Back in the day
An Oklahoma City woman remembers Mo Cheeks as a volunteer assistant for her sorority’s intramural team at West Texas State.
Maurice Cheeks is going into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for lots of reasons.
Being a four-time All-Star and a four-time All-Defensive First-Team selection. Starting on Philadelphia’s title team in 1983. Ranking fifth in NBA history in steals and 13th in assists. Spending two-plus decades as a coach in the league.
Heck, simply being able to talk Russell Westbrook off the ledge should earn Cheeks some sort of award.
His impact in basketball reaches far and wide.
But on the day the Thunder assistant is enshrined, there is a group of women now in their 50s and 60s who will relish his induction like no others. They were at West Texas State at the same time he was, and they have the distinction of being the first
basketball team he ever helped coach.
The intramural squad from Delta Zeta Sorority.
Oklahoma City resident Shelley Dutton was part of the team.
“Could not be happier to hear about his induction,” she said. “Super, super awesome.”
Dutton started college at West Texas State — now West Texas A&M — a year or so after Cheeks did. He had already made a name for himself at the Canyon, Texas, school, becoming a starter on the basketball team as a freshman.
Being a college of only 8,000 or so students then, everyone got to know everyone. Some of the Delta Zetas got to know Cheeks, and one of them, DarLee McPherson Foster, recruited him to help the team.
Like a lot of the other gals in the sorority, Foster had grown up playing basketball and only basketball in the Texas panhandle. The area was a hotbed for girls basketball, and many of the Delta Zetas had been standouts in high school.
They were serious about their intramurals.
That’s why Delta Zeta asked Cheeks to
help. He wasn’t at every practice — yes, practice for intramurals — and he couldn’t make every game. But he attended whenever he didn’t have a conflict.
“I just remember the practices were really fun when he was there,” Dutton said. “He was just really easy going. He’s unpretentious. Real upbeat.”
Truth is, many of the same things can be said today about Cheeks.
He spent four seasons with the Thunder back when Westbrook’s pro career was in its infancy. While Cheeks worked with all of the guards, Westbrook was his primary responsibility. Cheeks helped turn a live wire with great potential into a legitimate NBA point guard.
The two developed such a rapport that after Cheeks went to Detroit to be the head coach, OKC brought him back.
Westbrook has again seen great development while working with Cheeks. There was the MVP season. The triple-double records. The change from playing with Kevin Durant to playing without him to playing with Paul George.
Most of the credit for Westbrook’s evolution belongs to Westbrook — but it’d be foolish to ignore the impact of Cheeks.
The women of Delta Zeta like to think they had an impact on Cheeks.
“We could’ve been his training ground,” Dutton said with a chuckle.
While many of the sorority sisters kept up with Cheeks during his playing days — West Texas State wasn’t cranking out NBA players, so they were tickled to see him have such quick success as a Sixer — they struggled to keep tabs on him as time passed. They had careers. They had families. That left little time for NBA watching.
Dutton remembers the day in 2009 that she heard the Thunder had hired Cheeks.
“I was just like, ‘Oh my goodness!’” she said.
There was a similar reaction by even more of the sorority sisters last winter when Cheeks was selected for the hall of fame.
“I just can’t believe it’s Maurice!” Foster told Dutton the other day.
By the way, no one at West Texas State back in the day called him “Mo.” Everyone went with “Maurice,” emphasis on the “REECE” part.
But the basketball team at Delta Zeta could’ve gone with “Coach.”
Many more players have called him that over the years, but on a day when his career is honored and his impact is celebrated, the women who played on that intramural squad have the distinction of being the first.