The bus pulls into the parking lot of a Wendy’s in Charleston, W.Va., and out of it spills the Asheville Altitude of the National Basketball Developmental League. The team has just finished its game with the Charleston Lowgators and is on its way to Roanoke to face the Dazzle the next night. Players are searching for some food to sustain them on the five-hour ride.
With them is their coach, 55-year-old Joey Meyer, who spent more than half his life at DePaul.
The school fired him after the 1997 season, his 31st at the place as a player, assistant or head coach, and he moved from there into radio analysis of Northwestern games. Next came a year with the now-defunct Chicago Skyliners of the ABA, whom he guided to a conference championship, and then he made the move South, where he is in his third season chasing his dream.
“I want to get to the NBA,” Meyer says. “I want to experience that, and I feel this is the best way to do it.”
But at 11 p.m. on this frigid night in Charleston, that is not his primary concern. Food is, and it’s proving to be a problem. The dining room of this Wendy’s already is shut down and it’s not going to reopen, not even for Meyer, his assistant, his trainer and his 10 players.
But the drive-through is serving, they are told, and that news is good enough for them. They exit their bus, walk to the giant menu at the mouth of the drive-through lane, decide what they want, walk to one window, order and pay, walk to another window, pick up their bags of food and, finally, walk back to their bus and settle in for some fine dining.
“You learn to adapt. That’s the biggest thing in the minor-league system,” says John Anderson, the Altitude’s trainer.
“It’s a difficult life,” says Rusty LaRue, the former Bull who’s now one of the Altitude’s guards.
“It’s just life in the `D’ league,” Meyer says, and then he laughs.
Getting fired hurt
He laughed little through his final seasons at DePaul. He had played there under his dad, “the Coach,” Ray Meyer, and in 1971 he was the Blue Demons’ captain. He then began working for his dad, recruiting much of the talent that carried the school to the 1979 Final Four. When his dad retired in 1984, he slid over one seat and succeeded him.
Three seasons later he guided the Blue Demons to a 28-3 record and was national Coach of the Year–and more lucrative job offers came his way. He rejected them all, choosing instead to carry on the family tradition. But by the mid-’90s his teams were mired in mediocrity and he was under siege.
He declines even now to discuss the circumstances of that time, but it was clear he lacked the support of his superiors and the resources necessary to compete in the high-stakes game of college basketball. He finished 11-18 in his penultimate season, then went 3-23 in 1996-97 and was fired. The divorce was ugly and created a chasm between the school and his family.
“Everybody gets fired,” Meyer concedes. “But I’d been there so long, it took a lot out of me. I put a lot of my life into that, and it was hard. It was hard on the family (especially wife Barbara and son Brian, a junior at UIC). I can’t imagine how hard it was on them.
“Until you go through it, you don’t know how much it takes out of you. People get fired. But it’s not on the front page of the paper. It’s not on the 10 o’clock news. It’s not on talk radio. It’s done privately and it hurts. But when you have that public thing, too, I don’t know. There’s a sense you’re a failure. When you walk into a place, you feel the eyes are on you–`There’s the guy they let go at DePaul.’
“Sure, you dramatize it a little bit. Ninety percent of the population has no clue what happened. But when it happens to you, it feels like everybody knows.
“That was also something I’d given my life to, so there was a little bit of [feeling] `I need to get away and sort things out. I need time.'”
He spent much of that time watching and visiting with current Toronto Raptors coach Kevin O’Neill, who then was coaching Northwestern. He studied and talked with other coaches as well–Bob Knight, Rick Majerus, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski. He spent time with all of them, and the opportunities did more than help him cope with the pangs of withdrawal.
“When I did that,” Meyer remembers, “I said, `You know what? I really do love this game.’
“I don’t know if I’d lost that. But that first year it was buried. There was bitterness or whatever you call it. But after I got to see some games and practices, I started getting the bug back. My juices started going again.”
He does not remember who recommended him to the NBDL or who from that league’s office called him. But when that call came and a job was offered in 2001, he was ready.
