.seanmgregory: How Pete Carril of Princeton changed basketball, the NBA—and me
I now had a chance to be a part of all this. Carril recruited me to play for Princeton very late in my senior year of high school, and I’d be heading down to New Jersey come fall. There was one problem, the subject of this phone call: at 6’3″, 155-pounds, my dimensions were not optimal for banging under the boards with, say, former Georgetown center Alonzo Mourning, who willed the Hoyas to victory over Princeton back in 1989.
Once Carril left Princeton in 1996 after 525 career victories in 29 years there and one year at Lehigh —that secured his spot in the Hall of Fame, and whose winning basket, a signature backdoor layup, plays on a highlight loop every March—he brought his philosophy to the NBA, as an assistant to the Sacramento Kings.
But damn if he wasn’t entertaining. One of our players threw an errant pass in practice that cracked Carril’s glasses. He ripped his shirt off in anger, exposing tufts of gray chest hair. His crooked frames stayed on his face the whole time, and the drill resumed. He smoked cigars during practice: the indoor track teams who shared the gym with us had to sprint through the stench. Carril once told a player he planned to write the word “layup” across his own chest.