George Raveling, former USC mens basketball

As a younger man, he stood next to Martin Luther King Jr. as he delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. As a faculty basketball coach, he blazed a path for Black coaches and gamers. As an government, he was instrumental in signing Michael Jordan to his groundbreaking endorsement deal with Nike.

George Raveling had an impression that stretched far past basketball, the game which he last coached three many years in the past at USC. He turned a revered determine in the sport, not for the quantity of wins he accrued over his profession, but for his position as a mentor to many.

Raveling, 88, died Monday after a battle with cancer, his household announced.

“There are no words to fully capture what George meant to his family, friends, colleagues, former players, and assistants — and to the world,” the household said in a assertion. “He will be profoundly missed, yet his aura, energy, divine presence, and timeless wisdom live on in all those he touched and transformed.”

Raveling coached at USC from 1986 to 1994, the first Black coach to take the helm of the Trojans basketball program. Over his first 4 seasons at the varsity, Raveling didn’t expertise a lot success, profitable just 38 of USC’s 116 video games over that stretch.

Raveling discovered his stride in the second half of his tenure, taking the Trojans to two straight NCAA tournaments and two NITs after that. But his general document at USC never broke .500 (115-118). In September 1994, Raveling was in a critical car accident that ultimately led him to retire. He suffered 9 damaged ribs and a collapsed lung and fractured his pelvis and collarbone.

After his teaching profession, Raveling joined Nike as the director of grassroots basketball, later rising to the position of director of worldwide basketball.

But his largest contribution at Nike got here out of his relationship with Jordan, whom Raveling had coached as an assistant with the U.S. national staff at the 1984 Olympics. Jordan, whose deal with Nike despatched the model into a new stratosphere, credited Raveling for making it occur. In the foreword for Raveling’s ebook, Jordan called him “a mentor”.

“If not for George, there would be no Air Jordan,” Jordan wrote.

Across the basketball world, comparable plaudits got here pouring in Tuesday in gentle of Raveling’s death.

Eric Musselman, USC’s current basketball coach, said Raveling was “not only a Hall of Fame basketball mind but a tremendous person who paved the way on and off the court.”

Former Villanova coach Jay Wright wrote on social media that Raveling was “the finest human being, inspiring mentor, most loyal alum and a thoughtful loving friend.”

Raveling grew up in Washington D.C., during a time of segregation and hardship. His household lived in a two-room residence above a grocery store, where they shared a rest room with 4 other households on the same flooring. His father died immediately when he was 9. His mom suffered a mental health disaster a few years later and spent most of her remaining years in a psychiatric hospital. Raveling left home at 14 to attend a boarding faculty.

It was at St. Michaels, a principally white boarding faculty in Pennsylvania, that Raveling first began enjoying basketball. He earned a scholarship at Villanova, where he turned a captain and later an assistant coach.

But the faculty expertise, he later said, had an even more profound impression on Raveling.

“I’ve always felt like a sprinter who’d slipped at the starting box and was 20 yards behind everybody — I’ve been in a mad dash to catch up with everybody ever since,” Raveling told The Times in 1994. “My mom worked two jobs when I was a kid. There were no books in our house. Nobody envisioned that I’d graduate from college. No one even encouraged me to go to college.”

He’d spend the remainder of his life, it appears, making an attempt to make up for misplaced time.

Raveling was standing just a few toes away from King on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in 1963 as he delivered his famed “I Have A Dream” speech. King truly handed Raveling his copy of the historic speech immediately after he completed.

For many years, Raveling saved it tucked inside of a ebook, before recounting the story to a journalist. According to Sports Illustrated, a collector later provided Raveling $3 million for his copy of the speech. But he declined and donated it instead to Villanova.

Raveling pioneered a path that few Black coaches ever had through his profession. He was the first Black coach in the historical past of the Atlantic Coast Conference when he began as an assistant in 1969. Three years later, at Washington State, he turned the first Black coach to lead a Pac-8 (now Pac-12) Conference basketball staff.

He coached at Iowa from 1983-86 before being employed at USC. At the time, the Trojans had a roster that included Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble, who had been coming off their freshman season. Raveling gave the gamers a firm deadline to inform him if they deliberate to stay on the staff and when they didn’t he revoked their scholarships. Both went on to star at Loyola Marymount.

Raveling was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015. But as a “contributor”, not as a coach. Even while he was teaching, Raveling appeared to perceive that his position meant more than that.

“Winning basketball games just helps you keep your job,” he told The Times in 1994. “But keeping your job helps you work with these kids about the real challenges of life, which all happen away from the court. I know there’s an enormous demand around here to win. But I don’t want someone to ask me what I accomplished in my life and for me to say that I won this amount of games or took a team to some tournament.

“If all I can say is that I taught a kid how to shoot a jump shot, well, that’s not good enough. These kids come out of underprivileged, inner-city areas, and I’m just wasting my time if I haven’t put something of substance into their lives.”