University of Houston To Retire Don Chaney’s Number — A Legendary Cougar Finally Gets His Due Thanks to a Kelvin Sampson Assist

The University of Houston is retiring the number of Don Chaney, the legendary Cougar basketball star who helped integrate UH athletics and went on to become a standout NBA player and coach, PaperCity has learned. Chaney’s No. 24 will be put up in the Fertitta Center rafters, joining Chaney’s beloved former teammate and friend Elvin Hayes on that wall of honor.

Current Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson and his staff (particularly UH basketball director of external operations Lauren Sampson) worked behind the scenes to make this overdue honor for the 78-year-old Chaney happen. And now it will happen with the official ceremony set to take place at a game this upcoming season.

“I pushed for Don’s number to be retired,” Kelvin Sampson tells PaperCity. “And there’s a couple of other guys. Guys like Dwight Davis. I think he’s another one that’s very deserving. But Don Chaney is part of Cougar basketball royalty. His class. His dignity. His professionalism. His wisdom. His demeanor.

“. . . Elvin Hayes and Don Chaney. It’s fitting and it’s very deserving that those two guys who meant so much socially, both having their numbers retired. And their legacy will live on forever.”

The moment when Don Chaney’s number is retired is sure to be an emotional one. Not only for Chaney and his wife Jackie, but for Elvin Hayes, Bill Worrell and the other UH athletes during that generation. And for other coaches and former coaches in basketball like Jeff Van Gundy and Rudy Tomjanovich who love Chaney, the man.

Chaney is so humble that he’s only worn one of the two championship rings he won as a player with the Boston Celtics (for the 1969 and 1974 NBA titles) once ever in public. His contributions to UH basketball are immense. A fearsome defender, tough rebounder and capable scorer, Chaney helped power the Cougars to two Final Fours and a Sweet 16 from 1965 through 1968. He played all 40 minutes in the college basketball changing Game of the Century, contributing greatly to Houston’s 71-69 upset of John Wooden’s storied UCLA dynasty in front of that massive Astrodome crowd.

What Chaney and his buddy Elvin Hayes did off the floor as the first African-Americans to play basketball at the University of Houston may mean even more. Warren McVea integrated the UH football team the same year (1965) that Chaney and Hayes became the first African-Americans to play basketball for the Cougars.

“It was tough,” Chaney told PaperCity earlier this summer of integrating Houston athletics. “It was tough the first year. After the first year it was unbelievable how you were accepted. I say to the point where coming from an all Black high school and an all Black neighborhood, I had to also accept the situation myself.

“It worked out great. But the first year was tough.”

“I pushed for Don’s number to be retired.. . Don Chaney is part of Cougar basketball royalty. His class. His dignity. His professionalism. His wisdom. His demeanor.” — UH coach Kelvin Sampson

Don Chaney, Forever Cougar

Chaney has been battling health issues for several years, having been diagnosed with hereditary transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM), a rare potential life threatening disease that can lead to heart failure, which adds to the poignancy of his number being retired by UH now. When Chaney’s No. 24 is revealed on that wall, alongside all the other UH basketball greats of UH basketball greats, as a packed Fertitta Center roars, it will make for an unforgettable moment. For Chaney, those who love him and anyone who appreciates UH basketball and its storied history.

For Kelvin Sampson, it’s a no brainer that Don Chaney should be up there on the wall for all time.

“It’s been an honor for me just to know Don Chaney,” Sampson says. “He comes by practice sometimes. Him and Otis Birdsong.  I just love all those old former players. They’re so humble. The thing I appreciate about their era is they feel like Houston did so much for them. Where they think they owe the university a lot.”

Chaney is still a dedicated University of Houston backer and believer. He watches as many Cougar basketball games as he can. As a former NBA Coach of the Year, he often finds himself marveling over what Sampson is doing, elite season after elite season after elite season.

“I’m still bleeding red,” Chaney tells PaperCity. “. . .  They had a coach who just did a superb job (in the first Big 12 season). He won games that he shouldn’t have won. And that just tells you how good he is as a coach. I’ve learned to admire him over the years not just on the court, but also his relationship with his players.

“He loves his players to death and they love him, He really cares about his players. And I love that.”

Don Chaney has become something of a hidden regular around Houston basketball. He and the light of his life, his wife Jackie, live in Katy, with the Chaneys having moved there in 1989. Long before it exploded into the community it is today. “I went out there when they still had rice paddies,” Chaney says. “Everybody said, ‘Why are you moving all the way out there?’ ”

He started attending UH’s annual tipoff dinners long before the hype started building around Kelvin Sampson’s program and all those 30 win seasons and NCAA Tournament No. 1 seeds followed. Chaney’s presence at those dinners is what first made Lauren Sampson research and take a closer look at Chaney’s UH career. That started the ball rolling on what led to his number now being retired.

“We’ve been really advocating for Don for a really long time,” Lauren Sampson tells PaperCity. “There’s really also an extended brotherhood of Houston basketball that’s been really advocating for him for a very long time. From top to bottom, he deserves it.

“When you start looking at his accomplishments, there’s not a lot of people who have done what he has. He’s one of the few. And so it’s beyond past time probably.”

In many ways what Don Chaney did as a player at the University of Houston sometimes gets overshadowed by his 13 year NBA playing career (he played with both Bill Russell and Larry Bird during his Celtics runs) and his 12 year NBA head coaching career (which included a four year stint as the Rockets head coach, including a 52 win 1990-91 season). But make no mistake, Chaney left huge footprints at UH too.

Kelvin Sampson is determined to honor that history and he put his influence behind making Chaney’s number retirement happen too. Sampson would like to see former coach Guy V. Lewis, who Jim Nantz helped get into the Basketball Hall of Fame two years before the coach’s death at age 93 in 2015, have more of a presence in Houston’s on-campus arena too.

“What Coach Lewis did here,” Sampson says admiringly. “Coach Lewis doesn’t have a number, but what he did for this university, I’d like to see his name up in the rafters. This is a rich basketball tradition. It didn’t start with our program. I came here because of that tradition.

“I knew that what Coach Lewis did proved that it could be done. And we’re just continuing the tradition that those guys started. And it’s very humbling to be the coach at Houston for those reasons.”

“When you start looking at his accomplishments, there’s not a lot of people who have done what he has. He’s one of the few. And so it’s beyond past time probably.” — Lauren Sampson on Don Chaney

For his part, Don Chaney credits UH with setting him up for a life of success in basketball — and beyond.

“I became a man at UH,” Chaney says. “In so many ways, I grew up. I learned so much. I came from Baton Rouge, which is the capital (of Louisiana), but still the country back then. And coming to Houston was like the big city for me. And my roommate was from New York. I learned so much about New York.

“But the development in terms of being educated and learning so much about people, and the university and basketball. There was so much about basketball. Just an abundance of learning. And just something that you cannot replace.”

Don Chaney is an irreplaceable figure in the history of University of Houston basketball and the university itself in so many ways.

Now his name and No. 24 will be going into the rafters. Right where they have long belonged.