The Whittler

The other face is rage.

This is the man they had to pry off Tom Davis , then Stanford 's coach, in 1982, during Chaney's third game at Temple . The one whose fingers they peeled from the windpipe of Gerry Gimelstob, George Washington 's coach, in 1984. The one who has slugged an opposing team's doctor, dived into the stands after fans, threatened to boycott the NCAA and who received a one-game suspension a week ago for charging the press room podium, screaming, "I'll kill you!" at John Calipari because he thought the Massachusetts coach had tried to verbally intimidate the referees after a one-point win over Temple . The one who says, "I'm capable of being anything. A gorilla. An ass. A person who is afraid. I'm a person who can be out of control. Sometimes it's better to be crazy than intelligent."

When he focuses all the rage of his 62 years upon a single object, that glower has a name. One-Eyed Jack, he calls it. the look that television burned upon the national retina in 1988 as Temple was dismantling North Carolina 83-66, the deep-socketed Black Bottom stare that Chaney leveled upon the referee for an entire timeout, never entering his team's huddle.

Would it be all right, he asked the West Virginia p.r. people, if he took home a few of those masks? He grinned and tried one on. Yes, it was tempting. Imagine how much simpler life would be if he could just wear that face all the time. No one would ever know how easily he laughed and cried. No one would ever dare get close. Imagine if he could One-Eyed Jack the world.

His players set their alarm clocks for 4:45 a.m., but sometimes fear awakens them a quarter hour early. Often they rise from dreams of their coach. They trudge through the cold darkness of North Philadelphia to the gym at five, change clothes, get taped and take the floor at 5:30.

John enters a little later. Limps in pigeon-toed, flat-footed, T-shirt hanging out, one pant leg halfway up his shin. "The beaten-down dog," says Paul Gibson, Temple 's director of academic support for student-athletes. "He enjoys being that." Often he carries a large bag of breads or fruit or oyster stuffing to dispense to secretaries, janitors, deliverymen or whatever waif wanders into his office after practice.

The players gather around him. Oh, what a roll call he has had during his 10 years at Division II Cheyney State and a dozen more at Temple . McKinley Walker, with a bullet in his back and one blind eye; and Gerry Mills, placed in Chaney's custody by a judge for stealing a radio; and Eddie Geiger, a seven-foot dropout, working at a car wash, who had never played high school ball; and Frazier Johnson, whose mother was a junkie and whose father went out for a quart of milk one day and never came back; and Aaron McKie , whose dad died and whose mom left him; and Huey Futch, a freshman who was academically ineligible this season and who spent his last year of high school living alone in an apartment, cooking on a hot plate, under a roof half ripped off by Hurricane Andrew. Just thinking about them can make John cry. "Always leave the door open for a lost dog," his late mother, Earley, used to say.

He starts speaking to the players in that low, raspy voice—gravel in a drainage pipe—and builds to an ear-blistering, ass-smoking, remove-the-women, hide-the-children, Sunday-southern-preacher screech. His philosophy's the secretion of his life, fresh-squeezed, unstrained, pulp and seeds still in it. Everything dire: Get BACK on defense! Your house's on FIRE, your MAMA and SISTER are in there BURNIN', get BACK! Half of it hilarious, half cemetery serious, all raw as eggs dropping on the sidewalk. Might talk 10 minutes. Might talk an hour. Might talk four—ain't TIRED yet! Might talk Massachusetts ' man defense. Might talk Mogadishu. Might talk Holocaust or haircuts—No nubs! No naps! No EMBRYO HEADS! Might jumble 'em all in a bag and spill 'em all out at once, somehow finding the thread, the connective truth, that turns everything into analogy and allegory. "A message about life, every day," says La Salle coach Speedy Morris. "How many coaches give their kids that?" And then John will catch wind of the comedy in his catechism and set sail for absurdity and beyond, face shining like heaven's firstborn, spindly legs strutting the deck, hands flying up for bolts of lightning, tee-heeing and haw-hawing at his own incandescence.

His players never know what to expect. Today? Pinching, hugging, ranting, teasing, crying? Lies, laughs, torture, sugar, shame? No scoreboard, for god's sake, is going to be his master; he's likelier to be a madman after victory than after defeat. At Cheyney State he paddled his players now and then for committing too many turnovers during practice. When the Owls' ears weren't working to his satisfaction in 1988, he lined the kids up one day and screamed at their backsides.

Inevitably he'll start singling the players out, baring and brandishing each one's greatest weakness right in front of all of them. And what hurts—oh, what stabs deepest—is that the kid's greatest weakness is often the very thing that, before he met John Chancy, he prized most of all. Center with a pretty fake-right, turn-left fadeaway jumper? Houdini crap. Never want to see it again. Go STRAIGHT up! Point guard with the crossover dribble, the look-away pass, the 360-degree-baseline-glide-double-pump-off-the-glass-and-in? Give it up, son. Until you do, he'll mock you, imitate you, slo-mo you, stop-action you, scoff at the crowd going berserk, jeer at your fist shooting up, ride you to the Reading Terminal and back, honk you to your grave.