Richardson Had One Player He Couldn't Chew Out

Legendary Arkansas coach regretted it the moment he finally laid into Hogs' star

Nolan Richardson delivered an emotional tribute to Bobby Joe Hill in El Paso. / RUDY GUTIERREZ/EL PASO TIMES

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Former Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson used to look for reasons to get onto his best players. However, one particular star made that awfully difficult.

Guard Lee Mayberry, who made his name as a Razorback in the early 1990s, drove Richardson nuts with how perfectly he handled both practice and games. This meant that while he had opportunities to get onto fellow stars Todd Day and Oliver Miller to show no one was above catching his ire, Richardson had no chance to show he wasn't playing favorites with Mayberry.

"I think you have something in the air when you when you can choose a top player that has done something wrong," Richardson said in a radio interview with "DriveTime Sports" in Little Rock. "Sometimes I'm hoping that they do something wrong so it doesn't look like he's perfect player. And once in a while yeah those kinds of guys, a guy that hardly ever messed up in anything he did for me was Lee Mayberry. He hardly ever threw it away. You know, he hardly ever throw it away in practice, hardly ever threw it away in the game."

Only once did the opportunity come to lay into Mayberry. Ironically, it was because his guard wasn't being selfish enough and also was the one tail chewing he came to regret.

"The only time that I jumped him so bad was when we played LSU and he had taken one shot, scored one point and had two assists in that whole half and we're down probably 15," Richardson said. "And then I went up one side and down the other, kicked the garbage can, slipped, fell on my butt. I got up, screamed again for a few seconds."

The message got across. Mayberry did as asked and went out and played perhaps the most selfish half of his career much to both the delight and concern of his coach.

"He scored 32 points the second half," Richardson said. "And I'm saying, 'Well, I have to do this to get him to do that? I might do all the yelling and screaming, but I ain't doing no more kicking.'"

Richardson freely admits he's not the kind of coach who would find success in today's NIL world. He coached his players too hard to keep anyone around.

"I'm half crazy anyway," Richardson said of his coaching persona.

Even when paying players was against the rules, there were still opportunities for it to happen. However, Richardson has a strong philosophy against it even if it had been OK.

"That's the worst thing that could happen, because now, it's like the prisoners are running the prison and they are in charge," Richardson said. "I was always against somebody being paid to get you a player because now you can't coach because you owe him something. You owe him to play. You done cheated your game."

Richardson was famously loyal to his players, and he expected the same. He was as fierce off the court defending his players as he was in practice when someone wasn't listening. Even though they admittedly feared him, Richardson's players were always loyal.

"To me, once you get to that level, there is no loyalty," Richardson said. "When there's no loyalty, you can't, I don't know how you can develop a team. And so you can quit one day and the next week you playong on another team against the team you quit. You're rewarded. You might get more money. I don't know what's going to happen, but they don't look good right now."

The Hall of Fame coach closed with one stark reality that would have changed Razorbacks history forever. His championship teams would have fallen apart and the most legendary chapter of Arkansas basketball would have crumbled with it, even with guys like Mayberry around.

"It was my way or the highway," Richardson said. "Hell, I'd be playing my own team over and over again."

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