Duke of Dunbar
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The Wildcat system is about timing and teamwork. The players practice their game over and over, as if learning scales on an instrument, so ultimately they won't have to think about what they're doing. This work ethic, Hughes told me, is what makes Dunbar different: "It's because we work so dang hard. There's an intensity at our practices. Players know 'If I can't handle this, I'm going home to Mama.'" Hughes is a disciplinarian in an age of great permissiveness, a man who quotes Frank Sinatra to kids who quote 50 Cent. During games, he almost never talks to the officials; he saves his wrath for his players, either yelling at them or just pointing and hooking his finger, which means someone is going to the bench. The kids may look away when he yells, but they listen. More than anything, kids want to win, and more than anyone, Hughes knows winning. "There's something about looking to the sideline and knowing Robert Hughes is going to put you in a position to win," says Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen, a longtime observer of Metroplex basketball. "He gives you about a seven-point lead coming out of the locker room."
Last March, Hughes's Dunbar squad capped off the record-breaking season by winning the state 4A championship in front of a crowd of 16,258 at the Frank Erwin Center, in Austin. Dunbar finished the season 37-1, giving Hughes a grand total of 1,282 wins (by comparison, Dean Smith, the winningest college coach, has 879). There was talk in the newspapers that with the record and the title, Hughes had the perfect ending to a storybook career. But he didn't see it that way. He had three returning starters. There were games to win. So in the forty-sixth summer before his forty-sixth season, he was standing on the sidelines and watching children the ages of his grandchildren play a game he learned on dirt courts during the Depression. For the next few months, as I watched him get his Wildcats ready for their first game, on November 18 versus 5A DeSoto High School, the only team to beat them last season (and the eventual 5A champs), I wondered: How many more games? One? A hundred? How many wins would be enough to satisfy the man who's won more games than anyone?
ON SEPTEMBER 27, THE WILDCATS and 47 other area teams went to Colleyville and Grapevine schools for a day-long tournament, or shoot-out. Teams will play several of these in the fall, though according to University Interscholastic League (UIL) rules, their coaches can only observe their kids until the season officially begins, in late October. Hughes sat in the bleachers with a yellow pad, watching his team play and taking notes. He wasn't the only one interested in the Wildcats; whereas the typical turnout at most of the shoot-out's other games was a couple dozen, for Dunbar's games there were more than a hundred, including a handful of middle-aged coaches holding clipboards.
In its first game, Dunbar, wearing gray-and-blue uniforms, played Nacogdoches High School. Jeremis swatted the opening tip to Jared Watley, who dribbled twice and passed to Dominique, who laid the ball in. With five seconds gone it was already 2-0. Almost immediately Dunbar began harassing the Nacogdoches ball handlers, who panicked and began double-dribbling and throwing the ball away. Dunbar scored at will and at halftime led 44-24. I asked Hughes how he thought the team was doing. "Let's see," he said, "one, two, three, four . . . nine turnovers. You shouldn't have nine in a game. To tell the truth, if I was over there, there'd be hell to pay." Hughes had drawn a chart, with points, rebounds, and turnovers. And he was writing notes to himself about what each player was doing badly. "You don't see many other coaches taking notes at these shoot-outs," says Mike Kunstadt, whose TexasHoops.com, a statewide scouting service, organized this one. "They usually just show up to watch their teams and visit with friends."
In the second half, Hughes, sitting by himself in the stands, watched, increasingly frustrated, as his guards hogged the ball. "Pass it," he mumbled, as Naterian Roberts, subbing for the injured Jeff Muriel, dribbled out front, with a man on him, moving up and back, up and back. "Pass it." Up and back, up and back. "Pass it!" Naterian finally drove and threw an underhand lob pass to Jeremis. It was blocked. "There you go with that underhand pass again," muttered Hughes. He is fond of saying, "I don't want thirty-one flavors. Give me plain vanilla." His players are constantly struggling with doing what they want to do and what Hughes wants them to do. Watching this dynamic unfold is part of the fun of watching the Wildcats play. Dunbar eventually won the game 73-47, but the coach wasn't happy. "I give them a low C," he told me. "Too many mistakes, nineteen turnovers; nineteen turnovers will get your butt beat. Also, the other team got too many rebounds and second shots. There was too much listening to the grandstand. We lost our concentration."
Between games at Colleyville, hundreds of kids, parents, and coaches wandered around the school's three gyms. Everywhere Hughes went, a coach or a player would hail him and say hello. One coach, who hadn't seen Hughes in a while, said, "Congratulations. Things are going well for you. You look good, too." Hughes thanked him, talked briefly, and walked on. He is part of the coaching fraternity and also separate from it. Despite his loud presence on the court, off it he is quiet, even introverted. He spends his rare free time reading westerns. Hughes doesn't smoke or drink, and he goes to church every Sunday. He's still married to the same woman after all these years. He is from a different generation, as his players joke, a dinosaur.
In game two, as Hughes scouted other teams in other gyms, Dunbar easily dispatched an all-white team from Flower Mound. But their third game, against an all-black Seagoville team whose star center, six-foot-ten LaMarcus Aldridge, is considered by the Sporting News to be the best player in the state, was the marquee matchup of the tournament. The duel quickly proved to be one-sided, with Jeremis dunking and hitting from the outside while the Wildcats' press rattled the Seagoville squad. Dunbar was ahead by twenty when, with the last few seconds ticking down, Jared took a rebound and made a behind-the-back pass to Naterian, who dribbled several times before seeing Jeremis break for the basket. He threw up a perfect lob pass, which Jeremis grabbed in flight and slammed through the net as time ran out. Sitting in the stands, his notepad in his lap, Coach Hughes, in spite of himself, was pleased. "I think we did a pretty good job," he said later. This is just about the highest praise he will ever give.
YOU MIGHT EXPECT CERTAIN THINGS of the winningest coach in American high school basketball history. A bigger office, for example. Hughes shares his small, cluttered, cinder-block space with his three assistants Charles Hickman, who played for Hughes from 1987 to 1989; Wendell Ivory, who was a Wildcat from 1985 to 1988; and Leondas Rambo, who has been Hughes's assistant coach since 1974. Trophies stand willy-nilly—on the file cabinet, the microwave, and the floor. On the wall are several prints of Indians, including one of Geronimo. On the door are taped-up newspaper stories about Dunbar players who have gone on to bigger things: Charles Smith; Demetric Shaw, who played at Kent State and then in the United States Basketball League; Gary Collier, now retired after playing in Europe; Anthony Burks, who played at TCU and is now in the computer business.
One afternoon in September, wearing slacks, a white shirt, and royal-blue sneakers, Hughes sat in this cramped office behind a small desk. "People say, 'You stress winning too much,'" he told me. "Well, if you don't like it, get a visa and move. Winning, being successful, being the best, is as American as apple pie. Not apple strudel, but apple pie. It's not about the right to be mediocre or average. A lot of guys are mediocre or average because nobody pushed them to be great."
Robert Hughes, all-American, was born on May 15, 1928, in Bristow, Oklahoma, and raised on a farm in Sepulpa, a little town near Tulsa. His parents farmed cotton and corn, and his mother was part Creek Indian. Young Robert had one sister and six brothers, and when they weren't doing farmwork, they were playing basketball. Robert learned to play on dirt courts at age eight and didn't play in a gym until he went to high school. By his senior year, he was a forward playing the low post. He joined the Army and was recruited for a special unit that just played basketball in tournaments in the Far East; it was the first integrated team Hughes had played on.
