Josh Lucas takes his best shot at playing a legendary coach

When legendary college basketball coach Don Haskins learned Josh Lucas was cast as the coach in "Glory Road," he looked the actor in the eye and said, "You're playing me?"

Yeah, replied Lucas, 34. "And I'm gonna do my damnedest to do you right."

The former Gig Harbor resident stars in "Glory Road," based on the true story of the Texas Western College basketball team winning the NCAA Championship in 1966.

"This is the most important film of my life because I am playing a man who is there with me for segments of the filming," said Lucas. "Not only did I have Haskins there ... but I had [basketball greats] Tim Floyd and Pat Riley really, really watching me."

Haskins revolutionized basketball by starting an all-black lineup in the final NCAA championship game against the all-white University of Kentucky basketball team coached by Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight).

"About 40 years ago, it's stunning to think that the NCAA had never started an all-black team before," said Lucas. "No one had done that before."

Originally a high school girls basketball coach, Haskins was hired by Texas Western to run the men's dorm and coach basketball. The latter was secondary to administrators. Many high-school players he was hoping to recruit had signed with other colleges, prompting Haskins to look street basketball players, who were predominantly black.

"The cool thing about Haskins is that he was basically colorblind," explained Lucas. "He never understood why white players couldn't play against black players and vice versa. It made no sense to him. He just wanted to find the best players he could recruit — no matter who they were or where they were from, as long as they had potential. It was as simple as that to him."

On the set, it was Lucas' job to help mold the actors playing Haskins' players into a team, in a case of life imitating art.

"There was definitely moments during the early part of shooting where I would be very frustrated with the guys I was working with, as was Haskins," said Lucas.

"I would go and do basketball practice with these actors as Haskins, and drive them very hard because some of them were substantially experienced actors, but most of them weren't — most of them were basketball players who had to step up — and they did."

Lucas never went head-to-head with Haskins, whom he calls irascible and funny. Haskins would pick him up in the morning and take him to the desert in El Paso, where they'd eat tacos and drink tequila.

"It was a pretty amazing thing to be at that point — where you have gone from that initial stare — 'You're playing me?' — to the end where he was like, 'C'mon, man, I was never really this bad,' " said Lucas.

Despite all their bonding, Haskins didn't tell Lucas what he thought of the actor's portrayal.

"Haskins is not someone to give it up," he said. "Honestly, no matter what, he's gonna have problems. It's just who he is ...

"The most important thing to me," Lucas added, "is people who know him consistently saying to me, 'Look, man, you nailed it.' "

On the heels of "Glory Road," Lucas' next film is "Poseidon," directed by Wolfgang Petersen ("Troy") and slated for a May 12 release.

Lucas was hurt during filming and late last fall his left arm was in a cast.

"I got hit by a water cannon. It knocked me about 30 feet off a wall. This was one of those things where you didn't normally need a stunt person," he said. "[Petersen] created environments that were profoundly real and dangerous. I was constantly bordering on terrified."

Kurt Anthony Krug is a Michigan-based freelance writer: kurt513@core.com