(Budd Bailey and Greg D. Tranter have written a book called "Buffalo Braves From A to Z," published by St. Johann Press. Early in the writing process, they wrote good-sized biographies of all 71 men who played a regular-season game for the Braves during their time in Buffalo from 1970 to 1978. Publishers weren't so enthusiastic about all of that material, so most (59) of the biographies were shortened to about 500 words. However, the authors hated to waste all of that material ... so they are presenting it here. It will appear three times a week. A bibliography is available upon request.)
For those who look to professional athletes to provide a role model, they certainly should consider Mike Glenn for that position. The man who played guard on the last Buffalo Braves’ team in history has been successful in a variety of activities over the years, including community service.
Michael Theodore Glenn was born in Rome, Georgia, on September 10, 1955. Rome is about 70 miles northwest of Atlanta. The small city was surrounded by seven hills, along the lines of its namesake in Italy. The rivers that run between the hills made Rome a transportation center in the 19th century, mostly for cotton.
Both of his parents were graduates from Alabama State University, and they settled in Cave Spring - a bit south of Rome. That’s where his father Charles – a high school athlete at Randolph County Training School - taught and coached basketball at the Georgia School for the Deaf. The experience was an important one in Glenn’s personal development. "Those kids taught me to compete, and they taught me about humanity and caring and sharing," Glenn said to SB Nation about the students at the all-black school. "I was this hearing kid, but I would eat lunch with them and go on trips and they would always wave at me as if to say, ‘C'mon, come with us.'" Meanwhile, his mother Annye was an elementary school teacher at E.S. Brown – where she had the chance to be her son’s teacher in third, fourth and fifth grades.
Mike went on to attend Coosa High School back in Rome. Every school should be so lucky to have someone like Glenn roam its halls. For starters, he had perfect attendance in all 12 grades. Not only was he an honor student (No.3 in his class) and president of the senior class, but he was a simply outstanding athlete – the first (and of this writing, the last) to go on to play pro basketball. As a junior on January 22, he scored 59 of the Eagles’ 100 points in a game with Pebblebrook. Glenn averaged more than 30 points per game as a senior. Mike scored 2,465 points in his career, and held about all of the school’s scoring records. He was voted the state’s top player for the 1972-73 season. Glenn led his team to the state finals in Atlanta, only to fall just short in a game against Southwest Atlanta.
“I have so many memories that I will cherish for life,” Glenn said about his high school sports days. “Some of the best years of my life were growing up and playing ball at Coosa. We conditioned all season long, and that made a world of difference.”
In his spare time, Glenn was also all-state in baseball. Sports columnist Ted Smith once wrote a column about a game involving Glenn he had covered years earlier. “The thing that really struck me about the game was something a Calhoun player said while it was going on,” he recalled. “He said that Glenn remembered every pitch to every batter. If someone got a hit off of one of his pitches then that batter likely never saw that pitch again, but if the batter could not handle a pitch then that was what he got. It seems like Glenn had a little bit of Greg Maddux in him.”
When it was time to pick a college, Glenn had a choice. Dean Smith of North Carolina wanted Glenn more than any recruit since Bob McAdoo (1971). However, Mike wanted to go to the same school as close friend Corky Abrams, and both were accepted by Southern Illinois. Besides, another great Georgia guard – Walt Frazier – landed in Carbondale, so Glenn could follow in those footsteps. There he joined a team that was starting to move up the ladder. The Salukis were in the midst of the transition to Division I play when Glenn arrived. Paul Lambert had been around for three seasons at that point, and the team had been more or less around .500. But he and Mike caught a bit of a break in a sense, because freshmen became eligible to play varsity ball in 1972.
SIU already had Joe C. Meriweather from Columbus, Ga., and he was a force in the middle. The center averaged 21.2 points and 14.9 rebounds per game in 1973-74. Glenn immediately joined him in the starting lineup, scoring 15.3 points per game. The Salukis instantly had two starters who would go on to the pros. When that happens to a college team, wins usually follow. Sure enough, Southern Illinois went 19-7 as an independent. It was a similar story a year later. SIU finished 18-9, as Glenn’s scoring average moved to 16.3.
With Meriweather gone in 1975, Glenn was given the keys to the car rhetorically speaking. He had to do more scoring, and came through at 19.4 points per game. The Salukis went 16-10. More importantly, they celebrated their first year of play in the Missouri Valley Conference by finishing second with a 9-3 record – and Glenn won conference player of the year honors. SIU clearly could play with its peers, giving it a path to the NCAA tournament in the immediate future. That summer, Glenn turned down a chance to try out for the Olympic team, which was coached by Dean Smith. Instead, he took a special math class and worked with deaf children.
