Denny Crum turned Louisville basketball into a civic treasure and Freedom Hall into a vibrant landmark of the sport with two national championships, six Final Fours and massively entertaining teams.
Yes, his local standing grew more only hallowed after he left the sideline, an affable and approachable coaching emeritus never far away from the Cardinals in body or spirit, and doing a radio show with his old rival from Kentucky, Joe B. Hall.
Yes, he was a multi-dimensional legend. The national champion who won 675 games and spanned eras. He lost to John Wooden’s last Final Four team at UCLA and beat Mike Krzyzewski’s first Final Four team at Duke. But he also bred horses, collected Louis L’Amour novels and often went off to Idaho to hunt and fish.
Any remembrance of the career of the man who passed away this week at 86 must start with all that. But an intriguing question should be included.
What if Denny Crum had said yes to UCLA back in the 1970s?
How very different might college basketball history have been in two storied places had he gone thataway instead of thisaway when he came to the fork in the road of his career?
Denzel Edwin Crum was a UCLA guard for John Wooden in the 1950s, then a UCLA assistant for Wooden in the late 1960s. Did a lot of recruiting for Wooden, including landing a tall California kid named Bill Walton. And he already had a strong and competitive voice. When the Bruins stormed to another national title in 1971, a curious sidebar was the sight of Wooden and Crum arguing on the bench about substitution strategy. Question the Wizard? In public? Who had the gumption to do that? Wooden threatened to banish Crum to the end of the Bruins bench, but he understood his No. 1 aide was clearly ready to fly away on his own.