For the entire story in one file, please go here: https://gumroad.com/l/bVSqud
TEN – On The Road
April 15th
Macomb, IL
There were an incredible number of job offers I had received since the title game. I receive them every year, but they had increased exponentially. The biggest offers came from Louisville and St. John’s from the Big East, Clemson from the ACC, and Texas from the Big-12. The most amusing came from Southern Utah from our own Summit League. Going there would have started a riot. I didn’t meet with them, but I had met with the Power-Fives to put extra pressure on WIU.
Surprisingly, both Coach Danny O’Sullivan and Coach Garik O’Toole didn’t sign somewhere immediately. It troubles me a little, because I felt neither of them should be turning any job offers down. Part of me felt honored that they wanted to remain with the family. Part of me felt like it was time to kick them out of the nest so that they could fly on their own, hear their own voices.
Another surprise was the future status of Billy Assel. Billy plans on returning for his fifth year. I’m not sure if it’s a great choice for him or not, especially since my own situation is still up in the air. It has always angered me that collegiate athletes are not really given the necessary amount of time to decide their own futures. I feel if an NBA program is in love with a player, it really wouldn’t matter when the player decides to declare. They might as well give them up to a week before the NBA Draft itself to decide. I know it’s back-scratching to the League for the League forcing players into an age-requirement. Unfortunately, that is the way the world spins. Ignoring the business side of things doesn’t make things easier, only less fruitful.
The Board at Western Illinois kept trying to reach me to settle the issue of my employment. I have decided to slow-play them. I knew they want me, but I had played along with the way they did things long enough. They could squirm a little longer. It wasn’t as if I have been sitting on my haunches waiting for them to come around. That’s what’s making them so nervous. Rumors will spread and spread. I might as well take advantage of what is being said on my behalf.
I want to return to the university, but after winning a second championship, the university will not be able to give me what I really want. It is beyond their capability to do so. At the same time, the university has also given me exactly what I want: a chance to build things the way I want to, a chance to recruit the kind pf players I want to, and a chance to challenge my peers and the rest of the college basketball world year in and year out.
My wife tells me my conflicting feelings are normal after the events of the year. I would have to allow the rest of the emotions I am having to run their course all the way through to completion, as if they are traumatic memories. Yet, I can understand what she is saying. Even during our best times, we realize how fleeting they are. I am again reminded of the words of Tex Winter. “You are only a success at the moment you do a successful act.”
The glory is not from winning the title itself, but from the season which resulted in that win. The glory must come from the journey, not the outcome, even if you have become worn-weary of all the roads, the road to recruits, the road to the Final Four, the road to victory, or to the road that lies beyond.
April 17th
Canton, IL
Things are beginning to get really serious with my talks with the Northwest Foundation. They were the first to call me after my second national championship, only issuing me a few congratulatory remarks. I knew they would. I had already seen it, or should I say I had already heard it. Two days later, they called to see if I was free to come to Washington. I told them I was worried about traveling at the moment, and they guaranteed my safety. “I can assure you that no one is taking more preventative measures than we are,” the woman I have been corresponding on the phone with said. “As far as social distancing, you’ll have the whole space to yourself.” How does anyone turn down an offer like that?
On the twelfth, there was a car waiting outside of my house to take me to the airport. We didn’t drive through to the normal departure gates. Our route to the airport was like none I had ever taken before. This is a secret world the majority of people are not aware of, a world built by the elite, by billionaires so they can avoid meeting other people. And I was now being welcomed into it, and if not welcomed, certainly introduced for some kind of effect. I won’t say I hadn’t been impressed, but it didn’t really strike me as an exclusive world, in the sense that it was luxurious, but more of sadness than of anything else, rather like one of exclusion.
I was invited onto someone’s private jet, a Cessna Citation CJ2, of whose I still had no idea. Everyone was very hospitable, but also very guarded. No one seemed to want to let me in on who was covering for all these services. I certainly had hoped it wasn’t me. For the most that Western Illinois could offer me to stay, this kind of treatment would leave me bankrupt, both mentally and financially.
