UNT's Tony Benford: Chance of a lifetime

Harry · July 8, 2012

Tony Benford was sound asleep the morning after the 1986 NBA Draft when the call came.

Benford had spent the previous night out with his girlfriend, cousins and friends celebrating after being selected in the fourth round by the Boston Celtics.

Boston had taken only one player before Benford, an All-American from Maryland named Len Bias.

“I got a call at about 6 a.m.,” Benford said recently inside an office he had yet to finish decorating at North Texas.

“It was a beat writer from Boston. He asked if I had heard the news. I had no idea what he was talking about because I had not turned the TV on. He said that Len Bias had died of a cocaine overdose.

“It was on every channel. It was like someone shot me.”

The experience still resonates with Benford, who took over as UNT’s head coach this spring, more than 25 years after that ill-fated morning.

Even though he had never met Bias, Benford had seen him play on television and knew what a waste the death of a player considered by many to be a sure NBA star represented. He vowed that day to continue making the most of every opportunity to come his way.

That philosophy guided Benford throughout his playing career and a successful run of nearly 20 years as an assistant coach, and it will be the basis for his efforts to capitalize on the biggest opportunity thus far in his coaching career — at UNT.

The Mean Green has all of its key players returning from a team that fell one game short of reaching the NCAA tournament last year, including Tony Mitchell, who is projected as a first-round pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.

Benford has spent his career preaching about taking advantage of opportunities. His biggest opportunity — since his short stay in the NBA — is staring him in the face now.

Read more: http://www.dentonrc.com/sports/colleges/north-texas-headlines/20120708-basketball-chance-of-a-lifetime.ece