Tom Konchalski is a basketball treasure

I first saw a former college coach post about it on Facebook on Monday evening. I knew it was possible anytime soon, and yet I didn’t expect it, either, each for different reasons. But simply put, word was out that the world of basketball no longer has one of its best people in it.

Tom Konchalski is retiring. Simply put, the game of basketball has known no better person.

Sports is a people business any way you slice it. It doesn’t matter what capacity you’re talking about; whether you’re playing, coaching, officiating or covering a sport, dealing with people is a big part of it. When you’re in the media, you deal with a wide variety of people; players and coaches are the obvious ones, and less obvious ones are media relations directors, often the unsung heroes of the business. There are many more, as well as your fellow media members, with who you occasionally collaborate with. In covering basketball for recruiting, this often takes the form of checking a scorebook against what is listed in a program or getting other important player information that may be omitted.

For almost as long as I have been alive, Tom Konchalski has been a fixture on the basketball scene. His High School Basketball Illustrated report has been one of the authoritative scouting services for college coaches; I got a look at it as a college kid who was a manager for three years, with no idea I would come to know the man behind it later or how he is a far better man than basketball talent evaluator – and he was an all-time great at evaluating talent. That he is old school is legendary – he has never owned a car, computer or cell phone.

There is no way for me to do his story justice, especially since there have been other such features done on him in far more depth. But suffice it to say one of the privileges of being in this business has been knowing Tom. His handshake is legendary, as well as how understated, legitimately caring and down to earth he is. As an old saying goes, they don’t make people like Tom anymore. And he is modest to a fault; say any of this in front of him and he disavows it. One can imagine that he might have a hard time reading the tributes to him that are now out there if he could.

In my many travels to cover recruiting, I ran into Tom many times, every last one of them an immense pleasure. I was also fortunate to be the person who helped him get around town more than once. He always had someone help him get around on the road, and he is a man of deep faith to the point that he always found a place to attend mass on the road – even on Sundays during the travel circuit and while on the road.

I won’t forget traveling back from the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions in one of the years where it was held in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. Actually, the story begins before we were in the car en route to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Tom was having a conversation with a few people in the Dean Smith Center at North Carolina. You often hear of someone being described as a human encyclopedia or having a photographic memory, but to witness it first-hand was amazing. Tom remembered dates and players – even relatively obscure ones – like it was nothing, and if a person was off by a small amount on a date, he corrected them with such a touch that you know no one was offended. (Speaking as someone who used to do that all the time and did not endear himself to many people in those days, I can vouch for that being just about impossible to do.) The ride from there to the airport was memorable, and as we got to the airport, sure enough, we were on the same initial flight out of there before connecting to different flights.

In a world with so much polarization, even of the harmless kind between fans of arch-rival sports teams, he is that rare person who is universally liked and respected. In light of this, as well as his place as one of the original talent scouts of high school players, reaction to his retirement has included a push for him to be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a special contributor to the game.

That’s a move I would wholeheartedly back. The game is richer for what Tom gave it, plenty of people would surely get behind such an idea, and Springfield is also a place he can easily get to to boot.

Whether that happens or not, Tom Konchalski won’t be forgotten by anyone who was in the game over the past few decades. The end result also won’t change the reality of him being a Hall of Fame human being. As he rides off into the sunset, I join those in wishing Tom only the best – and that’s exactly what he has given everyone who has had the pleasure of meeting him.