It wasn’t until I had arrived in Washington that I began to figure out who my benefactor could possibly be. That industry has a love affair with sports franchises, particularly basketball. Paul Allen, after leaving his job, purchased the Portland Trailblazers. Mark Cuban, after generating a ton of money from web services, was able to get his hands on the Dallas Mavericks, and has been one of the best owners in the league. More recently, after Adam Silver and other owners finally voted Donald Sterling out, in came Steve Balmer to buy the Los Angeles Clippers. Nobody can call them bottom-dwellers anymore.
Why are so many tech people interested in sports franchises? Unlike in their initial stages, they continue maturing, much like real estate. What better asset can you think of as a sure thing? Their brand is always on display and is so visible around the city, around the world, that they require no advertising at all. A Picasso is worth a fortune, but I haven’t met anyone who owned one willing to show it off to anyone off the street. Sports franchises, on the other hand, wanted everyone on the streets to have some kind of apparel with their logo on it. That was how Beats took over the headphones market. Sports represent the only universal language without misunderstandings, the language of competition. As long as people are willing to dedicate their lives to it, others would continue to pay money to watch them do so. Sports franchises are going to be around for the foreseeable future, and as long as they take people’s minds off whatever they don’t want to think about, they will continue to be worth billions. Al McGuire was wrong. Sports is no longer a coffee break.
If you could work for someone, and it couldn’t be for the richest man in the world, the second and former richest man in the world would certainly be appealing, wouldn’t it? He had lunch prepared shortly after the car I was in arrived. There was no need for an introduction, but he gave me one anyway.
“Congratulations on your victory. I’ve been following your career for a while now,” he told me. “I always participate in the tournament bracket we put up on the website, under a pseudonym of course, and your team causes me fits. One year you’re winning it all. The next year you’re out in the first round. You guys end up breaking everybody’s bracket.”
“Well, to be honest, the way the committee determines our seeding has always been an issue of contention for me,” I tried to explain. The enthusiasm and tone in his voice told me he was only trying to make conversation. He is still a businessman, and more than half the world depends on his products. He knows what success is. Pointing out the inconsistency was not an accident. “I thought by now we’d get the Gonzaga treatment, but we’re still treated as a mid-major.”
We had lunch out on the veranda, going over a number of things, including all the social issues currently confronting the status quo. I kept my Charles E. Mills in the back of my mouth. There would be another time to find out whether he was aware of who that was. I instead brought up the case for endowments for student-athletes, and how I felt it could be a boon for programs like mine, depending on the way the NCAA was going to regulate it. “It could work as long as the universities are required to adjust the actual payments with the amount of revenue that not one player brings in, but one program does. The payments need to be capped, and they must also be congruent not with one program, but with all the sports programs a university has. So whether you are playing lacrosse or football, they all get the same cut of the money. It’s the only way to balance out the incongruity that boosters and sponsors and the big donators offer to the Power-Fives.”
“Don’t you sometimes wish you could leave all that behind?” he asked. I knew where we were heading. If I wasn’t careful, I’d lose all control in a nanosecond. “In computing, when a new interface creates a paradigm shift, the rest of us are playing catch up, and sometimes we never get there. Look how many times the Windows Phone has failed. Yet people who stay with personal computers, they don’t necessarily get left out. Whatever new technology is developed, they can’t just simply start over. They have to integrate themselves with the technology from before, whether they like it or not. And it survives not because of luck or power, but because it is the most reliable and dependable thing in the market place. If we were to shift that same idea to basketball, what platform would be similar?”
“The NBA is the most successful professional basketball league in the world,” I answered. It had been the moment I had waited for, and the moment I had dreaded the most all at the same time. I felt as Prince Arjuna had, looking down at the armies of friends and families he would not only lead, but also face, knowing that there was little he could do to stop what was about to happen. The Bhagavad Gita had prepared me for this moment. It was embracing the destiny that I have to now fulfill. I was about to reveal my answer to him after all this time, and yet I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced he would ask it. A man like him I was sure hated anything but affirmation.
