Seashells and balloons.(remembering coach Al McGuire)(Brief Article)

It's December 21, 1974. We're in Milwaukee, and it's snowing. The coach is late for practice because his car was stuck in the snow and the arena door was locked. Now he's standing at midcourt, aggrieved.

"This is the fourth straight time this has happened, that I can't get in this place," he says. "Why wasn't there any manager to let me in the back door?"

It's 26 winters ago, and Al McGuire is young and vital. His hair is a frizzy mess, as if answering to electricity, and his voice is the only sound heard in the old basketball arena. And what a voice it is, pure New York City, larded with sarcasm, insult, expletive and other tools of the coach's trade used to wake up young men, as in ...

"Earl, either you're hurt or you're not hurt," McGuire says to Earl Tatum, a player he had described as a black Jerry West. "If you're not hurt, get out here, will you? If you're hurt, get hurt bad. Get a broken leg."

On this winter's day, fast breaks flow around the coach at midcourt, the coach with no whistle, needing only his voice, that voice distinctive, authoritative, the voice of a coach whose team lost the national championship game the season before, a coach who now sees something he doesn't like and says ...

"Wait a MINUTE, hold IT, this is is un-be-LIEVABLE."

Everyone stops.