To find the best teacher of basketball he’s ever known, Dave Harshman didn’t have to go outside his family.
“My dad,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade him for the world.”
That was Marv Harshman’s strong suit – teaching.
To attend one of his practices was like stepping into the classroom of a top-notch professor. He explained the game in simple terms – step one, step two, step three. Even sportswriters sitting in on these sessions came away enlightened.
Marv could take mediocre talent and bring it to a level where it could compete with the best of teams. If a kid was willing to listen and learn, he got better under Marv. Most of his players were smart enough to open their ears and shut their mouths.
Dave had the good fortune to have this man for his father. Like Marv, Dave immersed himself in basketball from an early age. “He’s always been a gym rat,” Marv said.
When Marv coached at Pacific Lutheran University, Dave was his ballboy as a 7-, 8- and 9-year-old. “When Dad went to Washington State, I was always in the gym playing against those college kids,” Dave recalled.
When it came time for Dave to choose a college, Marv tried to dissuade him from picking WSU. “I wanted him not to come here because it was too difficult for a coach’s son,” Marv said. “I said I can’t play you unless you’re better than the other guys.”
Dave stayed away from basketball except for his freshman and senior years, concentrating on baseball instead. When he came out as a senior, Marv used to joke, “He’s our troubleshooter. When I put him in the game, you know we’re in trouble.”
If “Pop” Harshman was the best basketball teacher he ever knew, then Dave Harshman ranks as the finest teacher of big men that his father has ever come across. “He’s a better teacher than I am,” Marv said, and that’s saying something because the “Gray Fox” is in the National Basketball Hall of Fame.
As the new head men’s coach at Pacific Lutheran, Dave will take full advantage of his father’s vast knowledge when the Lutes open practice next fall. “He’d better get the practice plan ready,” Dave said.
What bothers Dave is that more coaches haven’t called upon his father to come in and evaluate their practices. “He doesn’t want any money,” Dave said. “He just wants to see basketball get better in the high schools and colleges up here.”
The program Dave will be working to make better is the same school his father coached from 1945-58. Six years after Marv left PLU, the Lutes went to the postseason playoffs. They haven’t been back since.
Dave is adamant about changing that. “I know how good they were when Pop was here,” he said. “I want to try to get it back to that level. I know it’s not going to be easy.”
One thing that makes it hard is PLU doesn’t award athletic scholarships. “We can’t give anything that any other student doesn’t get,” said Nick Dawson, the sports information director.
Yet that hasn’t stopped PLU from having a stellar football program. Under legendary coach Frosty Westering, the Lutes have been to the postseason 19 times in 30 years, 15 times as an NAIA member and the last four years as an NCAA Division III representative. They’ve won four national titles, three in the NAIA.
“My goal,” Dave said, “is to take PLU basketball to where Frosty’s football program is.”
Don’t bet against him.
Harshman, 54, is a bright, hard-working, self-admitted basketball “junkie.” He’s been out of coaching since 1989, but he hasn’t stopped teaching. For the last 10 years, he’s been working with kids and teams in his “Hoops with Harsh” program. His signature is “Instruction for Serious Hoopsters,” and he’s tutored kids from 12 years old through junior-college age. Two of his students were Curtis Allen and C.J. Massingale, current members of the University of Washington team.
To get an idea of the kind of teacher Dave is, tune in to the Washington-Washington State game tonight on Fox Sports Net. Harshman is a color analyst and if he’s his usual self, he’ll be incisive, yet explain the game in layman’s terms. He won’t try to be cute or flip and he’ll use the King’s English properly and without the usual cliches you get from most color guys. It’ll be almost as if you’re listening to the man who helped bring him up.
His dad isn’t the only coach who had a huge impact on his basketball career. From 1978-81, Dave was an assistant coach under Jud Heathcote at Michigan State, the same man who coached Dave on the freshman team at WSU. One thing Heathcote told him was “when your best players are your best workers, the other guys fall in line.”
The best player at MSU was a kid named Magic Johnson and in 1979, he led the Spartans to the NCAA championship. “We had pretty good talent,” Dave said, “but we also had a great work ethic and it was led by Magic and Greg Kelser. They would come to practice early and stay late.”
Just as it was later when he got to the NBA, Johnson’s whole attitude was “all about winning. He didn’t care how he did it. He truly made everybody better around him.”
Now, as the new PLU coach, Dave Harshman will try to make everybody better around him. He, too, will come to the gym early and stay late. Even as a non-coach these last dozen years, Harshman got out and about to watch as many high school and junior college games as time would permit. One day last week, he went to three games.
“My wife thinks I’m nuts, but I’m a basketball junkie,” he laughed. “I’d be doing this even if I hadn’t gotten the PLU job.”
That he did get it is good for the Lutes.
They got a teacher, much like the one they had 50 years ago.
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