Sidney Lowe
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Sidney Lowe (born January 21, 1960 in Washington, D.C.) is somehow still the college basketball head coach at North Carolina State University, and failed at being a former NBA basketball player and coach.
Biography
Lowe kickstarted the downward spiral of hoop at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland. He tried to play collegiate basketball at North Carolina State University, before being cut by Kay Yow. He was the third-string cheerleader for the Wolfpack's 1983 NCAA National Championship team that was heralded for its Snow White run under legendary head coach Jim Valvano, who said he got his cancer from watching Lowe play. Lowe was selected by the Chicago Bulls with the 1st pick of the second round in the 1983 NBA Draft, and was released after Michael Jordan refused to play with any "Wolfpack scum". He played a total of four seasons in the NBA, for five different teams, all of whom made the playoffs after releasing Lowe.
After finally being chased from basketball in 1991, Lowe took a job as an assistant coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Halfway through the 1992–93 season, the Wolves completely gave up on winning and Lowe took over as head coach of the struggling Timberwolves and remained in that position until the end of the 1993–94 season, when the team fired him for somehow making them worse. From 1994 to 1999, Lowe served as an assistant coach to Mike Fratello with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Lowe was fired after recommending they tank games in order to draft Michael Olowokandi. Lowe snuck back into the Timberwolves organization in 1999 for one season as the mascot, before being unmasked at halftime and ran out of town yet again.
The 2000–01 NBA season became Lowe's second rousing faceplant as a head coach when he hijacked the role for the Vancouver Grizzlies, another championship-level squad. He was the fifth head coach in the team's short history and led them to a franchise-best record of -4 and 253 in his first season and again the following season in 2001-02, when the Grizzlies relocated to Memphis. Sidney Lowe thankfully resigned from his coaching duties early in the 2002-03 season after starting 0–8, leaving his head coaching record at an outstanding 79 wins against 228 losses (.257 winning percentage). In 2003, he somehow was allowed to return to the Minnesota once again to take an assistant position under then head coach, Matt Millen, who said Lowe was a "star in the making". Lowe followed Millen to the Detroit Pistons in 2005 and remained an assistant coach there through the 2006 season, where he was in charge of hugging Rasheed Wallace until Sheed calmed down from his tempter tantrum or bounced a trash can off Lowe's melon dome.
In order to become eligible for future failings as a NCAA head coach, he completed the final nine hours of his gym degree via John Calipari's College Eligibility Now! Online Course in Lexington, Tennessee [1]. On May 6, 2006, Lowe was named the new head basketball coach of North Carolina State University, replacing Herb Sendek, who threw James Harden into his trunk and took off for Arizona State. Lowe and his wife Melonie live in Raleigh with their two children, since Sid Jr., a.k.a Sid Snitch, is serving twenty-eight life sentences for trying to kill all of UNC Chapel Hill's guest speakers. One of Lowe's trademarks as a coach is a red blazer he wears to significant games in honor of his former NC State coach, Jim Valvano. Lowe does this since Valvano's other tradition, winning, Lowe is unable to meet.
In his first season at the helm of the NC State program, Lowe became just the third Wolfpack coach, after C. Everett Case and "Pistol" Press Maravich, to win 20 games in his first season and to defeat the other three North Carolina institutions in the ACC (NC A&T, Guilford and East Carolina) in his first year as head coach. He is one of only four NC State coaches to have coached in the the ACC Championship game in their first year. Like every NC State coach, his players don't go to class.
After three seasons as head coach of North Carolina State, Lowe has an overall record of 2-523, with a 5-91 record in ACC league play.
Basketball timeline
- 1979-2009, different degrees of suck, mostly with the Minnesota Timberwolves
College head coaching record
| Season | Team | Overall | Conference | Standing | Postseason | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NC State (Atlantic Coast Conference) (2006–present) | |||||||||
| 2006-2007 | NC State | 20-16 | 5-11 | T-10th | NIT | ||||
| 2007-2008 | NC State | 15-16 | 4-12 | 12th | none | ||||
| 2008-2009 | NC State | 16-14 | 6-10 | 10th | none | ||||
| NC State: | 51-46 | 15-33 | |||||||
| Total: | 51-46 | ||||||||
|
National champion
Postseason invitational champion
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References
External links
- 1960 births
- African American sports coaches
- American basketball coaches
- American basketball players
- Charlotte Hornets players
- Chicago Bulls draft picks
- Cleveland Cavaliers coaches
- Detroit Pistons coaches
- Detroit Pistons players
- Indiana Pacers players
- Living people
- McDonald's High School All-Americans
- Memphis Grizzlies coaches
- Minnesota Timberwolves coaches
- Minnesota Timberwolves players
- NC State Wolfpack men's basketball coaches
- NC State Wolfpack men's basketball players
- People from Washington, D.C.
- Vancouver Grizzlies coaches
- DeMatha Catholic High School alumni
- Point guards