Southern Illinois’ future arrived in 1976-77. Southern Illinois finished 22-7 to win the MVC (8-4) and earned a spot in the Big Dance. The Salukis stunned 20th-ranked Arizona, 81-77, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Then they came up just short in the Sweet Sixteen against No. 9 Wake Forest, losing by a score of 86-81. Glenn turned in a pair of magnificent performances on the big stage. He had 35 points against the Wildcats, and added 30 in the loss to the Demon Deacons. Glenn averaged 21 points a game that season, and he exited SIU as the school’s second-leading all-time scorer. Mike was called “the greatest shooter in the country” by Tulsa coach Jim King. His play in the tournament certainly showed that he could play against top competition. That’s probably why he was the first pick in the second round of the 1977 NBA draft. The Chicago Bulls took him in that spot.
“I remember waiting and I had heard that the (Los Angeles) Lakers may draft me,” Glenn remembered about that day in a video interview. “I'd heard that Chicago may draft me. I didn't really know who was going to draft me. I'd heard a couple of other teams, so I was just sitting around the phone. I remember waiting and during the draft one of my friends called and pretended he was somebody else and, ‘This is Philadelphia (76ers).’ I was so mad at him. ‘Man, if you don't get off this phone. I'm waiting to hear from a real team, not you.’ So I got off the phone and true enough the Bulls called and Ed Badger, who was coach then, was saying, "Mike, congratulations! We're glad to have you.’”
Everything had been going so well in Glenn’s life until that point. That’s when life took a wrong turn. Mike was involved in a car accident on his way to Carbondale for workouts in August, and suffered a broken neck. It took until December before he was ready to play basketball again. He asked for his release from the Bulls, and got it. Glenn soon signed with the Braves.
“Cotton Fitzsimmons had coached the Hawks when I was (living) there,” Glenn remembered. “I always loved Cotton, this charismatic coach, prancing around the sidelines, and he was coaching Pistol Pete (Maravich), Lou Hudson and the Hawks, and he was a good friend of my college coach, Coach Paul Lambert. And they talked and (Fitzsimmons) said, ‘We'll take Mike with the Buffalo Braves," so I was able to spend the remaining part of that rookie year with the Buffalo Braves and had a wonderful year.”
Glenn made his NBA debut on December 14, and he scored three points in six minutes. It took him until December 28 to play as many as 12 minutes in a game, and he responded with 10 points. But as the season ran its course, Glenn did get an opportunity to play more. He responded with some big nights – 25 points against New Orleans on March 8, 23 against Milwaukee on March 17. Mike had nine points in the Braves’ last game in history, a loss to Boston on April 9, just above his 7.9 point average.
“It was cold. The snow was everywhere,” Glenn said about that year in Buffalo. “I was able to play that rookie year at Buffalo with NBA All-Star Randy Smith - he was the MVP of the All-Star Game that year. Played with Marvin "Bad News" Barnes and Swen Nater, and just a lot of guys. … It was just everything I thought it would be and I loved, I just loved being on the court with so many guys - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and all these kind of people.”
Glenn was a free agent at the end of that season, and he and the Braves went their separate ways. Buffalo was in turmoil and that summer moved to San Diego. Glenn signed with the New York Knicks, again following in Frazier’s footsteps. The Knicks were in the midst of their own turmoil, as Willis Reed was fired as coach only 14 games into the season. Ex-Brave McAdoo was the team’s leading scorer, but couldn’t help the Knicks avoid a 31-51 season. Glenn saw minutes as a reserve behind Jim Cleamons, Ray Williams and Earl Monroe, averaging 7.8 points in 15.6 minutes per game. Cleamons and Monroe left a gift for Mike along the way, calling him “The Stinger” – a nickname that sticks to this day. And Mike renewed his basketball relationship with Meriweather, who turned up in New York after a midseason trade.
McAdoo was gone in 1979-80, as the Knicks revamped their lineup in an effort to improve. They went 39-43 and missed the playoffs again. Michael Ray Richardson and Williams saw most of the minutes at guard, although Glenn did play in 75 games that season. Then in 1980-81, the crowd at the guard position cleared up a bit. Mike had the chance to play in all 82 games, averaging 8.2 points. The Knicks (50-32) even made the playoffs, but were swept out in a best-of-three series with Chicago.
During that time, Glenn had the chance to play for coach Red Holzman, who had won two NBA titles earlier in the 1970s. “Red wanted you to be a student of the game,” Glenn said in a video. “More than any coach I ever played for, he wanted guys to talk about the game. Red allowed his players to mature and utilize their intelligence and knowledge more than most coaches. He had no inferiority complex whatever. … Afterwards, it was so hard for me with coaches who would try to be domineering.”
