USC Upstate basketball was having a rough go of it in the mid-1970s while winning an average of 4 games/season…and then Mike Gibson showed up in 1978 and made everything better. During his 4 years the team won an average of 20 games/season, made the NAIA District 6 Tournament for 4 straight seasons, and won the 1982 NAIA national title. Gibson was a 2-time NAIA All-American, 1982 NAIA tourney MVP, and remains in the top-5 in school history in PTS/REB. In 1999 he became the 1st men’s basketball player to be inducted into the USC Upstate Athletics Hall of Fame. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Mike’s former teammate James Holland, who is currently the Senior Associate Commissioner of the Big South Conference, about winning a national title and getting drafted. Today is Mike’s 61st birthday so let us be the 1st to wish him a happy 1!
Mike was born in South Carolina: what made him choose Upstate for college? He was born in Hemingway, which is down by Myrtle Beach. He was at a very small high school so he did not have a lot of offers and was an under-the-radar guy. He was 6’8” and very thin but was probably ahead of his time because he could shoot the ball.
In 1982 his team opened the season 11-1 before losing 4 of its next 6 games: how were they able to get refocused? Coaches always say it is about the players but we had a great coach named Jerry Waters. There were high expectations for that 1982 team because we had been to the national tourney during our junior year. The games that we lost were all relatively close but we never lost confidence. Mike was the best player on the team and very talented. All 4 of those losses were on the road so we just tried to get back to doing whatever it took to get the job done.
The team won each of its 5 NAIA tourney games by double-digits including a 51-38 win over a 39-0 Biola team in the title game: what did it mean to him to win a title, and what was the reaction like after getting back to campus? It was really interesting. Mike was basically a 4-year starter, Wendell Gibson/myself were 3½-year starters, Doug Lightbody was a 3-year starter, and Odell Cleveland was a junior college transfer. Everyone felt that if we could go 1 step further by winning 2 tourney games it would be a success (after only winning 1 tourney game the previous year). After we won the 1st 2 pretty easily we started to think that we could win it all. We had been on a long winning streak but it was a little eerie at the end because you always thought that there would be another game. We were obviously happy to win a title but it was weird to finish our careers: we wanted to play against somebody else and see who we could compete with!
He was NAIA tourney MVP and a 2-time All-American: what did it mean to him to receive such outstanding honors? He was really focused. I will never forget sitting around someone’s apartment watching an NBA game on TV and they were interviewing famed scout Marty Blake. He mentioned a bunch of sleepers including Mike: the only people who probably recognized his name were the people who were in that apartment! It was not a lot of hype compared to what you would see for a guy like Zion Williamson: he was determined and worked really hard with that carrot of the NBA dangling out there. His focus was great for our team: guys have to be “selfish” sometimes. I hate using that word because it was not a bad “selfish” but a focused “selfish”. His desire to play in the NBA never exceeded his desire to win: if you win a lot of games then a lot of other things will take care of themselves. Scouts came to Kansas City to watch the national tourney so he knew that he needed to just go out and play.
He remains top-5 in school history in career PTS/REB: how did he balance his scoring with his rebounding? There were games when he would come in and say “I am getting every single rebound tonight”! Dennis Rodman made a career out of rebounding the ball: it is a hustle stat and was connected to Mike’s motivation to make it to the NBA. He was 6’10” so he was never at a height disadvantage. From a scoring standpoint he had the skill to make shots: if there was a 3-PT line back then he could have easily made a lot of shots from out there. He did not want to leave anything to chance in terms of people saying there was anything that he could not do: he also thought that he could dribble a little bit!
In the summer of 1982 he was drafted in the 2nd round by Washington (4 spots ahead of Craig Hodges): did he see that as a validation of his college career, or the realization of a lifelong dream of reaching the NBA, or other? I think that it validated him because he worked really hard in college. When you talk to young guys today about the small percentage of people who will play professionally, you have to understand that you never know who is watching. We did not have as much TV coverage back then but he played well and worked hard in the weight room. We did not have a nutritionist: you needed the self-discipline to dedicate yourself to taking care of your body. He was conscious of what he was eating, which was very rare 40 years ago. He was thin so he constantly tried to gain weight before joining the NBA as a 6’10”, 200-pound player.
The Bullets allegedly had him put on more weight so that he could be stronger (like teammates Jeff Ruland/Rick Mahorn) but the extra pounds took away some of his quickness: do you think that big men should put more weight on or keep it off? When you get to that stage and the GM tells you what you need to do to make the team, you do not disagree with him. I think it did affect his athleticism because he ran the floor so well in college…but when you put a 20-pound bag of sand on your back it will slow you down a bit. He definitely changed his game to take the pounding: when he came back to work out during the summers he would seek out contact but he lost a little finesse.
After playing in the NBA he spent the next decade playing professionally in the US and overseas: how big of a star did he become in foreign countries? He spent the majority of his career overseas but without any Internet at that time we just knew that he was over there. Every player reaches a point where you understand that it is a business and there is a small window of time to play professionally. He told me that he needed to make as much money as he could while doing something that he loved to do: he was not a 1-and-done player so even with a long career he “only” played about 13 years.
What has he been up to since retiring? For 2 guys who shared an apartment for 3 years in college we have just gone in different directions. We lost a little touch when I got into coaching but I know that he returned to Spartanburg and ran a couple of businesses like Baskin-Robbins.
When people look back on his career, how do you think that he should be remembered the most? I think that he is the best guy to ever play in District 6. There is certainly an argument to be made for a guy like Ulysses Hackett but Mike took it to the next level in the NBA and was really good. When you are the MVP of the title game it checks most of the boxes.