“We have finally been cleared by the NBA and all its governors to be the controlling body of one of its two new franchises,” he explained, a smile crossing over his bespectacled countenance. “We are about to announce that we do plan on bringing back the Seattle Supersonics. The franchise will be rising from the dead, and even if it is a resurrection of sorts, we aren’t looking for something old and borrowed. We’d love for it to have something new, an identity of its own, a rhythm and style of its own.”
He waited for me to reply, but I could only sit there silently, my eyes focused on him. I felt like I was twenty-five years old again, in front of Dr. Tim Van Alstine’s desk, trying to get him to offer me a job. Back then, I tried to be witty and slick, charismatic and convincing. My style has changed a lot since then. For one, I realize I am the one being pursued rather than the one pursuing. I don’t have to make small talk or positive, reinforcing banter.
“The press release will be coming out tomorrow,” he continued, seeing how I was going to hold my ground. “Before it does though, I would love to include a coach’s name along with it, so that everybody knew we are well-prepared, unlike what happened the last time the Supersonics were in Seattle. I can’t have someone like Russell Westbrook holding a uniform he would never wear.”
I let the moment soak into my skin. It had arrived. I had anticipated it, expected it, waited for it, and now that it was here, I was going to revel in it. It is what all dreams are made of for people like me, the ones who love the game yet had not been gifted with the physicality necessary to perform in it. The moment was similar to Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire, when he was lying on the ground, listening to the world around him chanting his name, enjoying every minute of it. It was a fictitious movie and a fictitious scene, but I remember it and can identify with it nonetheless. It can still generate a lot of emotional power, simply because it exists.
“Rick,” he said after realizing I wasn’t intending to offer up my services myself. “I’d like for you to be the coach of the new Seattle Supersonics. I’d like to work with you. I’d like for you to simulate the same kind of success with my new franchise that you have achieved with Western Illinois University. As far as I am concerned, there is no one who can do a better job. You are the right man for this one, and I’d like to have you, no matter the cost.”
He had finally said the magic words I had been waiting for.
April 20th
Western Illinois University, IL
The day to talk to the Western Illinois University board had finally arrived. From December until the end of February, we hadn’t had any kind of progressive discussions that would move the issue of my employment forward. In retrospect, I believe the problems stemmed even earlier than that, way back to before the 2018-2019 season had begun. Former Athletic Director Matt Tanney used our run to the Final Four to benefit his own agenda, knowing full well that he could have extended me then. Most other programs would have done just that. After he left, I don’t blame the office for scurrying to put things back in place. However, that doesn’t mean they haven’t had adequate time to get this taken care of.
There were lots of things that were upsetting when the meeting began. For one, it was very different than when I went to Seattle. I knew it would not be a one-on-one meeting with WIU interim President Martin Abraham doing the negotiations, but they could have worked at making the atmosphere more welcoming. I felt the way Billy did on the court at times, just me against everyone else. I have never been known to make demands, or to act as a prima donna, but I wanted them to realize who had the power in the room. The chair I was asked to sit in, I refused, and took another one more toward the head of the table, showing them I was at the front of negotiations. Doing this, I made it more difficult for several of them to look at me, which was the whole point. If they didn’t make the effort, than it was they who were showing disrespect and chutzpah, not me.
“What are the odds we can come to some kind of an agreement today?” I asked right off the bat. Since I was the youngest person in the room, it looked arrogant. From where I was sitting though, it looked like I was in complete control. The arrogance is expected at that point.
“Is your agent not coming today?”
“He’s busy talking to other parties on my behalf at the moment.” It was rude and usually a career-ending thing to say. At this point, our negotiations needed a paradigm shift if we were going to work things out, and I wanted to work things out. But I was being serious about why my agent wasn’t present. Whether it would represent negotiating in good faith or not, it was no longer up to them to decide. If they didn’t like it, then we might as well part ways.
