Burleson Anniversary

Flashback General NCS Basketball34

We’re big fans of looking back at history and randomly identifying anniversaries and such. In that light, I got the following quick email from a friend that I thought was interesting and needed to blog —

“I saw Tommy Burelson at the Marist game Friday (March 16th) and told my friend not to forget that Tommy played a big role in getting the ball rolling last year.

So, I went back into the SFN archives and look what I found that was blogged exactly one year ago on March 16, 2006 – Burleson says it’s time for a change.

The contrast of where we were on eyear ago with the current ‘Red Coact Revival’ that is exemplified by the fans’ passion and support on Friday night is unbelievable.”

At the time that Burleson made his comments, the Wolfpack was in Dallas preparing for their “5th NCAA Tournament appearace in a row” and their “9th ouster before the sweet 16 in 10 years” (so, the team was not aware of or impacted by Burleson’s comments). But, the administration (and coaching staff) hit the roof over the comments and there was a lot of talk of Burleson having received his last free ticket to a State game, etc, etc.

For those of you who are still learning your lessons on how to analyze things — you need to never forget that hitching your wagon to people/administrations is always a short term event. True Wolfpackers will always be around. The Todd Turner’s, Lee Fowler’s and Herb Sendek’s of the world will never be around as long as you will…or Tommy Burleson will.

Unfortunately, the direct URL to Burleson’s comments is no longer active. At the time of the interview, TexPack & BJD summarized TB’s comments as follows:

I listened to almost all of the interview this morning. Tommy was right on target. He was very respectful of Sendek. This will be hard for people to just ignore.

He’s also making very astute points about the limitations of our offense – basically saying it’s not how you compete at the highest level. Just how you get to pretty good.

A few choice quotes from TB:

“There’s gotta be some kind of change made…do something to get some peace in the valley.”

“You’ve got to keep the alumni happy.”

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Flashback General NCS Basketball

34 Responses to Burleson Anniversary

  1. chris92heel 03/18/2007 at 9:13 PM #

    legacy, I believe the equivalent would be heelies.

    Pack92, I’d be interested in hearing how we’re overrated.

  2. dawgitall 03/18/2007 at 9:46 PM #

    Where Are They Now? Tom Burleson

    March 18, 2004

    Former Wolfpack seven-footer loomed large on North Carolina State’s 1974 title team

    By Chip Alexander
    Raleigh News & Observer

    Newland, North Carolina, has changed little in the 30 years since Tom Burleson helped North Carolina State win its first NCAA championship. A slice of small-town America of 700 or so folks tucked deep in the North Carolina mountains, it’s a quiet, scenic spot with such fixtures as the Bear Trail Cafe and the Shady Lawn Motel.

    Burleson regularly attends Wolfpack basketball games. (Raleigh News & Observer)
    Burleson left Newland in fall 1970, lean and gangly, all arms and legs, his basketball potential seemingly as large as his 7-foot-2 frame. He began a journey that would take him to the top of college basketball with the Wolfpack, that would make him a part of the most controversial basketball game ever played, that would lead him to an all-too-short NBA career that was wrecked by a horrific knee injury.

    It was a journey that later would make Burleson the world’s tallest power-boat racer, a sport he would abandon after a pair of death-defying crashes at top speed. Finally, the journey would lead him back home, back to Newland, where he would raise a family.

    Tom Burleson is 52. He serves as director of the inspections and planning department for Avery County, settling into that job after serving two terms as a county commissioner. He’s a church elder, a civic leader, a respected member of the community. And, of course, he’s still the tallest man in town.

    There are bits of gray at his temples, and there will always be the ugly, nasty scars on the left knee he so badly damaged. But to see him courtside at N.C. State games these days, in the RBC Center in Raleigh rather than his old haunts at historic Reynolds Coliseum, is to conjure up memories of the past.

    Burleson doesn’t sit quietly at games. At times, he’s up on his feet, towering above everyone at courtside, his eyes full of fury, the passion still there. It’s almost as if he’d like to slip back into that red-and-white N.C. State jersey, No. 24, and go at it again in the post, trading elbows and hitting his sweeping hook shot.

    Burleson earned a reputation as a clutch player. (North Carolina State Sports Information)
    “It’s a sport I dearly love, one that has been very good to me,” he said. “The thing you miss the most is the competitiveness. But I have no real regrets. Oh, maybe a small regret about the NBA, about what might have been if I had not hurt my knee, but I have been very blessed. Life has been very good to me.”

    When Burleson arrived at N.C. State, he said he was officially measured at 7 feet, 2 1-4 inches. But Frank Weedon, then the school’s sports information director, decided that wasn’t quite tall enough.

    “Frank said I would be listed at 7-4,” Burleson said, laughing. “He said it would gain attention for me and the school. He said I would be the tallest player in college basketball.

    “I told Frank I didn’t want to be the tallest player in college basketball. I wanted to the best player in college basketball.”

