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1. frausty said:

   May 9th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

   “I tell my players, ‘Listen, if you miss practice tell me the truth about it the way I do,’ ” he said.” ‘Don’t tell me you had swine flu or were trapped in an elevator. Tell me you were sick of basketball for a day, or were swamped by life, or whatever the truth happens to be. I understand those things.’”

2. Black Scholes said:

   May 9th, 2009 at 11:54 pm

   I really enjoyed that article. I’ll always have a special fondness for Abe; we really won’t see his kind again.

   So the Danks/one basket/dead man line had been used before, albeit in a different variation. Not surprising, but that was new to me.

   srr, I can’t recall but were you the host of Abe’s show? I wonder if there’s video still floating around of his bit with the casket and “we’re not dead yet”? That was priceless.

   Abe to Weltlich to Penders to Barnes was always a great example to me when I was starting my career that organizations often tend to hire someone diametrically different than the last guy. McWilliams to Mackovic to Brown also works pretty well as a case in point.

3. Scipio Tex said:

   May 10th, 2009 at 8:55 am

   These just killed me.

   “I might have been the world’s first hippie,” Lemons said one day not long ago. “I was barefoot, the seat was torn out of my britches, I had long hair and I rode a girls’ bicycle. When you’re little and poor in a small town and have to ride a girls’ bike, you develop a sense of humor.”

   Abe said college players had changed since he started coaching. “It’s got to where now if you say hello to a player he’s liable to show up the next day in your office with his feet on your desk. He’s 19 years old and he says, ‘Coach, I’m not happy.’ I wave my hand at him like it’s magic and say, ‘Happiness to you.’

4. Scipio Tex said:

   May 10th, 2009 at 9:07 am

   “Zone Xavier and get something to eat.”
   —Texas Basketball Coach Abe Lemons, after he was asked what he planned to do in Cincinnati.

5. srr50 said:

   May 10th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

   srr, I can’t recall but were you the host of Abe’s show? I wonder if there’s video still floating around of his bit with the casket and “we’re not dead yet”? That was priceless.

   Nope. I was the Sports Director at KTBC at the time. Abe was upfront with me in that he said he liked my work, but since I was the host of the football show, he wanted someone else.

   That actually was fine by me, because Abe was harder on the hosts of his TV show than he was on his players.

   Six years — a different co-host each and every year.

   I know KTBC kept the tape for a while, but this was during the analog days, and I just don’t know if the “We Ain’t Dead Yet” tape survived the transfer to digital.

6. srr50 said:

   May 10th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

   One other thing about Abe.

   He was fired right after the 1982 season was completed. Less than a week later I was in a car accident — one that was serious enough to put me in the hospital for three weeks and on crutches for another three months.

   After I was moved out of intensive care, Abe was one of the first people outside of family to come and see me.

   His reputation for the quips and one-liners certainly was well deserved, but unlike many of his coaching bretheren, he actually connected with people in ways that had nothing to do with career.

   He truly was one of a kind.

7. Bob in Houston said:

   May 10th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

   I also loved to hang around Abe, but he could be nasty when he wanted to be, like when the last thing he wanted to do was hang around practice and talk to some scrub Daily Texan reporter.

   So what I ended up doing was getting up early and going to his office first thing in the morning. It worked like a charm. I learned a ton of basketball from him and Barry Dowd. Abe used to have open practices. He didn’t care who watched. I didn’t do it enough, but when I did, it was like going to class.

   It was about then that I realized how much time and effort coaches put into learning their trade, and how stupid some writers must sound sometimes.

   I’ve always said that Abe laid the foundation for what we’ve seen in UT hoops the last 20 years. Weltlich tried as hard as he could to destroy that foundation, but he couldn’t do it.

8. Scipio Tex said:

   May 11th, 2009 at 9:05 am

   Abe could definitely tell you where to go on the floor to get a good shot.

9. FTimmy said:

   May 13th, 2009 at 8:43 am

   srr…do you recall the names of the hosts of Abe’s show? I assume Jimmy Fidler was not one of them….

10. srr1950 said:

    May 14th, 2009 at 5:33 am

    srr…do you recall the names of the hosts of Abe’s show? I assume Jimmy Fidler was not one of them….

    His first year Abe brought up his announcer from the valley, (first name of John, can’t remember his last name.)

    His assistant, Barry Dowd, hosted one year. So did Bill Little, so did our weekend anchor Danny Elzer, and so did Sam Richardson, who was the promotions director for the station.

11. William R. Bowden said:

    May 16th, 2009 at 6:54 am

    Abe was definately one of a kind. You wont see that type of coach again. I remeber the NIT championship game. Watched it on tv in Lubbock Texas. The signal was terrible the game was great. Really thought Abe was about to put UT basketball on the map. He almost did on the court and no doubt did off the court. What a funny guy!

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