How high school hoops coaching legend Gus Alfieri should be remembered

Dave Alfieri had just settled into his chair, nervous and eager to get this job interview started. He was 25, 26 years old, impatient to impress, eager to find common ground with the CEO of a mortgage banking firm. And then he was suddenly transfixed.

What is it? the man with the fancy office asked.

Alfieri pointed at an orange pin sitting among the pens and pencils on the mans desk. He would recognize that pin anywhere. Before he even saw the front, he knew what it would say: I Beat the Coach. The boss took the pin into his hands.

I was a terrible basketball player as a kid, he said. But one incredible day at All-American Basketball Camp in Smithtown, I beat Julius Erving one-on-one.

And as the words spilled out, there was a hint of recognition.

Alfieri, he said. As in Gus?

You want to measure the value of a coach,and a teacher, find how many lives they touched over the years, across the decades. See what happens to those kids as they go into the world on their own, fueled by lessons taught in basketball gymnasiums and history classrooms.

That was always Gus Alfieris greatest gift. He died Monday at 87, after a battle with Parkinsons Disease. He won 328 games at St. Anthonys High from 1968 through 1986, won a couple of state titles, won five Catholic League titles, once won 49 games in a row. He cherished those years, and those wins, and the rivalries he forged with Frank Morris at St. Agnes and Ralph Willard at St. Dominics and Bob McKillop at Holy Trinity.

How_high_school_hoops_coaching_legend_Gus_Alfieri_should_be_remembered Gus Alfieri with former Nets coach Kenny Atkinson. APHow did you prepare to coach against Gus Alfieri? says McKillop, the longtime coach at Davidson now in his second year of retirement. How do you prepare to sit in a dentists chair?

But it was his impact on thousands of other kids who never got a chance to play for him at the St. Anthony campuses in Smithtown (and, later, South Huntington) but did flock to his summer camps where his reach was truly felt. All-American was a place where kids of all skill levels arrived every summer, and no matter if you were ticketed for Division I or an intramural league, you left drilled in fundamentals.

And affected by Gus. Usually for keeps.

Between the camp, St Anthonys, and the Catholic League, he influenced so many kids who grew up on Long Island, says Kenny Atkinson, the former Nets coach and current Warriors assistant who played for Alfieris Friars from 1983-85. He had a profound influence on my development as a player and a coach.

Alfieri had been a terrific player at St. Johns he was inducted into the schools Hall of Fame last year and so revered his coach there, Joe Lapchick, that when he was done coaching and was pursuing a doctorate he wrote a thesis centered around Lapchick that would become the basis for a dynamic and definitive biography Lapchick: The Life of a Legendary Player and Coach in the Glory Days of Basketball, published in 2006.

Here I was, a tough kid from Greenpoint, and he showed me how I could use that fire, Alfieri told me not long after that book came out. He taught me so much of what I know about basketball, but that was only a fraction of the lessons. Maybe I couldnt change the world, but I could maybe impact my small corner of it.

He did that. And that is why as the news spread the past few days, it wasnt just Alfieris old players Atkinson, Tom Greis, Rich Simkus, Rich Monsees, to name a few it was so many of the kids who grew up learning from him at camp, competing against him elsewhere in the Catholic League, whose memories exploded.

Dave Alfieri heard from Rich Roche, who played at Maria Regina and later coached St. Anthonys, who said, Bad enough hed double-team you every time but he was always standing and waving his arms and it felt like was triple-teaming you. Ed Newman, who played at Chaminade and later Fairfield recalled going as a fifth grader to a St. Anthonys-Mater Christi playoff game at St. Francis Prep. The Friars held the ball for large chunks of the game, won 46-44. Afterward, Gus crowed, We got them to play our game!

How_high_school_hoops_coaching_legend_Gus_Alfieri_should_be_remembered Gus Alfieri, a former St. John’s University basketball star and long-time St. Anthony’s high school coach, died at 87. Courtesy of the Alfieri family Their game, McKillop says with a laugh, meant that sometimes, you wondered if you would ever see the ball again.

Ill close this with another memory: I was 6-2 as an eighth grader. Gus had thoughts of what that might look like as a 12th grader (having never met my 5-6 father). He inquired about my high school options. I told him Id been ticketed from the cradle for Chaminade. Later that day, he called me out for one of his camp-wide sessions on footwork for big men.

It was probably the highlight of my basketball life. Until a few minutes later, after hed shown me everything he knew.

Lets see if they teach you that at Chaminade next year, he said with a wink.

Godspeed, Gus.

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