writing, maybe Feinstein didn’t know the best way to present that, deep down, there was certainly some humility in there. So, as an alternative of claiming it, he did so by displaying it. He put his weight the place it would carry probably the most.
“I’m unsure his critics acknowledged that he did that,” Krzyzewski mentioned.
On this, his ultimate season, Feinstein, born 1955 on the west facet of Manhattan, was calling televised residence video games at Longwood College in Farmville, Va., the place he additionally taught journalism.
His ultimate column within the Washington Submit ran Thursday morning. It was a nod to Tom Izzo refusing to alter a few of his methods in these new days.
“He referred to as me the opposite evening,” the Michigan State coach mentioned by telephone from Indianapolis on Thursday. “To be trustworthy, I assumed we had been simply bulls—ing. I didn’t even know he was writing a column. I simply answered his name as a result of I needed to listen to what he needed to say.”
(Picture by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE through Getty Pictures)