The last name might not look it, but I am a full-blooded Irishman by birth. And with that on the résumé, the right is being claimed to repeat one of Dennis Fitzpatrick’s observations on Sean Sweeney, a son of St. Paul and a top assistant for the Dallas Mavericks.
“He was playing Noon Ball with us as a high school freshman,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re in our 40s, maybe older, basketball junkies who played in college. We had one rule for him: ‘You can play, but you can’t take the winning shot. That has to be one of us old guys.’
“He never backed down. Incredible competitor. I tell him, ‘You’re going to wind up with Irish Alzheimer’s.’ You know what that is? You forget everything but the grudge.”
The hoops addicts raised in St. Paul presumably will be rooting for the Timberwolves in this Western Conference final vs. Dallas, yet you will find nothing but admiration in what Sweeney, 40 next month, has accomplished since setting his sights on being a coach.
That was even before he was done playing at the University of St. Thomas.
“Sean was always a details guy,” Joe Mauer said. “He’s as intense about competition as anyone. It has been great to watch his climb as an assistant in the NBA. It seems like he’s going to be a head coach, maybe soon.
“He was a great shooter for us. Sean, Steve Sir and me … we shot a lot of threes. That style of play, with Billy McKee as a coach, was as much fun as I’ve had on a team.”
Sweeney put it this way: “We played blue line to blue line, but in basketball.”