President Martin Abraham hadn’t invited all of the members of the board, only a couple of them. The rest of the people present, I discovered after introductions, were the people running the university itself, in charge of not only the financial situation, but the student body. I would later be informed of certain details, while available to the public record, were not discussed openly to the people it employed.
Before Dr. Van Alstine had left, he had warned me about former WIU President Jack Thomas. It turned out he had been the reason for Tim’s release, although Tim had been wrapped up in scandal after scandal in his last years here. He had said the president’s planned direction was different than what the university was used to. President Goldfarb had been in charge when Western Illinois had raised over 60 million dollars. All of that seems so much longer than it actually was. At that time, the university had a student population of over twelve thousand. Nowadays, it was threatening to dip under five. No wonder we would never be able to play anywhere other than Western Hall, unless I could convince my new best friend to perhaps donate something larger to us.
“It’s not just that,” the one in charge of financial operations said. “Education has been taking a hit for the last several years now. The money we had expected from the state seems to be getting smaller and smaller with no end in sight. Part of that is the budget impasse from previous years.”
The budget impasse was the two-year fiscal period where Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and the General Assembly couldn’t agree on a constitutionally-mandated budget for the entire state of Illinois. Basically, he kept passing the buck until we got to this point.
“Eastern Illinois had to lay off roughly 300 of its employees,” he continued. “We look like saints compared to what they’re going through, believe you me.”
“Gentlemen, this information is all well and good,” I finally said, having heard enough of the state’s troubles. Someone must have forgotten that I am from California, “but I don’t really see the point of airing out our dirty laundry. If I had just come off a losing season and brought a bunch of reasons for it to this meeting, what would your response be? Let’s get one thing clear. I know what I’m worth. The question then is, what are you willing to offer for it?”
“Well, I see the end of courtesies has arrived,” said the interim president. He was right. I was being curt, and I had every reason to be. “Before we present you with our offer, we had hoped you could understand what being a resident of the Lincoln State at the moment feels like.”
“Comments aside, I know the figures for what it cost to settle the university’s debts with both Tim Van Alstine and Jack Thomas, and as much as you want to talk about fiscal responsibility, I’d like to remind you that there is equal blame to go around the table.” That caught everyone’s attention. It had immediately made them drop all the pretenses, which was its intended purpose. “Members of the board, my contract is expiring, and I have done what I can to show loyalty in the utmost way while I have been employed as a member of the university’s family. Where do we stand now is what I want to know.”
“We know about the interviews with Louisville, Clemson, and Texas,” the interim president said. He forgot to mention St. John’s. “Loyalty has a variety of meanings.”
“As does how it’s rewarded,” I mentioned. He was trying to intimidate me. It was a blatant form of reverse ageism, of using my youth against the good ol’ boys’ club. I slid my right hand behind the lapel of my suit jacket. “I have given this school the name recognition it deserves. What you and the board have done with the spoils from the first championship as well as the second Final Four appearance had little to do with me at all. The question is, what do you plan to do now after the second national title?”
“We’d like to offer you a lifetime contract,” someone else on the board immediately responded, seeing the ambience sour. It was true. I was throwing a mini-fit. I have all the offers ahead of me and they knew it. They were going to have to cater to me for once. Anyone would take the same chance to do it given the same opportunity I had at that moment.
“You know, that sounds wonderful,” I replied without even a minute’s hesitation, “as did the fifteen year contract that Trey Parker and Matt Stone had initially signed with Comedy Central once South Park had become a hit, and yet they grew to hate it.”
“We think you’ll be more than pleased,” she continued, sliding a figure over and forcing the rest of the men in between us to make sure that piece of paper reached me. “Part of the reason so many programs were cut was so we could make sure we could secure the success of one of them.”
This was the drama my new best friend in Washington had spoken of the other day. I was basically being told I was the reason all my other coaching colleagues had just lost their jobs. This was how the status quo liked to fight. Everything is sewn with something bitter behind it. Damon Hendriks and Dawud Byfield, my Champion Leathernecks, had taught me how to handle it. “It seems to me that rather than shredding from the bottom, it’s really the top that needs lightening. Let’s face it, none of you even live in Macomb.”