    Burleson would never gain that kind of acclaim. The same year he enrolled at N.C. State, another tall, gangly teenager from San Diego was enrolling at UCLA, a redhead named Bill Walton.

    A year later, Burleson wouldn’t be the best player on the N.C. State campus. There was a 6-foot-4 phenomenon, a soft-spoken kid from Shelby, North Carolina, whose vertical leap could leave observers gasping and whose shooting touch soon would leave defenders all but in tears. His name was David Thompson. With freshmen ineligible for varsity competition, Walton and Burleson spent a year starring on their freshman teams, a continent apart.

    Walton and UCLA would win NCAA titles in 1972 and 1973, making the “Walton Gang” a part of college basketball’s lexicon. The ’73 NCAA championship was the seventh straight for UCLA coach John Wooden, and Walton was named most outstanding player in 1973 after hitting an astounding 21 of 22 shots and scoring 44 points in the ’73 title game.

    Burleson had a double-double in the 1974 national title game. (1974 Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos)
    But Burleson would be a part of one basketball experience that Walton would miss. He was a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team, the one that was upset by the Soviet Union in the championship game later known as the “Play it again, Comrade” game because of its bizarre ending. The Soviets, given two tries in the final seconds after confusion by game officials, finally scored to beat the Americans, 51-50, the first Olympic basketball loss by the U.S.

    The U.S. team refused to be a part of the medal ceremony, declining to accept their silver medals. Through the years, only one U.S. player expressed an interest in belatedly being awarded the silver — Burleson, whose stance has earned him criticism from some of his former teammates.

    “I turned the other cheek and accepted what happened,” he said of the events at the Munich Games.

    But that’s Tom Burleson. He is a man of strong convictions. He’s also a player whose talents should not be overlooked, much less forgotten.

    Thompson was everybody’s all-American, the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year in 1973, ’74 and ’75, and named national player of the year in 1974 and ’75. But Burleson was named all-ACC each of his three varsity seasons. He was the MVP of the ACC tournament, which decided the conference champion, in both 1973 and ’74, as a junior and senior.

    Burleson, like Thompson, was named one of the ACC’s best 50 players when the league celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2003.

    “Tommy played like he was 7-8,” said Weedon, now associate athletics director emeritus at N.C. State. “He always played big in the biggest games.”

    The Wolfpack was 27-0 in the 1973 season but barred from the NCAA tournament because of probation stemming from Thompson’s recruitment. In 1974, N.C. State was 30-1, the only defeat to UCLA in a made-for-TV game played in St. Louis early in the season. The Pack, with 5-7 Monte Towe at point guard and capable role players in forward Tim Stoddard and guard Moe Rivers, was undefeated in the ACC both years.

    “Tommy was a great player,” said Norman Sloan, the former N.C. State coach who died this past December. “Some people would say he should have done this or done that, but we were undefeated in the league for two years, and he was primarily responsible.

    “Sure, we had David and Monte. But without the big man, without Tommy, it would have been awfully tough for us. He always gave us 110 percent, every game out.”

    In March 1974, the Wolfpack needed to beat Maryland in the ACC tournament final to advance to the NCAA tournament in an era when only one school represented a conference. The pressure was almost overbearing, and Sloan, a fiery type on the bench often called “Stormin’ Norman,” later confessed it was the only time he found himself dry-mouthed in a game.

    (1974 Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos)
    The Pack would win a classic, 103-100, in a contest many still believe could have been the best game played in college basketball. Burleson responded with the game of his life, scoring a career-high 38 points and snatching 13 rebounds.

    UCLA’s Walton, having faced both Burleson and Maryland center Len Elmore during the season, deemed Elmore the better center, and Elmore didn’t tend to disagree. But that only piqued Burleson, making him go harder, making him dig deeper. Elmore almost seemed befuddled by game’s end at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Walton had been proven wrong.

    UCLA had lost a couple of late-season games, with the Wolfpack moving to No. 1 in the national polls. Still, the national perception was that Wooden’s Bruins would not lose again, that another NCAA banner soon would be hung in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.

    But Burleson, Thompson and the Pack were the team that would not lose again, that refused to lose. In a NCAA semifinal, on the same Greensboro Coliseum floor, N.C. State and UCLA went into overtime, then into a second. The Bruins led by seven points in the second OT, only to have the Wolfpack rally behind Thompson and Burleson.

    N.C. State won, 80-77, ending UCLA’s dynastic run. Burleson and Walton played evenly, Walton’s temper appearing to flare as Burleson scored and rebounded and blocked shots.

    “Bill just … didn’t want to give me any credit as a player,” Burleson said. “We were like from two different worlds, like sugar and vinegar. After the game in St. Louis, he knew I could play, so maybe that spurred it even more.”

    The NCAA championship game was almost anti-climactic as N.C. State topped Marquette, 76-64. Burleson ended his college career with another double-double, with 14 points and 11 rebounds.