“Are you willing to move?” he was asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
It would mean leaving Chicago for the first time in his life and living alone for more than half a year. It would mean long separations from Barbara and Brian, who would remain at their home near DePaul. It would mean learning a new game, coaching a different kind of player and enduring circumstances that stretched from the ridiculous to the bizarre.
But he would be back on the sidelines.
“Yeah, you moan a little bit, but if I left this job, there’d be 150 guys lined up to get it. They’re coaches,” Meyer explains, and then he starts talking of Charleston coach Doug Marty.
He has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford, a master’s in international studies from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, and a master’s in education from Harvard, yet he has chosen to toil in the “D” league.
“There are only so many coaches’ jobs and we all want the opportunity to prove ourselves,” Meyer says.
“It’s like [the players] complain about the bus rides and things like that, but how many guys would take their place? Are you kidding me, how many calls I get in my office? I have guys call to be my assistant, to volunteer. I had a guy who owned his own business call, he wanted to try out. Why?
“When I first came out, I wasn’t sure. But now I know what I want to do.”
What it’s all about
In the next-to-last game of the 2002-03 season, Asheville needed a victory to keep its playoff hopes alive. The Altitude led at halftime, but then a team official walked into the locker room with a bit of news.
Jeff Trepagnier, the team’s best player, had just been called up by the Denver Nuggets, the man told Meyer.
“That’s great!” was Meyer’s first thought.
“Uh-oh. I don’t know how great this is,” he thought a heartbeat later.
“Then Jeff wants to play the second half and I let him for the first six minutes,” Meyer recalls. “Then I’m thinking, `What am I doing? What if he gets hurt?’ I don’t want to hurt a guy who got called up.”
So Meyer yanked Trepagnier and sat him for the rest of the game, which Asheville lost, and there went its playoff hopes.
“But that’s what the league’s all about,” Meyer says with a shrug. “That’s just life in the `D’ league.”
Inflating the basketballs
The players, who are said to make between $12,000 and $24,000 per season, live two to a unit at an Asheville apartment complex. The NBA pays for their rooms and provides much of their equipment. When they are on the road they receive a $30 per diem, as do Meyer and his staff.
But many do not own cars, so before practice they’re collected by assistant coach Mike Sanders, who played for the Cavaliers back when they were an ardent Bulls playoff opponent.
Sometimes the Altitude practices at its home court, the Civic Center, which during the winter also is used for public ice skating. (“It sometimes feels like a meat locker in there,” says Anderson, the trainer.) Sometimes practice is at the local YMCA and sometimes on the court of the Foster Seventh Day Adventist Church.
But on this morning the players are gathered at UNC-Asheville’s Justice Center, where they must wait for Liberty College to complete its shootaround before they can take the floor.
Meyer usually gets to practice a good hour before his players, and on occasion he must sweep the floor or inflate the balls.
“You can’t be too proud to coach down here,” he says.
And you can’t always concentrate just on coaching.
“Anything I ask of him, he does a fabulous job of being an ambassador for the organization. I’m fortunate to have him as my coach,” Altitude President Alfred White says. “He understands the basketball side, but he also understands the business side and how marketing contributes to our success.
“We played a tripleheader the other night (with the Altitude following two high school games). Some coaches would have told their president to jump in the lake. They weren’t going to play third and then get on the bus [for an overnight trip], which we did. But he embraces the idea of making us a successful business venture, and he encourages the players to contribute as much as they can.”
Their signature program is Read to Achieve, but Meyer and the players are involved in other charitable endeavors. They deliver Meals on Wheels, and on Thanksgiving they served dinner at a soup kitchen. They have decorated a Christmas tree at a hospital and conducted clinics at the YMCA. Each day Sanders drives around town in the Altitude Hummer, which is decorated with the team’s schedule and other advertisements.
“We do any random act of kindness,” White says.
A Doritos Christmas
Still, their focus is their sport. The Altitude often plays back-to-back games, finishing at 11 p.m., loading into the bus, driving five hours and playing again that evening. Nourishment is a regular issue. Even all the fast-food joints are closed on some evenings, and then they must eat pre-wrapped sandwiches purchased at gas station mini-marts.
“Our first year, on Christmas, we’re in Huntsville (Ala.) and nothing’s open until late,” Anderson recalls.
