Steve Lavin has a Hollywood smile, a one-liner for every booster in the room and a recruiting pitch smoother than a 30-year-old bottle of single malt scotch.
But he also has guts a fighter pilot would envy.
With three games left in the regular season and his St. John’s team perched on the NCAA Tournament bubble, Lavin suspended his leading scorer, D’Angelo Harrison, for the rest of the season.
Harrison’s No. 11 jersey, his 18.3 points per game and his team-leading 58 3-pointers have been packed away.
Right or wrong, a successful basketball season for programs such as St. John’s is defined these days on whether or it makes the Tournament and how far it advances. Lavin knows that better than anyone.
He led UCLA to six NCAA Tournaments in seven years. His teams advancing to one Elite Eight and four Sweet 16s. He won 65 percent of his games. And he still got fired. Whether Lavin would have made the same decision with a UCLA player in the early ’90s is a question only he can answer, but yesterday he manned up.
“I can’t be a coach that is more concerned with the winning than the process,’’ Lavin said. “Even if it means at the end of the day that it ends up costing you your job, it’s the way I operate.’’
“The reason I got into coaching is to teach and work with young people to help them reach their full potential.’’
You expected some director to bust into the interview room in Taffner Fieldhouse screaming, “Cut! Cut! We’re not shooting a Hallmark commercial here!”
What Lavin did is simply unheard of. It’s not as if Harrison failed a drug test, was pulled over and blew a 2.0 on a breathalyzer, or cheated on a paper. According to Harrison’s grandmother, sources in the St. John’s basketball program and Lavin, the player’s offense was being a volatile, erratic, immature sophomore.
He gives officials the hairy eyeball seemingly from the minute the band starts playing the national anthem. He’s late for team meetings and buses and sometimes needs a bullhorn to get him to class on time.
But he is the furthest thing to being a bad kid, not even close to being a rotten apple. He just has a lot of growing up to do. Lavin tried to up the ante this season; in November, he spoke glowingly about Harrison’s maturity, but that talking point didn’t stick.
Harrison was suspended for a preseason game and didn’t start against Detroit or Baylor. In the past month, there were few outward signs Harrison was in a maturity backslide.
But when he turned his back on a huddle in a national televised game at Syracuse, the highest levels of the administration saw it and were embarrassed. Whatever other miscues Harrison committed behind the scenes were not big-ticket ones, but there were a lot of them.
Harrison was called to the coach’s office on Thursday and received the Lavin Death Penalty. The Johnnies, sitting at 16-11 and 8-7 in the Big East, will have to make the tournament without the player that leads the league in tattoos, has threaded eyebrows and a Mohawk.
The Johnnies — assuming Harrison returns, JaKarr Sampson and/or Chris Obekpa don’t foolishly enter the NBA Draft and no one blows out an ACL — appear to be an Elite Eight team next season, but there’s no guarantee. Dan Marino went to the Super Bowl as a rookie and never went back.
Lavin has put himself on the chopping block.
“You’re always aware at this level, winning clearly is an objective in terms of wanting to create revenue streams, get people to fill the Garden and make the NCAA Tournament,’’ Lavin said. “But when I took the job one of the things that the was attractive about St. John’s was right from the jump, Father Harrington made it clear there are things that are more important than winning.’’
Things that are more important than winning. What a concept.