University of Kentucky basketball great Kyle Macy had just finished talking to an audience at Preston Arts Center about his book “From the Rafters of Rupp: Legends of Kentucky Basketball” on Wednesday night when it was time for “the question.”
Someone asked him about that thing, as a player, he did with his socks.
The 68-year-old Macy, whose own jersey hangs from the rafters at Lexington’s Rupp Arena, is a three-time All-American, one of only 13 Wildcats named First Team All-SEC three times and the first SEC Player of the Year.
He was a play maker for the Wildcats and left UK as the top career free throw shooter in the program’s history, sinking 331 of 372 charity stripe attempts (88.97 percent).
He did it because of that thing he did with his socks.
“My father was a coach and taught me the fundamentals of basketball,” said Macy, a graduate of Peru (Indiana) High School and the 1975 Indiana “Mr. Basketball” award winner.
“He said you have to develop your rituals, find the one that works for you and stick with it,” he told the audience about wiping his hands on his socks to dry them off when he walked up to the free throw line.
“It blocks everything else out,” he added, particularly the opposing fans intent on creating distraction.
Macy shared other things about his college basketball experience, including what it was like as a sophomore to be a starting guard on the 1978 UK National Championship team with Jack “Goose” Givens, James Lee, Rick Robey and Mike Phillips.
He said it was a “mature team” with a wealth of talent.
“From the start of the season we were very focused,” said Macy, who transferred to UK after a freshman season at Purdue and then had a mandatory year as a redshirt. “That team had done everything except win a championship.”
He said regular season losses to only LSU and Alabama “helped focus us on the goal for the season,” which was to bring the national championship to Lexington.
Macy, who went on to play for seven seasons in the NBA, coached at Morehead State University and did basketball commentary on television, talked about his inspiration for the book, which he signed following his presentation.
The foundation for it came from an interview television program about UK players he created “before the SEC Network” and sold to stations around the state (and to one in Evansville.)
Macy said his impulse was that it would be nice to interview the players who had jerseys hanging at Rupp to help explain how UK basketball came to be where it is today.
“For me it was a blast to do the interviews,” he said, noting that today those recordings are part of the UK oral history archives and accessible by the public. “There are all kinds of stories about players.”
Macy also talked just a bit about UK coaches — one he played for and one he didn’t.
He said current coach Mark Pope was a good fit for the job because of his own player experience at UK in the 1990s.
“He knew what he was getting into,” Macy said, referencing the Kentucky fan base. “He knew it wasn’t just any basketball, it was Kentucky basketball.”
And what was Joe B. Hall like to play for?
“Until you graduate, you don’t know that he has a really great sense of humor or can even smile,” he quipped, adding a serious note that Hall was tough on his players. “For me it was perfect. I was looking for a team that had some discipline.”
These days, Macy said, he plays more tennis than he does basketball and coaches the tennis team at Lexington Christian Academy.
With that, a new question came from Wednesday’s audience.
“Do you wipe your hands on your socks before you serve?”