“So you’re at the vending machine popping quarters. That was breakfast and lunch. It’s hard for people to comprehend. It’s hard for them to understand. `Hey, did you do anything for Christmas?’
“`Yeah. I sat in a hotel room and had a bag of Doritos and a Coke.’
“But we’re on the road and everything’s closed. What are you going to do?”
That is part of what Meyer and his band do in pursuit of their collective dream, which is a job in the NBA. Fifteen former “D” league players are now part of the show, including the Bulls’ Ronald Dupree, and it’s Meyer’s ardent hope that one day he’ll join them.
That is why he left his hometown and his family, why he took on this nomadic existence, why he now spends endless days that blend together as one.
He reaches a gym at 9. He practices with his team for two hours. He joins his players as they lift weights. He goes to his office, reads e-mail and makes phone calls. He retreats to his townhouse, where the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky mountains provide scenery and cows graze 100 yards from his front door, and spends endless hours watching tape. Finally he sticks a Lean Cuisine package in the microwave and, to end his day, eats dinner while watching basketball on TV.
“I don’t get out much,” he says with a soft chuckle. “It’s basically 24 hours of basketball. Some people may say that’s crazy. But I enjoy that. I’m having fun down here.”
But it has to be difficult.
“This is a tough league not only to play in, but also to coach in,” LaRue says. “When you’re in college, guys will sacrifice for the team. You get guys here, they’re hoping they’re here only two weeks. So it’s kind of hard to get guys to play together and to really buy into what you’re telling them. . . . I think that’s frustrating for him sometimes.
“In the minor leagues, guys are down here because they have deficiencies. There’s something they have to work on, and sometimes guys don’t want to hear that. It’s a challenge. But he does a good job of it.”
Meyer says he’s a better coach now than when he left DePaul, and though he has made NBA contacts, there have been no promises or guarantees.
“I get a feeling he has some chances,” White says, “but what I’ve learned in this business is you have to self-promote. I think he’s doing more of that now, but it’s uncharacteristic for him. He’s uncomfortable doing that.”
But he’s not complaining.
“That’s a gene I got from that 90-year-old guy sitting up in Chicago,” Meyer says of his father.
Ultimately, a lifer
But he also got another gene, one that compels him to coach, and so the uncertainty and the loneliness, the bus rides and frozen meals, the lack of glamor and near-empty gyms, none of that really matters to him. He is ultimately a lifer doing his life’s work, competing, teaching, pursuing a dream and always hoping.
“I came down hoping I wouldn’t be down too long,” Meyer says. “But what’s that line about two steps back and one step forward?
“I’m comfortable now [that] I could help someone in the NBA. I’m comfortable I could do it again in college. But I just enjoy coaching. I’m sure people will read this and say, `He’s in the “D” league.’ But I do enjoy coaching. I’m learning the pro game. I like trying to get guys better, and I think I’m serving a purpose.
“It’s not where I want to stay. I see it as a steppingstone. Everybody in this league is trying to get to the next level in some capacity. I’d like to get a job tomorrow. But I’m trying to be patient and do things the right way.”
Meyer at DePaul
SEASON REC. POSTSEASON
1984-85 19-10 Lost 1st rd NCAA
1985-86 18-13 Lost in Sweet 16
1986-87 28-3 Lost in Sweet 16
1987-88 22-8 Lost 2nd rd NCAA
1988-89 21-12 Lost 2nd rd NCAA
1989-90 20-15 Lost 3rd rd NIT
1990-91 20-9 Lost 1st rd NCAA
1991-92 20-9 Lost 1st rd NCAA
1992-93 16-15 none
1993-94 16-12 Lost 1st rd NIT
1994-95 17-11 Lost 1st rd NIT
1995-96 11-18 none
1996-97 3-23 none
13 sea. 231-158 7 NCAA, 3 NIT
After DePaul
SEASON TEAM, LEAGUE REC.
2000-01 Chicago Skyliners, ABA 29-11
2001-02 Asheville Altitude, NBDL 26-30
2002-03 Asheville Altitude, NBDL 23-27
2003-04 Asheville Altitude, NBDL 12-12
%%
%%