    “People forget that Marquette had a great team that year, too,” Burleson said. “They had Maurice Lucas, Bo Ellis, a lot of talent. UCLA was ranked second, but Marquette was ranked third.

    “But nothing was going to stop us at that point. A lot of teams end seasons with the could’ves and should’ves. Maryland probably was saying, ‘We could have been the national champion.’ But we finished the task. Next to the 1974 championship, it says, ‘N.C. State.'”

    Made the No. 3 pick of the 1974 NBA Draft by Seattle, behind Walton and Providence’s Marvin Barnes, Burleson turned down an enticing offer from the ABA’s Indiana Pacers and headed to the SuperSonics. Bill Russell was the Sonics coach and Burleson had some respectable numbers the first two seasons, but Burleson would last just three years in Seattle before being traded to the Kansas City Kings.

    Burleson’s NBA career didn’t come to an end February 22, 1978, but it was the beginning of the end. Saying he was trying to be a peacemaker in what became a fast-escalating fight that began between Kansas City teammate Phil Ford and Philadelphia’s Maurice Cheeks, Burleson was caught in the middle of what he called a “skirmish.” Somehow, he said, bodies began tumbling amid all the pushing and shoving and he took a hard shoulder to his left knee.

    “The knee hyperextended six to eight inches,” Burleson said. “Three of the four ligaments were totally severed. At first I was told I might never walk again. The surgery, by today’s standards, was pretty crude.”

    Burleson would return the next season and play a few more years, but it was never the same. Going from Kansas City to the Atlanta Hawks in 1980, he was out of the NBA a year later.

    “Once I started to take over in the NBA, I crashlanded,” Burleson said.

    Burleson was financially secure but said he still had the competitive urges of a world-class athlete. He needed an outlet and he was to find it on the water, in a high-powered 6-liter hydroplane, cranking it up to 140 miles per hour, competing against some of the best powerboat racers in the country.

    “I loved the adrenaline rush,” he said. “At that time, I still needed that.”

    Burleson, with a heavy Grand National schedule of 25 to 30 races the first few years, won a few races and was among the points leaders. But a couple of crashes, in Illinois and then Miami, were both harrowing and reality checks.

    “I was upside down in the first one and they said my head was about 18 inches from the water,” he said. “That was a barrel roll. At Miami, in 1992, I had a blowover which wasn’t violent. “I walked away from both of them. I realized my family needed me. They needed me walking erect and healthy. They didn’t need me dead.”

    Burleson and his wife, Denise, moved back to Newland in 1983 and have three sons. The two oldest boys — Robert (20) and David (18) — are at N.C. State, although not basketball players. The youngest, Quentin, is 13 and prefers soccer.

    Burleson no longer wears his 1974 championship ring, which is small and hardly ornate. He said he has it in a jewelry case, next to the gold band given to the Wolfpack players for going unbeaten in 1973.

    “But I wouldn’t trade my family for all the championships and rings there are,” Burleson said. “Looking back now, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

    NCAA SHOP

  3. Pack92 03/19/2007 at 8:05 AM #

    CHris,
    All your McD AA’sand Ol’ Roy were 1-3 pt shot away from going down in the ACC tourney to a team with 6 guys playing for 4 straight days. Both 3 pointers that nailed our coffin shut came in front of a guy who literally could not leave his feet to jump. The talent on your team should have easily put us away and won by 20. Maybe overrated is not the best description but underachieving sure as heck is. Anything you don’t understand about that?

  4. chris92heel 03/19/2007 at 10:01 AM #

    “Anything you don’t understand about that?”

    Yeah, why you would denigrate the incredible effort and play of your own team.

  5. Pack92 03/19/2007 at 11:41 AM #

    If you think I did you MUST have gone to UNX.

  6. chris92heel 03/19/2007 at 12:08 PM #

    “The talent on your team should have easily put us away and won by 20. ”

    Speaks for itself.

  7. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 03/19/2007 at 1:07 PM #

    Not that I needed another reason to have Sendek leave but during his final year some punk was sitting behind him with a Walton jersey on. Not once but for at least two games. Whoever that kid was he must of been someone known to the team since he was sitting directly behind Sendek.

    For Herb not to have an assistant coach grab him by the ear and drag him out of the arena and not until he returns with appropriate dress showed a complete lack of understanding NC State’s basketball history. I was pretty sure Herb didn’t even know that of the Burleson/Walton rivalry much less enough sense to put a stop to that kid wearing the jersey right behind State’s bench.

  8. Pack92 03/19/2007 at 4:28 PM #

    In your limited understanding Chris, in your limited understanding. No more posts from me.

  9. redfred2 03/19/2007 at 4:29 PM #

    dawgitall

    I’m pretty sure I’ve personally written a couple of posts longer than that one, but thanks for sharing that. That is a great read.

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