Purdue Boilermakers

For a guy who fell into the coaching game by accident, Gene Keady and basketball have been a pretty good mix for almost 50 years.
Now, the Toronto Raptors are hoping that their new, 69-year-old assistant coach still has plenty of the spunk and tenacity that helped make him one of the most respected coaches in U.S. college basketball during his 25 years with the Purdue Boilermakers.
Keady’s good luck may have already rubbed off. On Dec. 17, in Toronto’s first game after Keady joined the team, the Raptors beat the Charlotte Bobcats 111-103, their fourth win in 21 NBA games this season.
“Basketball is basketball,” Keady said. “So if you block off and get back on defense and make your free throws, you might win a few games.”
That is precisely the idea the Raptors had in mind when they lured Keady out of retirement, where he was working on his golf game in Lafayette. He joins Jim Todd, Alex English and Jay Triano as assistants on the coaching staff of head coach Sam Mitchell.
Keady, who stepped down as the Boilermakers’ coach after last season, said he was looking for a challenge – and it doesn’t get much more challenging than the 2005-06 Raptors.
Basketball wasn’t even Keady’s chosen sport, although he played it until he was a junior in college. His passion was football and as a receiver at Kansas State he was talented enough to be drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL in 1958.
“If I could touch it, I could catch it,” Keady said, harkening back.
Back then, Keady said, the Steelers had some talent at quarterback, recalling the names of Len Dawson, Jack Kemp, Earl Morrell and Bobby Layne. And Keady, who was 22, was excited about the prospect of trying out for the team, a dream that died when he suffered a career-ending knee injury.
“It was just one of those things where I had a family to worry about,” he said. “I came home and started teaching.”
And he also started coaching basketball, at the high-school level in Beloit, Kan., spawning a career path that lasted 47 years at the secondary and college level.
As the no-nonsense coach at Purdue, Keady directed the Boilermakers to 512 victories, a school record that represented more than a third of the school’s 1,500 wins at the time of his departure. He led Purdue to six Big Ten titles and was chosen as the U.S. college coach of the year six times.
Keady said he hopes his energy will have a positive effect on the Raptors.
“That’s the way I’ve always been,” he said.
“You watch me on the bench, I smile a lot and raise hell with the referees. But I won’t be able to do that here because Sam will be mad at me.”
Keady is regarded as a defensive specialist, an area in dire need of repair with the Raptors. Toronto has allowed its opponents to connect on 49 percent of their shots from the field, the highest success rate in the NBA. The Raptors are also second last in opponents scoring, with an average of 103.6 points.
“Sam wants suggestions, another set of eyes and to teach,” Keady said of his role in Toronto. “I’m a teacher and I’ve always been a teacher, so hopefully I can help there.”
Keady has already taken rookie forward Joey Graham under his wing in the short time he has been with the team. The second-round Toronto draft choice said Keady reminds him of Eddie Sutton, his veteran coach at Oklahoma State.
“Hard-nosed guy, just like Coach Sutton,” Graham said. “He’ll get after his players to motivate them. When you do something wrong, he’ll let you know.”
One who does not need much motivation these days is power forward Chris Bosh, who continued his superb play in Charlotte, where he had a season best total of 30 points in the win, Toronto’s third in its past four games on the road.
In Toronto’s past five games, the 6-foot-10, 21-year-old has been virtually unstoppable, averaging 26.2 points on 45.2-percent shooting and hauling in 10.4 rebounds.
Bosh said he’s glad the Raptors made the move to bring in a veteran presence like Keady.
“He’s been coaching for a long time,” Bosh said. “I know it’s his first days (in Toronto), but it sure didn’t seem like it, because he was really voicing his opinion, saying what we could do better and pulling guys aside and reminding them about small things on defense and offense.
“You bring in a guy like that with a lot of credit in his career, it really doesn’t hurt – especially if he’s willing to help.”