The Line Between a Tough Coach and an Abusive One

The Line Between a Tough Coach and an Abusive One

Two years ago Mike Rice sat in Terry Henderson’s living room and asked him to entrust his son to the basketball program at Rutgers University. At the time, Terry Jr. was a talented player at Neuse Christian Academy in Raleigh, N.C., with scholarship options, and his father was trying to decide which college coach would get “the keys to my son.” The Quad Stay on top of all the news, on and off the court, on The Times's college sports blog. Go to The Quad Blog Men Schedule and Results A.P. and Coaches Poll Standings Statistics Women Schedule and Results A.P. and Coaches Poll Standings Statistics Enlarge This Image David Smith/Associated Press Terry Henderson was recruited by the former Rutgers coach Mike Rice but chose to play for Bob Huggins at West Virginia. Terry Jr. was impressed by how passionate Rice was about turning Rutgers’s downtrodden men’s basketball team into a winner. “I thought he was a pretty cool coach,” he said. His father was taken with Rice’s energy, but he did not feel the coach was properly grounded. “You could tell he wanted certain things out of his kids,” he said. In the end, the Hendersons chose West Virginia and Bob Huggins, who with 700 victories and 21 N.C.A.A. tournament appearances has inspired loyalty from his players despite a reputation as a taskmaster and who was forced out at Cincinnati after being arrested and charged with drunken driving. Neither father nor son thought about the fine line that separates a beloved coach from a bully until a video surfaced Tuesday of Rice berating players during practice, throwing basketballs at them, kicking them and taunting them with vulgar language, including homophobic slurs. “I saw him throwing the ball at the players, and I was stunned,” said the younger Henderson, who completed a successful and happy first season at West Virginia. “I was kind of sad, too.” Shock and revulsion to Rice’s actions have reverberated through all levels of sports. LeBron James of the Miami Heat was among nearly a dozen current N.B.A. stars who took to Twitter to weigh in on the controversy. “If my son played for Rutgers or a coach like that he would have some real explaining to do and I’m still gone whoop on him afterwards! C’mon,” he wrote on Twitter. But the incident also has prompted some soul-searching within the coaching ranks, especially among college basketball coaches who have seen some of their colleagues toe the line between fiery motivation and abuse. In February, Mike Montgomery, the basketball coach at California, shoved one of his star players, Allen Crabbe, in a game. In November, Morehead State Coach Sean Woods pushed guard Devon Atkinson in the back as he came off the floor for a timeout, then chastised him nose-to-nose as he took a seat on the bench. 

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