IS LIVE CHATTING EAGLES-BEARS
He had never seen the guy before, the assailant who jumped him from behind inside the Wyndham Franklin Plaza hotel in Center City, sticking a broken cocktail glass in the back of his neck, scraping the glass around the side and missing his jugular vein by less than an inch. "As close as it could come," Patrick Chambers said. "I'd be dead."
The scar is still visible on his neck. At the time of the unexplained attack, he was not a Villanova assistant basketball coach, about to work at the Final Four. This was October 2002.
"It changed my life, and it changed my life forever," Chambers, now 38, said yesterday.
His priorities then did not sound that different from those of many young guys. He's just always been good at achieving his goals.
"I was chasing the almighty dollar, driving a luxury car, a BMX X5," Chambers said. "Back then, it was a big deal."
The change did not come right away. Chambers hid after the attack, fear and vanity keeping him home, he said. He was quiet, which isn't him. He was part-owner of the family printing business, working a lot of sales, helping out part-time with the basketball team at his old school, Episcopal Academy. That cocktail glass had cut his neck and opened his eyes. Chambers decided to leave the business and pursue basketball.
"I realized what I wanted to do," Chambers said. "It wasn't about chasing money. It was about being part of something bigger than myself."
Here, his luck turned. A job opened up at Villanova as director of basketball operations. Chambers knew Billy Lange, who had the job and had just been named head coach at Navy. Lange recommended Chambers to Jay Wright, who used to play pickup games with Chambers at the Palestra. It didn't hurt his job prospects - "I'm sure it helped," Chambers said - that Villanova's top recruiting targets that year, Wayne Ellington and Gerald Henderson, also were at Episcopal Academy.
Life has its twists. Henderson went to Duke, Villanova's Sweet 16 victim. Ellington is at North Carolina, up next for 'Nova on Saturday.
"I don't get them [as recruits] - my first experience in coaching," Chambers said of Ellington and Henderson. "It made me work harder, and smarter. Those lessons hurt. They hurt for a long time. It taught me so much about recruiting. It was a big punch in the face, two punches in the face. And those kids were awesome. They couldn't even tell me because they knew how close we were and how upset we would all be if we talked. They were amazing. It probably benefited me as a recruiter."
That's the other part of the tale. Chambers kept getting promoted. He is now Wright's top assistant, after Brett Gunning left last year for a coaching job with the Houston Rockets.
"He took a huge chance on me," Chambers said of Wright. "C'mon, I was in high school."
He'd learned the game well, from Dan Dougherty at Episcopal and Herb Magee at Philadelphia Textile (now Philadelphia University). He had walked on at Drexel, gotten cut, then he went to Textile and walked on. He's still the school's all-time leading assist man and likes to remind Magee of that occasionally.
The youngest of 12 children raised in Newtown Square, Chambers said he really started growing up when he joined Wright's staff at age 31. He remembered that Wright did not recruit him by telling him how great the job was.
"I think he painted the worst possible picture you could imagine," Chambers said. "It was all about how hard it is, how time-consuming it is - this isn't a normal job. This isn't a 9-to-5 job. This is every day, 12 months a year, expect your phone to ring."
The job was everything Wright said it was. Directors of basketball operations at Big East schools can't go on the practice floor, but they have to be worried about meals, practice times, scheduling, tickets, travel, running summer camps and clinics, checking on players being in class.
"My head was about to explode," Chambers said.
He survived and advanced, learning from Wright, and from Gunning, the top assistant, who had been with Wright forever and showed him the ropes. There was a staff ethos.
"Don't worry about credit," Chambers said. "If you worry about credit, that's a turnoff. If you don't care about who gets the credit, great things are going to happen."
That was all right with Chambers. He was always an assist man.
"These players are why you're here talking to me," he said, pointing around the gym.
Being top assistant is another challenge, he said. Being in business helped. Being in sales, which is similar. Now, he has to worry about recruiting more, expanding his areas, dealing with compliance and being on top of the office. He tries to stay ahead of Wright in terms of what he needs done. There is a lot of pressure in the job, a lot of stress. But he's in it for the long haul, Chambers said. He just knows how truly lucky he has been to be where he is this week.
And his car now?
"A Mercedes convertible - don't tell anybody," Chambers joked, comfortable in his own skin.
Contact staff writer Mike Jensen at 215-854-4489 or mjensen@phillynews.com.
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