“Neither do you, coach.”
“I’m not going to take your lifetime offer the way it is being offered,” I answered. Immediately, the person who had made the last remark was glared at by everyone in the room. “In fact, I’d like to reduce the number on this sheet as long as a few of my coaching colleagues can get their programs back. I don’t think that is asking too much, and restoring it will return credibility to the university.”
They were in disbelief. This was not how they expected the negotiations to go. I had, though. If you do what is expected of you, then there will be little expected of you. “So you don’t want the lifetime contract then? Are you saying that you will be resigning as the head coach of Western Illinois?”
That comment silenced me for over a minute. The obtuse judgment formed from the available information was not something I expected from people at this table. “I’m going to take the lifetime contract, but I’m going to change the terms. The current terms I can’t work with. There was a time when these terms could be expected of me. That time has passed.”
For the next hour or so, I explained my role as a semi-general manager, an executive on the new Supersonics front office, to the university’s governing body, and I explained the caveats they would have to accept for me to continue as the head coach of the Western Illinois Leathernecks basketball team. “Your lifetime contract, although of the highest honor, has several shortcomings that a Power-Five contract would not have. I am presenting a way to give you the best of both worlds, relinquishing your power over my proclivities as well as offering an escape from the embarrassment of not being able to sign the hottest coach currently on the market, a situation created not by me, but by you all.”
I gave them no choice in the matter. I was going to accept their tenure, but I was also giving myself the flexibility to gain income elsewhere without stipulation. It was completing the deal I had already struck thousands of miles away. I would manage the roster for the Seattle Supersonics, while I was coaching the program I had built completely from scratch. If they wanted to be a part of the rewards, then this was what they would have to accept going forward.
I could understand now why John Calipari, Rick Pitino and all the other coaches made the demands they did. This is what it means to understand your worth. This is also what it means to demand what you are worth. The demoralizing thing for everyone looking at me was that they knew they had no choice in the matter. For the last couple of days, to them it would certainly seem as if this was the reason I had delayed any possible meetings we could have had. I would like to say to any successful young coach out there that they have the power to do the same. It is not up to a university to decide where that coach would end up. That ultimately is up to the coach.
Where I deserve to end up is right here in Macomb. But Macomb can only offer me so much. I feel as if after thirteen years, anything more would have to come from outside Macomb. That is the fate of all small schools, and the fact we keep winning and not growing altogether as a university shows that some people are not doing their jobs from a management perspective. It would always be the ceiling which stops me. It didn’t mean I had to accept it anymore. I wasn’t leaving Macomb. At the same time, I was embracing the revelation that was presented to me, following my destiny.
May 1st
Macomb, IL
Ndudi Clinton, the guard out of New York City, decided to play for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Lucious Killingsworth, a 4-star out of Compton, went with the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels. Even after winning a title, there is little to be done to make high profile recruits choose WIU.
The championship did convince Cam Medina, a 6’7” 222 lbs 3-star power forward out of Charleston, South Carolina to put his John Hancock down and submit his Letter of Intent. I had also been reviewing the tape of Renardo Verdejo from Argentina, a 5-star 6’6” 210 lbs small forward. His game did not shout out super star, but rather junk yard dog, something this team needs. Najeeb will be missed, and I didn’t see anyone after him who could embrace doing all the little things we would need to win big games. Austen is turning into an elite wing defender. Borislav has turned his nickname of Comrade from pejorative to laudative. However, he sees his role on the team and with his teammates as a beast of burden, the one to carry everyone, rather than the ultimate team player. Frye looks like our next 3&D player, but that is hardly glue. Raymond and Roberto are more premier players than pure role players.
As happy as I am about Billy’s decision to return for his final year, I don’t really see a team that can repeat the way the Louisville Cardinals had, or the Florida Gators had a decade before. We are short on shooters. My best lineup is Diondre at the point, Billy at the 2, Borislav as a small forward, Austen playing the 4, and Raymond as the center. That leaves me with a bench of Orien, Roberto, Frye, and Kim Kone. Brandin Price and Sydney Dupree, no matter how good they are, will still be freshmen, and not the Anthony Davis elite kind of freshmen, either. I won’t have much depth.
