Falling Star Tiger hoops legend Larry Finch is looking for work. by Dennis Freeland t should never have come to this. Larry Finch, the most celebrated player and coach in University of Memphis athletic history, is running a doomed campaign for an obscure political position that almost no one other than the 37-year incumbent understands. Back in 1995, I sat next to Finch during an opening-round game in a conference tournament at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Across the court from us, a struggling UAB team, coached by Finch’s friend and mentor Gene Bartow, was closing out its season. Everyone knew that Bartow would soon pass the torch on to his son, Murray. Most agreed that the game had passed the elder Bartow by. His recruiting had slipped and his team was barely competitive. Finch empathized with the man who had given him his first college coaching opportunity after UAB hired Bartow to build a basketball program from scratch in 1977. Midway through the game Finch said to me, “I hope I don’t end up like that.” His mind was clearly on his old coach who had led Finch’s team to the national championship game in 1973. “But I don’t know what else I would do if I wasn’t coaching basketball,” Finch confided. I thought about it for a few minutes. I wanted to come back with a great idea, to sling a string of possibilities at the man sitting next to me. He is only five years my senior, but on this night he seemed much older, much more tired. I couldn’t think of anything. Finch had been a basketball player or coach all of his life. What would he do if he gave up coaching? He doesn’t possess the glib personality that would lead him into radio or TV. Even though he was one of the lowest-paid coaches in Conference USA, Finch would have a hard time adjusting to the salary that most jobs in Memphis offer. The man who had brought a racially divided city together behind an integrated basketball team in the early ’70s couldn’t settle for any old job. It just wouldn’t be right. So I sat quietly. A career in politics never entered my mind. Three years later someone called our office to say that Larry Finch had filed to run against venerable 72-year-old County Register Guy Bates. I didn’t believe it. But a few minutes later senior editor Jackson Baker confirmed it: Larry Finch was running for political office, perhaps the most unlikely political office of all. Why? Why would Finch want Guy Bates’ job? No player, coach, or administrator at the University of Memphis has come close to matching Finch’s success. As a player he played in the biggest game in school history, on national TV, in St. Louis, against Bill Walton and UCLA. As an assistant coach he helped the school return to the Final Four in 1985. As a head coach he made it to the Elite Eight and consistently had his team in the NCAA post-season tournament. But he was fired mid-season in 1997 and was then unceremoniously rejected for coaching jobs at mid-major schools Jacksonville, Georgia State, and South Alabama. This is how a hero ends up in Memphis: out of work and running an uninspired campaign for a position that in no fashion suits him. This was a long shot, to be sure. To beat Bates, Finch would have had to call on all his old friends, shake lots of hands, look people in the eye, and ask for their vote. But unlike all those pressure shots number 21 sank at the Mid-South Coliseum, he didn’t nail this one. “Finch is a pleasant man.” That was as much praise as the daily newspaper could muster for the ex-coach in its editorial endorsement of his opponent. Like I said, it shouldn’t have come to this. n (Dennis Freeland is editor of The Memphis Flyer and has covered Tiger basketball since 1991.)