Mark WiedmerKNOXVILLE - Allan Houston received a phone call from Tennessee men's basketball coach Rick Barnes at the start of this season.
"'I want to honor your dad,'" Houston recalled him saying. "To have (Barnes) take that initiative to honor him makes it special."
Wade Houston's tenure as coach of the Volunteers from fall 1989 to spring 1994 was anything but special. They went 65-90, never reached the NCAA tournament and never finished higher than third in the Southeastern Conference.
But that didn't mean the school's first black basketball coach wasn't an outstanding husband, father and role model.
So this past Friday, in anticipation of the big weekend win over Kentucky, Barnes announced the school would begin awarding the Wade Houston Captain's Award, which will be presented at the close of each Vols basketball season to the player who best exemplified leadership, a team-first approach and exemplary work ethic that year.
"It was a little surprising," said Wade, a native of Alcoa, Tennessee. "But it feels good to know you're still remembered. And for us (Wade and Allan) to be here together made it better. It started with us together."
In what surely seems more than a little surprising in today's college basketball world, Allan arrived with his dad after a prep All-American career at Ballard High School in Louisville, Kentucky, and played all four seasons for his father, who had been a longtime assistant to Denny Crum at the University of Louisville. Twenty-six years after graduating in 1993, Allan's 2,801 career points remain the most ever scored by a Vol.
No doubt because of that, as well as his 12-year NBA career and the gold medal he helped the U.S. men's basketball team win at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Barnes had young Houston speak to the current Vols on Friday night.
"My biggest message," recalled Allan during halftime of Tennessee's resounding 71-52 win Saturday, "was 'You guys have an opportunity to do something that's never been done here before (reach the Final Four). You are an extremely hard-working and selfless team. It oozes out. You've set a new standard for the university and the basketball program. Let that be what motivates and drives you - your influence and your name.'"
Now the special assistant to New York Knicks general manager Scott Perry, he doesn't have many chances to watch the Vols in person but catches as many games as he can on TV.
"When I watch them, I'm impressed because they're a mature group," Allan said before specifically mentioning talented upperclassmen Admiral Schofield, Grant Williams and Jordan Bone.
"Admiral's been here. Grant's been here. Bone's been here. They have good leadership from the staff and the players. Again, I keep saying it - it's the character of this team."
That's almost certainly the reason why Barnes chose to honor Wade Houston - his character.
As Allan noted in recalling something his father taught him from an early age: "What do you want your real legacy to be?"
We are all taught fame is fleeting. We aren't taught enough that character is what you do when no one is looking.
Wade Houston didn't win enough games at Tennessee, and coaches are ultimately paid to win games, whether we want to admit it or not. You can sometimes be fired for a lack of character despite winning a lot of games - Rick Pitino, come on down - but you are all but certain to be fired for not winning enough games, regardless of your character.
Yet that doesn't mean Wade Houston isn't deserving of having a team award named for him. Especially one that focuses on leadership, a team-first approach and exemplary work ethic.
And Barnes' decision to honor Houston is yet another example of why the Vols appear to have a coach who, perhaps for the first time in school history, checks all the boxes: character (the man even negotiates his own contracts), X's and O's skills, teaching skills, recruiting skills and an obviously deft touch for honoring Big Orange hoops' past.
Or as both Houstons said of the new basketball award: "This is the icing on the cake."
For this remarkable Tennessee season to ice its cake, it needs to extend to the Final Four. But whether it does that or not, Allan Houston was already looking ahead to what may ultimately be this current team's more lasting legacy.
"The bar's been raised," he said. "It's about how we keep it."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.