Dirk Nowitzki was a center of attention, too, but Dallas native and former Texas A&M women’s coach Gary Blair charmed reporters ahead of his 2023 Naismith...
Blair only began coaching girls because South Oak Cliff High was starting a girls basketball program. The two girls P.E. teachers were doubling as cheerleader and drill-squad sponsors. Three girls knocked on boys P.E. teacher Blair’s gym door and asked if he would coach them.
“So think about this,” Blair said. “I was a JV basketball player. I didn’t score a point for the varsity basketball team at Bryan Adams and Dennis Rodman didn’t score a point in high school.“And South Oak Cliff brought us together. Sometimes you find a calling in a different way.”Rodman was inducted into the Naismith Hall in 2011. Blair coached Rodman’s sisters, Kim and Debra, at South Oak Cliff and later as an assistant at Louisiana Tech, where they won two national championships.
Blair didn’t become a Division I head coach until age 40, at Stephen F. Austin in 1985. The son of a plaster foreman, Lee, and housewife, Jean, Blair grew up in East Dallas’ Forest Hills neighborhood and wound up becoming one of the most successful women’s basketball coaches in history.
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