In the book "One Heartbeat, A Philosophy of Teamwork, Life and Leadership," Mack Brown's final words are about coaching, and this is what he said: "When it's all over, your career will not be judged by the money you made or the championships you won. It will be measured by the lives you touched.
"And that is why we coach."
This is a story of Leon Black, a coach and former basketball player who passed away Tuesday at the age of 89. For the majority of 70 of those 89 years, he was either at or near The University of Texas Longhorn athletics program.
He was a pioneer, a pathfinder, yes. And a dreamer who read his Bible every night and loved the game of basketball and the kids who played it.
These are just a few of the portraits of Leon Black that mirrored hope and dreams, all intertwined with destiny.
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It was cold on the "East Side," that winter of 1965, but inside the old gymnasium at L. C. Anderson High, things were heating up, and they were rocking.
The Anderson Yellow Jackets were about to play host to the team from I. M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, and the star of that team was a young man named James Cash.
As a young sports reporter for the Austin American Statesman, I sat on the stage of the south side of the gym, peering toward the sea of youngsters representing the two all-Black schools. I was one of two white people in the building. The other, sitting in the middle of the sea of kids and parents on the other side, was Leon Black.
He was, then, and forever, the Dreamer.
Leon Black was in his first year as an assistant basketball coach at The University of Texas, and the Longhorns—like every other school in Texas--were trying to convince James Cash to become the first Black student-athlete to ever receive a scholarship to play basketball in the Southwest Conference.
So, when the Anderson fans cheered their hometown heroes playing for Lawrence Britton's Yellow Jackets, Leon Black watched every move James Cash made.
In the end, Cash would choose to stay in Fort Worth and play at TCU, embarking on a career that would earn him basketball honors, the distinction of becoming the first Black professor at Harvard, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of nine major companies including GE and Microsoft. He also has been part owner of the Boston Celtics of the NBA.
But the enlightenment Leon Black brought to the Longhorn basketball program would endure. He knew that young men like James Cash had been denied for too long. For Leon Black, right was right and wrong was wrong, and that never changed. After taking the Texas head coaching job, he recruited Jimmy Blacklock, a junior college star who would earn fame as a long-time member and player and coach for the Harlem Globetrotters. And in 1970-71, he and his staff would recruit his greatest player—Larry Robinson—who would be a super star at Texas and go on to international fame playing in Sweden.
With those two very good players, Black opened the door of integration.
After earning his degree from UT in the early 1950s, Black had gained recognition after taking Lon Morris Junior College to the pinnacle of success. When he came back to Texas and joined Harold Bradley's Longhorn program as an assistant in 1965, he had retraced his path that had brought him from the tiny East Texas community  of Martin's Mill to a feisty guard on the Longhorn teams of the early 1950s.
All of that thrust Leon Black smack in the middle of history.
In the heart of the 1960s, Leon saw the future for The University he loved, and its basketball program. For more than 15 years, he had coveted the head coaching job at his alma mater. When Harold Bradley left after the 1966-67 season, Leon was given the job. He knew he had work to do.
Despite some great moments under Bradley in the early part of his UT career, the glory that had been Texas basketball in the late 1940s had slowly disappeared. When Leon had arrived as a freshman on the UT campus for the season of 1949-50, the legendary Jack Gray was in his final year of coaching Texas Basketball.
Integration, scheduling, and image were paramount problems.
College basketball coaches felt that high school players were being denied opportunities because there were no summer camps, and most gyms were shut down in the summer. At Texas, the Longhorns had limited their schedules, unlike the days when Jack Gray annually took his teams to New York to enhance competition and increase exposure.
The advantages of such scheduling were obvious, but so were the negatives:Â You got beat a lot.
In his first four seasons, his teams went 43-53. And then, with stellar recruiting that included Blacklock and Robinson, it all began to change. The break through came in 1972, when Black's Longhorns won their way to the final 16 teams in the NCAA Tournament of its time, carving a 19-9 record, tying for the SWC championship, and disposing of the league's nemesis, Houston, 85-74, in the NCAA First Round.
An inordinate amount of injuries to key players (including Robinson) haunted Black's Longhorns for the rest of his career. Even so, there were highlights, including a remarkable turn-around season in 1974. That year, the 'Horns lost their first nine games (seven by less than 10 points), only to come back and win the SWC and earn Black's second NCAA berth.
Even as the losses and the injuries mounted, Black would return to his hotel room after the game, grab a light dinner, and read his Bible as he went to bed.
Back home in Austin, the dreamer continued to dream. The Longhorns had played in 7,200 seat Gregory Gymnasium since 1930, and more than 40 years later, Leon Black would head out on a recruiting trip, carrying with him an architect's drawing of a proposed new arena which resembled a hat box—or, if you please, a giant snare drum.
But like Moses and the Promised Land, Leon Black's destiny never included playing there. Following the 1975-76 season, battling negative recruiting, and fighting for elusive victories, Leon Black's tenure as UT's basketball coach had ended.
The dream, however, had not. Over the next 43 years, Leon Black gracefully stepped aside and he and his wife Peggy sat just a few rows off the court, near the Texas bench, in that new 16,000 seat arena for which he had fought so hard.Â
He watched as Abe Lemons took a team that included some of his key recruits to New York and won the NIT in 1978. He took a variety of jobs in the athletics department, including helping manage several NCAA Tournaments.
And he was there when his friend Rick Barnes finally did reach that "Promised Land," playing in the NCAA Final Four in New Orleans in 2003.
Leon was there, for the last time, on March 7, when the Longhorns played their final home game. The night before, Larry Robinson was in town, all the way from Sweden before travel was shut down by the COVID-19 virus. Teammates Harry Larrabee and Dan Krueger were in Austin as well. They all gathered at Leon and Peggy Black's house for what they thought would be a short visit. It lasted until midnight.
Robinson left for his home in Sweden the next morning.
Several months later, Rick Barnes worked out and left for his office at the University of Tennessee, as Leon Black was heading home from the hospital under Hospice care.
"I am going to do a video," said Barnes. "Leon was the first person to welcome me when we came to Texas, and we are just going to talk like a couple of coaches out on the court, even if it is only a video. It is a chance for me to tell him how much he meant to the game, and to all of us."
In the end, it was about dreams, the Bible, and the basketball. The mourners are many because the friends are legion.
What was it Mack said?
"When it is all over, your career will not be judged by the money you made or the championships you won. It will be measured by the lives you have touched," said Mack.
Was he right?
You be the judge.
