Paths taken, or not

 Two men died in America in the last week, and a rhythm section heralded them to their reward. It was the sound of a basketball beating a drumroll on hardwood, and the two men followed it all their long lives.

One followed it to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach, and when he died at 88, surrounded by those who loved him, LeBron James tweeted "RIP LEGEND",  and Dallas Mavericks coach Jason Kidd called him "a pioneer, a legend, a role model." And the Cleveland Cavaliers -- for whom he was both an All-Star guard and then the head coach who won a club record 316 games there and took the Cavs to the playoffs five times -- held a moment of silence in his memory.

The other followed the drumroll to a couple of dizzying weeks of glory, and then down a dark road that left him chasing the game to every dim and anonymous place where its unending lure resides.

One game. Two men. Two paths, taken or not.

The first of them was Lenny Wilkens, and you know that name. Precise and dignified, he came off the playgrounds of New York to star as an eyeblink-quick, elegant guard at Providence College and then in the NBA -- where he was a nine-time All-Star as a player, coached a record 2,487 games, won an NBA title in 1979 as head coach of the Seattle Supersonics, and won gold medals as an assistant coach for the 1992 and 1996 US. Olympic teams.

The '92 team, of course, was the Dream Team, and it's in the Basketball Hall of Fame. So is Lenny Wilkens -- as part that '92 team, and as a player, and as a coach. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver noted upon Wilkens' passing, he holds the unique distinction of being named both one of the top 75 players of all time, and one of the top 15 coaches of all time.

"Lenny Wilkens represented the very best of the NBA -- as a Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame coach and one of the game's most respected ambassadors," Silver said.

And the other man in this tale?

His name was Kevin Mackey.

In 1986, as a 40-year-old college basketball wunderkind, he coached tiny Cleveland State to 29 wins and the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. In the first round, the Vikings -- who'd never before in the program's 57-year history played in the postseason -- shocked Bob Knight and lordly Indiana, 83-79, a 14-seed-over-a-3-seed that remains one of the biggest upsets in the history of March Madness.

Four successful years later, Cleveland State rewarded Mackey with a $300,000 contract.

A handful of days after that, Mackey stumbled out of a crack house in Cleveland, high on booze and blow. The police pulled him over on an OWI charge, and Mackey's rising tide had crested.

He wound up doing 60 days in former NBA player John Lucas' rehab program, getting himself clean and staying clean until the day he died earlier this week. But the glory days were gone for good. He wound up bumping around the minors of the basketball minors -- the USBL; the IBA -- coaching teams you never heard of: the Miami Tropics, the Portland (Me.) Mountain Cats, the Atlantic City Seagulls, the Mansfield (O.) Hawks.

Oh, he could still coach. He won three straight USBL titles with Atlantic city, and, in Mansfield's only season, he coached the Hawks to the league title.

Eventually, Larry Bird hired him as a scout for the Indiana Pacers. Mackey did that for the next 17 seasons, retiring in 2021 at the age of 74 as both a symbol of triumph over addiction, and a great what-if.

One game. Two men. Two paths, taken or not.