Taking Her Shot : A Funny Thing Happened to Cheryl Miller, Who Went From Booth to the Bench at USC

It’s one of the best of all basketball stories, a certain inductee when the basketball Hall of Fame opens its comedy wing.

It is 1982 and Riverside Poly High prep star Reggie Miller bounds through the front door of his parents’ home, yelling, “Cheryl, Mom, Dad--I got 39! Everything I put up went in!”

Cheryl Miller recalls that Reggie smirked just a bit.

But big sister Cheryl had played that day, too.

As Cheryl recalls it, the conversation continued like this:

Reggie: “How many did you get today, Cheryl?”

Cheryl: “A lot, Reggie.”

Reggie: “How many? Forty? Fifty?

Cheryl: “A hundred and five.”

Reggie: “You gotta be kidding.”

Telling the story again the other day, Cheryl burst out laughing.

“Reggie went sheet-white,” she said, fairly cackling.

This one is sure to keep the Millers in chuckles for a few more decades. And Cheryl Miller is indeed basketball’s lady of laughs.

She wears a constant whimsical look, as if she is about to burst out laughing. And often she does.

At the White House, when she and her USC NCAA-champion teammates were meeting President Reagan, she said, “Thanks, Ronnie,” as he shook her hand and everyone broke up, including the President, who said, “Finally, I meet someone who’s a bigger ham than I am.”

For the last few months, Miller has needed some laughs. And she will need some more over the next few months.

Miller, proclaimed by Sports Illustrated in a 1985 cover story as the best basketball player in America, male or female, dropped out of the sky into the USC women’s basketball program last Sept. 2.

Trouble was, her players didn’t open up the safety net for her and she crash-landed.

She found herself at one end of an emotional tug of war. At the other end was the former coach, Marianne Stanley, who had chosen not to sign a new contract that would have paid her $288,000 over three years because she wanted to be paid the same as George Raveling, the men’s coach. She filed an $8-million sex-discrimination suit against USC and Athletic Director Mike Garrett.

In the middle were a dozen very good basketball players, many of them irked at the sudden, unexpected departure of their coach.

So when Miller came on board, she found a certain team chemistry--nitroglycerin.

She laughed when asked if the players’ initial reception had been stiff.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” she said. “In fact, things were so stiff that if they’d been any stiffer, we’d have all been corpses.

“But now I’m having a great time. Things are falling into place. The chemistry on this team is getting better.”

Her veteran, talented team begins its regular season tonight at Northern Illinois. Then they move on to the University of Richmond tournament--Texas, Maryland and Richmond are the other teams--Friday and Saturday.

She was asked about talented players responding to sudden coaching change and began her answer before the questioner had finished.

“Talent is overrated,” said the woman many say was the most talented female player ever produced in this country.

“I’ll take 14 players who say to you, ‘Coach, which brick wall do you want me to run through?’

“Mental toughness--I want my team to be known for that more than anything. That’s my goal. And I want them mentally tough whether they’re behind or maintaining a lead.

“Maybe they’re being pushed around. Maybe one night they’re not getting the calls (from the officials). I want them to retaliate in only two ways--playing tough D, or by scoring.

“Some players are mentally tough to begin with, some aren’t. But I can live with that, because toughness is contagious, like enthusiasm.

“If you have a player out there, hobbling around on a sprained ankle and making plays, her teammates see that.”

“When I played, I took a lot of pride in playing hurt. . . . To me, that’s what basketball is all about.”

Of course, toughness is an acquired trait when you have a 6-foot-7 brother, Reggie, knocking you all over the family driveway court, along with a 6-5 father, Saul, and two other big, strong brothers, Saul Jr. and Darrell.

Miller, 29, makes a major career switch tonight. She goes from getting paid for talking about basketball to coaching the game. Last season, she was somewhere every weekend, for ABC, ESPN, Prime Ticket and Raycom, calling games, most of them men’s.

“When Mike Garrett hired me, I asked him about my broadcasting career and he gave me permission to continue with it, but he told me he didn’t want me running myself into the ground.

“Then I took a long look at our schedule, and I decided there’s just no way. I’m a coach, period.”

The call, she said, came one day last summer, when she was at her Studio City home.

“It was Daryl Gross (USC’s assistant athletic director), asking me if I was aware of the problems they were having with Marianne,” Miller said.

“I told him I was. Then he asked me if I was interested in coming back to SC as an assistant coach. I told him I’d love to, as long as I could continue with my broadcasting career. He told me he’d get back to me.

“So he calls four or five hours later and asks if I was interested in being the head coach.

“I dropped the phone.

“I didn’t know what to say. He told me to sleep on it.

“I didn’t sleep a bit that night, which told me I wanted it. When Darryl called me the next morning I told him I’d do it if he got me Fred Williams, too.”

And Fred Williams, too, was brought back.

Williams, 36, was working at UC Irvine but had been an assistant at USC for eight years, having worked under both Linda Sharp and Stanley.

Williams, who was given the title--at Miller’s insistence--of “associate head coach,” is a quiet but persistent practice taskmaster.

Miller is most often at mid-court, interrupting with a toot on her whistle and shouting, “Laaaaadies, this isn’t getting it done!”

The other day, while Miller was participating in a full-court drill, junior guard Karleen Shields leaped high in front of her coach at mid-court, intercepted a pass, took it to the other end and laid it in.

OK, so the old knees aren’t what they used to be.

Miller, who led USC to NCAA titles in 1983 and ‘84, also led the U.S. women to an Olympic gold medal in 1984. She tried Olympic comebacks in 1988 and ‘92, but her knees failed her.

“It was so disappointing,” she said. “I always could play hurt, but in ’88 and ’92 it got to the point where just standing up was a big problem. It was over.”

But this is just starting. And she wants her brother, now a 28-year-old NBA millionaire, to be a part of it--and never mind that he’s a former UCLA guy.

“I want Reggie to talk to my players one day about the work ethic, because he’s a prime example,” she said.

“You know, at one point Reggie was 6-7 and 160 pounds and all kinds of people told him he’d never be able to play college ball.

“Reggie never argued with anyone about it, he just worked. People who told him he couldn’t play--when they were getting out of bed in the morning, Reggie had been shooting for two or three hours. And when they went to bed, he was still shooting.”

And few people really know how unlikely it was that these two siblings ever played intercollegiate sports at all. Or, in Reggie’s case, walked.

Cheryl Miller was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Doctors worked frantically before baby Cheryl could take her first breath.

And Reggie was born with pronated hips, severely splayed feet and a chest cavity that hadn’t closed. Saul and Carrie Miller were given the bad news up front: Reggie might never walk.

He walked. The steel braces came off when he was 4. Then it was out to the Miller clan’s driveway.

Cheryl played, and set standards--she was a four-year All-American and a two-time Final Four MVP--no one has matched.

Now, we find out if she can coach.