Cowens Almost Coached Cs in Mid-90s

1996

The new coach of the Charlotte Hornets wanted some soup before his cheeseburger. The waitress told him the specialty du jour was seafood chowder and that it was excellent.

Dave Cowens arched his eyebrows. Seafood chowder here in the land of grits and peaches?

``It's real good,'' the waitress promised.

Cowens ordered it, tried it and concurred.

``Pretty good,'' he said. ``But not as good as the No Name.''

In so many ways, Cowens will always be a fixture in Boston regardless of where he goes or what he does. Where he is now is having lunch in a mall restaurant a few miles from the Hornets' impressive practice facility in Fort Mill, S.C. Cowens, who was raised in Newport, Ky., and went to college at Florida State, has mastered the phrase `Praise the Lord!' and other subtleties of Bible Belt living. What he's doing now is trying to stabilize the backsliding Hornets, a task that may require not just the help of the Lord, but also a few good players.

It isn't Boston and it isn't the Celtics, both of which Cowens would have preferred. After years away from the game, he returned to the NBA two years ago as an assistant in San Antonio with one goal in mind: to be a head coach again in the NBA. He almost got his wish last summer with the Celtics, as M.L. Carr allegedly went looking for a coach and called on his former teammate.

The move made sense for so many reasons. Cowens' wife and children were still in Needham, living in their house with a backyard view of Sabrina Lake. The team would be moving into a new building and needed a new name and identity. He would bond with the town and the team as he did before.

He was interviewed three times, including a tour of the practice ``facility'' at Brandeis. It led him to believe he was close. ``I guess it must have meant I did all right in the first two interviews,'' he said. Then, he flew back to San Antonio and found out that M.L. Carr took the job. He won't get into name-calling or backstabbing now, but he was hot about the way the whole thing went down.

``Sure, I was disappointed,'' he said. ``But M.L. did what he wanted to do."