Patton, Elie still proud to be part of Youngstown Pride

July 14, 2015 at 10:14a.m.

Twenty-five years after winning second WBL title, Patton, players still feel proud

Bob Patton named the game himself. He called it “In the Bank” — a practice competition for his Youngstown Pride teams. The rules were simple: make a free throw and stay in the game. Miss three free throws and get eliminated. Five dollars goes to the winner.

Twenty-five years later, a certain game of “In the Bank” still stands out to the former Pride coach.

“Mario Elie and Fred Cofield are shooting and shooting and shooting and eventually it’s 75-75 — neither guy’s missed,” Patton said, remembering a practice inside the Beeghly Center during the 1990 season. “And then Elie finally missed and Cofield won. That’s how good and competitive they were.”

Like Elie and Cofield shot that day, Patton can go on and on with stories about the short-lived, yet highly-successful, Youngstown Pride basketball franchise that repeated as World Basketball League champions in the summer of 1990.

Sure, the league — unique for its fast-paced play style due to a 6-foot-5 height-limit — folded in just its fifth season on Aug. 1, 1992.

It did so because Pride owner Mickey Monus was fired from his discount drug chain, Phar-Mor, for embezzling $10 million from the company to help fund the WBL (a crime for which he served 10 years in federal prison).

But after all these years, the longtime local coach can still rattle off tales of the brief Youngstown Pride days — even though he doubts any others can.

“I thought people forgot about us,” Patton said with a chuckle from his home in St. Petersburg, Florida. “But that professional league was, without a doubt in my mind, unbelievable basketball.”

And the Pride were the class of the league.

They had some of the top players in Elie, Cofield, Tim Legler, Barry Mitchell, Mark Wade, Willie Bland, Kenny Natt and Keith Smart. They led the WBL in attendance from 1989-91 while posting a 42-game home-winning streak. They also hosted the 1990 WBL All-Star Game at the Beeghly Center.

Plus, they won a lot — totaling a franchise record of 153-92 in addition to two league titles.

“I just remember hanging out with the team and having a cool owner in Mickey Monus,” said Elie, who went on to win two NBA Finals with the Houston Rockets and another with the San Antonio Spurs. “Coach Bob was a good coach and the people in Youngstown were great. I loved playing there and when I stepped out on the court, I gave it all I had. I felt we could go far and we did.”

The WBL — which was played from May-September — debuted in 1988 with six teams, but eventually blossomed to as many as 10 franchises. During the late summer days of 1989 and 1990, Youngstown twice defeated the Calgary 88’s in the championship.

In 1989, the sharp-shooting Legler led the Pride to a sweep of the 88’s in a best-of-three series. It was the ESPN analyst’s lone season in Youngstown, as he left for the NBA with a pair of Reebok Pumps to go along with a WBL title.

SDLqI remember taking Timmy to buy some shoes,” said Bruce Burge, former Pride Assistant General Manager. “We went to the Southern Park Mall and got him some Pumps — he said he had to have a pair of them. Now Timmy’s on TV doing the NBA, but I told him that I remember when you were a nobody in our league.”

Game Two of the 1989 series played to a record crowd of 7,278 fans at the Beeghly Center. It ended in a 118-116 Youngstown win when Eric Newsome connected on two free throws down the stretch. That victory elicited this Oct. 16, 1989, congressional remark from the late Jim Traficant:

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Youngstown Pride. ... The final contest between these two teams has been compared to the type of victory that people talk about again and again and the kind of win movie directors like to recreate.”

No, a movie never was made of the 1989 Pride. Same goes for the 1990 team that was guided by Elie and defeated Calgary, 3-2, in a five-game series after losing two of the first three contests.

“They came back and beat us at home in Game Three and [Elie] had a really bad game,” Patton said. “I went in the locker room and Mario’s head was down and I said, ‘You’ll be the best player on the floor tomorrow night.’ And he had an unbelievable game. He was the best player I ever coached.

“We ended up winning that game and the next one even though Calgary was loaded.”

That’s because the Pride were loaded, too.

Wade starred on UNLV’s 1987 Final Four team. Smart hit the game-winning shot for Indiana in the 1987 NCAA championship. Bland teamed with Karl Malone on the 1985 Sweet Sixteen Louisiana Tech squad. And Natt, the former Sacramento Kings interim head coach, was the seventh pick of the 1980 NBA Draft.

“I thought Mark Wade was a hell of a pass-first point guard,” Elie said. “My man Barry Mitchell [MVP of both championship series] was a dirty-work guy and then we had some scorers like me and Cofield. We all had NBA-potential.”

In all, over 20 players from the WBL signed NBA contracts. The list includes former New York Knick John Starks (Memphis Rockers), former Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Scott Brooks (Fresno Flames) and the Pride’s Elie, Legler, Wade, Natt and Cofield.

Cofield actually recorded a WBL-record 57 points on June 24, 1990, at the Beeghly Center.

“The reporters are down there after and they want to talk about Cofield’s 57,” Patton said. “But what I wanted to talk about was the great screens that Barry Mitchell and Mario Elie and all these other guys set for him to get his 57. Saying that in the locker room, you should have seen the faces of those guys light up.”

Before Patton put his stamp on the Pride, he coached at Struthers and Liberty High throughout the 1980s. He initially joined Youngstown as an assistant in 1988, but replaced Mike Rice as head coach with just 16 games remaining in the inaugural season.

Patton then promptly went 12-4 to make the playoffs and — with the help of local assistants Rich Deniman and Bob LaRicca — earned the 1989 WBL Coach of the Year award. He served as the Pride head coach through the 1991 season before moving to General Manager in 1992.

“The talent on those teams was scary, but what [Patton] did best was put us in our roles,” said Wade. “That’s probably the best team I ever played on with guys knowing their roles and the coach playing to your strengths.”

Wade said the Pride had another advantage as well.

“There were many games where the energy from the crowd put us over the top,” he said. “The crowd was a plus and might have been the deciding factor between us and Calgary.”

While the WBL averaged 3,240 fans per game in 1990, the Beeghly Center often drew between 5,000 and 7,000 fans during its championship seasons.

“That was a fun part of it,” Wade said. “The town really embraced us.”

The players embraced the Youngstown community, too. Rick Love, former Pride director of media relations, said the team held youth basketball clinics, visited St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and made trips to the local libraries in an effort to serve the Valley.

“There are people in Youngstown that, at the end of the day, I’ll be friends with until the day I die,” Wade said. “We all appreciated what Youngstown brought to the table for us. It was a mutual respect.”

Speaking of respect, Patton recalled receiving some admiration from Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski in 1990.

Taking a break from their regular season schedule, the Pride traveled to Athens, Greece, for exhibition games against the Greek and Czechoslovakia national teams — winning both contests.

Afterwards, the Pride coach received a call from Krzyzewski, who was searching for scouting advice on the Greek and Czech teams for the 1992 USA Dream Team.

“Since they were going to play them in the Olympics, he wanted to find out what our secret was,” Patton said. “It was just speed and quickness.”

See, the Youngstown Pride stories go on and on with the former coach. And, yeah, Patton may be one of just a few who still remembers as vivid.

But then again, maybe not.

“There were a lot of other NBA guys in that league and we — especially John Starks — used to talk about the days,” said Elie, who later matched up with Starks in the 1994 NBA Finals. “It was definitely pretty neat.”