I do have Billy, though. The way I feel must be similar to the way Dean Smith must have felt when Michael Jordan was a junior. What is there for him to accomplish in College Hoops at this point? Part of me wants to just get him to become the best player he can possibly be. The years Stephen Curry had spent at Davidson had turned him into the player he is now. I think I’d be fine with that being Billy’s goal as well. There is a high possibility he would be the top pick in next year’s NBA Draft. If he had declared, there had been a possibility he could have been the top pick in this year’s as well. That is not a knock on the other new Champion Leathernecks. NBA teams prefer big point guards. Who doesn’t? There is nothing more I enjoy in this dark world than tall point guards.
And depending on when the NBA officially announces the inclusion of its two new expansion franchises, Seattle may very well get the No.1 draft pick. I can’t see a better person to build a franchise around then my very own Billy Assel.
June 1st
Los Angeles, CA
School was getting out soon, but my familiarity with the California system would give me a chance to do this. I had gotten to know the head coach at Venice High when he was an assistant with LA City College, when I had gone out to see Dawud Byfield. He had just taken over for John Flynn. This would look like two acquaintances getting back in touch with one another.
Before Vernard Fulton went off for summer vacation, I wanted to get a good look at him. As a junior, he is a projected 4-star power forward at 6’7” 210 lbs, in the same mold as Najeeb Goode. Raymond would be leaving after this year, and Cam Medina could use the competition. The two of them, if I can land Vernard, can test out each other’s mettle. Iron sharpens iron.
The Venice coach and I spent a lot of time just talking about the game against UCLA. It was the finest display of coaching he had ever witnessed. There wasn’t anything I could have done any better.
“I’d like to take all the credit, but I wasn’t the one who stole the ball at the end of the game,” I reminded him. “You know as well as I do that no matter what you want to run, it’s out of your control what actually gets run. All you can do is trust your players, and defensively, there was no one on the team I trusted on defense more than Najeeb Goode.”
There was a sudden knock, and a tall young man with entered the office. The coach signaled for him to come forward. “What’s going on, Mr. Fulton?”
“I just wanted to check on the schedule for our summer league, Coach,” he said, fumbling to get papers out of his backpack.
“You don’t have to look for it, Vernard. It’s all written on the billboard against the wall to your left,” he said, pointing over to the white board. They were going to be playing at the Pyramid over at Cal State Long Beach. I had seen Jordan Farmar and Andrew Bynum play out there before their rookie seasons as Lakers. It seemed like a full off-season. These ABLs also give us a better sense of what the recruits can do beyond just their box scores and stat lines. The bigger programs have the staffing power to send scouts to film the games of the players they want to see.
The young man kept looking back and forth at what was printed on the wall and at me. I didn’t return his glances. I didn’t want to give the wrong impression. I also didn’t want to give myself and my intentions away.
“Vernard, you know better than to stare at someone. That’s straight-up rude,” his coach told him. “For crying out loud, if you want to say something to the man, you’d better first introduce yourself.”
“My name is Vernard Fulton. It’s nice to meet you,” he said, extending his right hand.
“For the sake of social distancing, I hope you don’t mind,” I replied, showing him my elbow instead. The two of us bumped, and I took a step backward after to give him his space.
“I don’t want to say something out of place, but I have a feeling I recognize you from somewhere,” Vernard said. “Aren’t you the coach for Western Illinois?”
“Yes,” I said, expecting an autograph or a cellphone photo.
“I thought so. I can never forget your face. You beat Kansas, UCLA, and Florida to win the title,” he said, almost apoplectic. “How did you guys do it? How did you win?”
“We found our way,” I told him. “We found where we belong in this world.”
The End
For the entire story in one file, please go here: https://gumroad.com/l/bVSqud