Sam Okey was part basketball player for the University of Wisconsin and part myth.
It was announced Tuesday that Okey was leaving the UW basketball program and will transfer to another school. This will be seen in some quarters as a tragic development. It will be seen here as merely unfortunate.
The conflicts between Okey and the Wisconsin coach, Dick Bennett, are of some interest. But players and coaches have conflicts. Bennett is not Bobby Knight. And, apparently, Okey is not Latrell Sprewell.
There is something else striking about this story. It isn't altogether new.
Sam Okey was part of a long line of players who were going to single-handedly turn this program around. These players all were "highly touted." They often shared two other characteristics: They were from Wisconsin. And they were white.
The white Wisconsin kid who will carry the Badgers back to the Big Ten championship that they haven't won in 50 years is a staple of the UW program. The problem is, he never quite exists. In this way, he is primarily a staple of the imagination of University of Wisconsin basketball fans.
There is neither time nor space to provide a full listing in this category. But here's one example for you baby-boomer alumni.
Remember Eino Hendrickson? Maybe you don't. But 30 years ago, he was supposed to be Wisconsin's answer to UCLA's Lew Alcindor. The two of them, it turned out, shared the single trait of extreme height. But there were all sorts of goofy expectations placed upon young Eino when he arrived in Madison. When he wouldn't meet those expectations, it was allegedly his fault. No. It was the fault of everyone else who tried to make him into something he wasn't.
When Wisconsin successfully recruited Okey, you were told that this was the type of player who would not only carry the Badgers, but would surely go on to a glorious career in the National Basketball Association.
This was fine, until you actually watched him play. He was a nice player, no doubt; he was a player with some skills. But for long-range purposes, he was mostly a tweener.
He was not large enough to be a classic power forward. He was not skilled enough to be a classic small forward. For starters, he didn't shoot the ball as well as a small forward must. This became part of the conflict between coach and player. For the purposes of his future, Okey saw himself as a small forward. For the purposes of this team, Bennett saw Okey as a power forward.
The central problem here had two parts. Okey's press clippings, making him into a player he never really was, was one part. The other part was that Okey evidently believed all this himself.
This is a typical mistake in judgment. In one way or another, weren't we all world-beaters at age 20? But here, the Sam Okey myth made the Sam Okey player not particularly coachable.
Okey did become the Big Ten freshman player of the year. But he did not get better. In fact, the argument could easily be made that his value to his team deteriorated.
And so, he found he could not co-exist with Dick Bennett. We are all sorry to hear that. But here are the sides you can choose:
On the one is a man of honor who has devoted his adult life to discovering and bringing out the absolute best that the young men under his tutelage have. On the other, you have a player who is not as good as he thinks he is.
Dick Bennett will take some blame for this, but it isn't his fault. Part of it is Sam Okey's fault, but not all of it. For the rest of the blame, check out the people who foisted a dream vision on this kid.
The central problem here had two parts. Okey's press clippings, making him into a player he never really was, was one part. The other part was that Okey evidently believed all this himself.
� Copyright 1998, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.