In his spare time in New York, Glenn wasn’t goofing off much. He attended graduate business classes at St. John’s University and Baruch College, and earned his stockbroker license. Meanwhile, an incident triggered a thought that Mike had carried with him for some time. “I received a special request to attend a basketball tournament for local deaf schools,” Glenn wrote on his website. “Between games of the tournament, I communicated to the audience in sign language. A quiet stillness fell over the crowd as they stared in shock at a pro basketball player who knew sign language. After I told Superintendent Henry Bjorlie and basketball coach Dennis Tobin of my desire to start a basketball camp strictly for deaf athletes, they offered me the use of their gym. On July 7, 1980, the nation's first major basketball camp for deaf athletes was born.” His community work earned him the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award from the NBA for 1980-81. The camp eventually moved to Georgia. In the meantime, Mike often was greeted by fans during road trips who used sign language to communicate with him.
Glenn’s contract expired in 1981, giving him a chance to head much closer to home. He signed as a veteran free agent with the Atlanta Hawks – just up the road from Rome and Cave Spring. The Knicks received a second-round draft pick as compensation. Glenn settled into a reserve guard role with the Hawks, although injuries limited him to 49 games. The Hawks went 42-40 that year. The 1982-83 season marked the arrival of a superstar in Atlanta. Dominique Wilkens, the third pick in the 1982 draft, came over from Utah for guard Freeman Williams and forward John Drew. Glenn played 73 games that year, starting four of them. Mike’s former backcourt partner in Buffalo, Randy Smith, turned up for the stretch run. Atlanta did make the playoffs at 43-39, but exited quickly again.
Glenn had settled into a role at that point. For the next two seasons, he played about 18 minutes per game and averaged about 8.5 points. Mike set a team record for shooting percentage in 1984-85 (.588), a rare accomplishment for a guard. The Hawks again weren’t long for the postseason in 1983-84, and didn’t even qualify for the playoffs in 1984-85. When he wasn’t on the Atlanta roster at the beginning of the following season, Mike’s career looked about over. But he signed as a free agent with Milwaukee on January 11, 1985. He filled his usual spot as backup guard. The Bucks won 57 games that season, thanks to the play of people like Sidney Moncrief and Terry Cummings. They were eliminated by the Boston Celtics in the conference finals.
“Each experience (on an NBA team) was very unique, but the most intellectual experience on the court was with the Bucks,” Glenn said later. “They were a very cerebral team. We had guys like Sidney Moncrief, who was our leader. Sidney analyzed everything on the court. Sidney was ultimately prepared for every play, every player. I have never played with a player as prepared as Sidney Moncrief, and it was a great experience. I learned so much from Sid.”
Glenn was on the Bucks’ roster for the start of the 1987-88 season, but only played in four games. Milwaukee cut him on November 14, and his career was over. Glenn had squeezed out almost a decade of play in the NBA, scoring 4,496 points in 593 games. He had an .855 shooting percentage from the free-throw line.
Sometimes athletes have trouble adjusting to retirement, but Glenn’s long list of skills and interests helped him in the transition. His most visible work has been as an analyst on the broadcasts of Hawks’ games. Mike worked with Merrill Lynch and the NBA on some pension matters in the early 1990s. He has a great collection of literature about African-American history, and has written books on his collection and on leadership tips. Glenn was the commissioner of the World Basketball Association, a summer league that stretched mostly through the South, around 2005. Mike is available for public speaking appearances. He even played himself in a movie about the basketball camp. Glenn has taken some bows for his basketball career along the way. Mike was inducted into the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame in 2015, and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. He and wife Rhonda raised a son, Michael Justin Glenn.
Meanwhile, during all of that time since 1980, Glenn’s basketball camp has continued. There is no charge for those with hearing issues. The camp had to take 2020 off because of the pandemic, but returned in 2021 in Decatur, Ga. Players have come from 40 different states to attend the camp over the years. Sometimes players without hearing disabilities turn up, and Glenn calls that “reverse mainstream.” By any standard, the “Mike Glenn Camp for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing” has been a success.
“Even if you don’t go any further, they’re doing what they love, and this is a memory they can hold onto for the rest of their life,” Glenn told reporter Jay Phillips. “I want it to be one of the best weekends of their life, because that’s how I remember basketball camp. They come here, and everyone is signing from different states and laughing and talking. … They just have fun. I know it means a lot to them, it really does, and that touches me.”
(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)
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