San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SDSU BASKETBALL COACH 1979-1987
David “Smokey” Gaines, the Aztecs men’s basketball head coach from 1979 until 1987, died Saturday, according to his family. He was 80. He was the first Black man to hold the position of basketball head coach at an NCAA Division I school in California.
Former San Diego State basketball coach David “Smokey” Gaines has died.
His family announced his death Saturday morning. Gaines suffered a stroke in June 2018 and spent the last month in the hospital with complications from liver and brain cancer. Most internet databases list him at 78 years old, but his family’s Facebook post said he was 80.
He will be remembered in these parts as head coach of the Aztecs from 1979 to 1987 and the first Black man to hold that position at an NCAA Division I program in
California. But he was more than that: a Harlem Globetrotter, a pro basketball player, an NBA scout, an athletic director, a nightclub owner, a real estate investor, a comedian, a promoter, a single-digit handicap golfer, even a furniture salesman.
“He relates to people,” ESPN announcer Dick Vitale, who hired Gaines as an assistant coach at the University of Detroit Mercy in the 1970s, told the Uniontribune two years ago. “People really enjoy his company. A loyal, dedicated guy. Just a good friend, a friend for life.”
“The consummate entrepeneur,” said Michael Brunker, an assistant coach at SDSU under Gaines and now the vice president for mission advancement at San Diego County’s YMCA. “He did more than coach basketball.”
Gaines was promoted to head coach after Vitale left Detroit in 1977 and amassed a 47-10 record in two seasons before heading west to a SDSU program trying to raise the profile of an athletic department that had elevated to Div. I only nine years earlier.
The Aztecs went 6-21 in his first season, then had five straight winning seasons culminating in a 23-8 record and a trip to the NCAA Tournament in 1984-85 when
Gaines was the Western Athletic Conference coach of the year. The Aztecs would have only one winning season in the 12 years after Gaines left (and that was 1514) and wouldn’t reach the Big Dance again until Steve Fisher took them in 2002.
Known for his tailored suits, silk ties and one-liners, Gaines was equal parts tactician, salesman and showman. He immediately sensed SDSU athletics had an image problem and set out to change that with numerous community appearances. He called it “the nation’s fastest-rising basketball program.” He talked
about his belief in higher education … “you know, 6-8, 6-9, 6-10.”
Told at his introductory news conference that he’d be mayor if he won 10 games, he quipped: “Let me be governor, I’ll win 12.”
“If I’d come here and been very serious and sat in my office here and didn’t speak,” Gaines told the San Diego Reader in 1983, “then (SDSU) would have had just another program. But with me being a colorful coach, or however you might want to put it, I think that helped this program a lot. You can’t buy the kind of recognition we gained by that.”
The starting point guard for his first three seasons was a baseball player named Tony Gwynn, who still ranks as the school’s career assist leader. His biggest recruit, though, was Michael Cage, a 6-foot-9 power forward from West Memphis High in Arkansas who picked the Aztecs over the likes of Kentucky, Louisville and Memphis and became a first team All-american.
But Gaines was limited by facilities (his office was a cramped trailer next to Peterson Gym) and resources (the program’s $300,000 budget was couch change compared with college basketball’s blue bloods).
In an interview with freelance journalist Rob Miech in 2018 for a story in the Union-tribune, Gaines predicted he would have won three NCAA titles with Viejas Arena after it was built.
“If I had that (building), Woooo,” he said. “I came so close to getting big-time ball players. I woulda gotten them if we had the facilities.”
Gaines wound up with a 112-117 record in eight seasons as Aztecs coach, the fourth-most victories in school history.
“I knew Smokey from our Midwest days, when he was in Detroit,” Fisher said in a statement released by SDSU. “I watched from a distance as he developed some great teams at San Diego
State led by the likes of Michael Cage and Tony Gwynn. He was a man who loved his profession and genuinely cared about people. He followed the Aztecs long after his coaching days ended and was proud of what San Diego State accomplished. He will be fondly remembered by all of us that were fortunate enough to know him.”
Gaines grew up in innercity Detroit, one of nine children predominantly raised by his mother, a housekeeper who, he once said, made $5 a day. He was raised during the Motown era and told people he once dated Detroit singer Diana Ross. With few opportunities for Black basketball players at higher-profile universities, he attended Lemoyne-owen College, an HBCU in Memphis. He left as its all-time leading scorer and later became the school’s first player to have his number retired.
He was a sixth-round draft pick by his hometown Detroit Pistons but opted to attend a tryout camp for the Harlem Globetrotters, with 117 players vying for four spots. He was selected and traveled to more than 60 countries over the next year.
He spent four years with the Globetrotters, and in 2006 he became the 24th person inducted into their “Legends Ring.”
He played the next season with the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association, then the rival league of the NBA. Following that, he worked as a furniture salesman and got his master’s degree at Eastern Michigan University before returning to basketball as a high school coach.
After SDSU, Gaines briefly coached the San Diego Stingrays in the International Basketball League, worked as a scout for the NBA’S Denver Nuggets and ran a Mission Valley nightclub called “Smokey’s.” He returned to Lemoyne-owen as basketball coach and athletic director from 2005-08, then spent four years as athletic director for Memphis City Schools before retiring.
mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com