The stage is all set for Chris Mullin to return to St. John’s.
That’s not just not great news for the St. John’s basketball program. It’s terrific news for New York City and college basketball.
If the most popular player in the history of the once-great program can recruit some top players, then he can turn St. John's back into what it once was: Relevant.
We’re betting that he can, despite what St. John’s has to go up against when trying to get the best New York City players to stay home, as Mullin once did when he came out of Brooklyn.
He believes in the brand, he believes in the tradition. Most importantly, he believes St. John’s can be what it once was.
“You have to find those kids that want to stay home and be part of something,’’ he said to reporters when he was inducted into the St. John’s Hall of Fame last month. “New York should be a great selling point.’’
Now, St. John’s gets the best salesman it can in old No. 20.
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St. John’s hasn’t really been relevant since the days of Lou Carnesecca, Mark Jackson, Walter Berry and Billy Wennington. And Mullin, of course, the Hall of Famer who 30 years ago took the team down to the Final Four in Lexington, Kentucky.
That’s when St. John’s was more than just a Big East team. It was a national power.
It’s been a long fall under coaches like Mike Jarvis and Fran Fraschilla.
Lately, Steve Lavin came in from California and UCLA to try to do what Mullin will attempt to do without a single day of coaching experience.
Lavin never lived up to his big billing, getting the Red Storm to only two NCAA Tournaments in five seasons and never making it out of the first round. His record in the Big East tournaments wasn’t much better, with one win in six games.
Lavin had some problems with players that aren’t exactly limited to the St. John’s of the college basketball world. The latest came when junior center Chris Obepka reportedly tested positive for marijuana on the eve of the NCAA Tournament. Without their lone rim protector available, St. John’s was one-and-done, losing to San Diego State.
Lavin’s dismissal with one year left on his deal made for the perfect time for St. John’s to reach back into its rich basketball history and go get a legend who knows what it’s like to win out on Utopia Parkway. They offered the job, but only after the powers that be got Carnesecca’s blessing -- a slam dunk if there ever was one.
Mullin, according to industry sources, is lining up a crack staff of coaches who will help him with the heavy lifting of college athletics: recruiting.
Mullin will be the deal-closer. Even if you've spent only a minute with him, you know he’s got a shot to be successful, because he loves basketball and he loves St. John’s even more.
That’s what Mullin had over all the coaches who were busy lining up to come to New York, when they have no idea what they would be getting into. They just knew that St. John’s has a shot to get back to where it once was, when Mullin came in from Xaverian and had St. John’s ranked in the national Top 20.
Not long before Mullin’s arrival, an old New York gent named Frank McGuire regularly grabbed all the best parochial-school players and took them down to play for him at South Carolina.
“If Frank was still coaching when Chris was around, he would have been another Frank McGuire player,’’ Mike Dunleavy, the old New Yorker and one of McGuire’s players, once told me. “There's no doubt in my mind, he would have gone down to South Carolina, just like we all did."
But Mullin left Xaverian a year after McGuire retired from coaching. So he ended up staying home and playing at St. John’s, where McGuire got his coaching start and took the Redmen, as they were then known, to the NCAA Finals in 1952.
The best thing about this is that Mullin knows what it will take to revive the program because he’s lived it. Talent evaluation won’t be a problem. He’s spent a career in NBA front offices after his playing days in Golden State and Indiana were over. Not long ago, when Donnie Walsh ran the Knicks, his plan was to bring Mullin back to help him run the show.
Mullin has had his eye on getting into coaching. In fact earlier this season, the Sacramento Kings lobbied heavily for Mullin, a team adviser, to take the coaching reins when they fired Mike Malone. After much deliberation, he decided that he wanted to wait. His plan was to take the job next season and start from scratch, with the benefit of having a full training camp and assembling his own staff.
Smart move, but then the Kings gave up on Mullin and decided to bring in a proven coach in George Karl.
But Mullin always had the St. John’s job in the back of his mind.
Out on Utopia Parkway, they should be very, very happy that he did.
Longtime New York columnist Mitch Lawrence continues to write about pro basketball, as he’s done for the last 22 years. His columns for NBCNewYork.com on the Knicks, Brooklyn Nets and the NBA, along with other major sports, will appear twice weekly. Follow him on Twitter @Mitch _ Lawrence.
