When he was a young man, he stood beside Martin Luther King Junior as he gave his speech “I have a dream.” As a basketball coach in the college, a path for coaches and black players caught. As an executive official, he had an effective role in the signature of Michael Jordan on his pioneering deal with Nike.
George Raveling had an effect that extends beyond the basketball, a sport coached by the last three decades at the University of Southern California. He became a distinguished character in the game, not for the number of victories that have accumulated during his career, but for his role as a guide for many.
Raville, 88, died on Monday after a battle with cancer, to him The family announced.
“There are no words to capture what George fully means to his family, friends, colleagues, former players and assistants – and to pass the world,” the family said in a statement. “It will be deeply missed, however, a halo, energy, divine presence, and immortal wisdom live in everyone who did not touch and transform it.”
Raveling trained in USC from 1986 to 1994, the first black coach to lead the Trojans basketball program. During his first four seasons in school, Raveling did not have a lot of success, winning only 38 games from 116 matches in USC on this extension.
Raveling found his steps in the second half of his term, and took Trojan horses to two consecutive NCA championships and two after that. But his USC’s public record was not broken. 500 (115-118). In September 1994, Raveling was in a dangerous car accident that eventually led him to retire. He suffered from nine broken ribs, lungs that collapsed, breaking the pelvis and the bone of collarbone.
After his training career, Raveling joined Nike as a Grassroots director, as he later rose to the role of international basketball director.
But his biggest contribution to Nike came out of his relationship with Jordan, who trained Ravilge as an assistant with the American national team in the 1984 Olympics. Jordan, who sent a deal with Nike the brand to a new Litosvir, is thanks to Raveling to achieve this. At the introduction to the Raveling book, Jordan described it as a “guide.”
“If George is not, there will be no flying Jordan,” Jordan wrote.
Throughout the basketball world, similar praise came on Tuesday in light of the death of Raville.
Eric Musalman, the current basketball coach at the University of Southern California, said Rafaeling “not only the mind of basketball in the hall of fame, but a huge person who paved the way and outside the stadium.”
Jay Wright, former Villanova coach on social media, wrote that Raeel was “the best human being, an inspiring guide, more loyal and loved friend, a deliberate lover.”
Rafeel grew up in Washington, DC, during the period of separation between isolation and hardship. His family lived in a two -room apartment over a grocery store, where they shared the bathroom with four other families on the same floor. His father died suddenly when he was 9 years old. His mother suffered from the mental health crisis a few years later and spent most of her remaining years in a psychiatric hospital. Rafeel left at home in 14 to attend an internal school.
She was in St. Michaels, a school mostly in Pennsylvania, which started playing basketball for the first time. He obtained a scholarship in Villanova, where he became a leader and then an assistant coach.
But the college experience, as he said at a later time, had a deeper impact on the crane.
“I always felt as if she was running in the start box and was 20 yards behind everyone – I have been in a crazy impulse to catch everyone since then.” I encouraged I have to go to the college. “
It seems that he apparently spends his life, in an attempt to compensate for lost time.
Raveling was standing a few meters away from King at the National Commercial Center in Washington, DC in 1963, when he gave his famous speech “I have a dream.” King has already handed his copy of the historical discourse as soon as it ends.
For decades, Ravils kept reserved inside a book, before recounting the story to the journalist. According to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, a mosque later offered $ 3 million to copy it from the letter. But he refused and donated it instead to Villanova.
George Ravilling was recruited in the Celebrity Basketball Hall in Naismith, Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2015.
(Charles Croba / Associated Press)
Raphayng was a pioneer on a road where there were a few black coaches through his career. He was the first black coach in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference when he started as an assistant in 1969. After three years, in Washington, he became the first black coach to lead the basketball team at the PAC-8 (now PAC-12).
He trained in Iowa from 1983-1986 before his appointment at the University of Southern California. At that time, Trojan horses had a list that included Hank Gatters and Bo Kimbel, who were coming out of a student season. Raveling gave the players a fixed final date to tell him if they intend to stay in the team and when they did not cancel the scholarships. Both went to the star in Liola Marimaont.
Raveling was inserted into the Naismith Celebrity Hall in 2015. But as a shares, not as a coach. Even during his training, Rafeel seemed to understand that his role means more than that.
He told the Times in 1994: “Winning basketball games only helps you to maintain your job. But keeping your job helps you work with these children about the real challenges of life, which all happen away from the stadium. I know that there is a tremendous request here to win. But I do not want to ask me what I have accomplished in my life and tell me to say that I won this amount of games or took a team to some of them some.
“If all I can say is that I knew a child how to shoot a jump, well, this is not good enough. These children get out of the areas deprived of the inner city, and I just waste my time if I do not put something in their lives.”