Hey, remember when head coach Kevin Ollie exited the Oklahoma City locker room, threw his jersey in the trash, climbed into a suit in Storrs, Connecticut and proceeded to push, pull, scream, face-slap and cliché his UConn Huskies almost directly to a national championship?
That was pretty cool.
But as much fun as we had at the beginning of April — when we walked the earth declaring Kevin Ollie the greatest coach in the history of history — a month later, we find ourselves in midseason panic mode as NBA vultures circle our beloved Ollie, ready to rip him from our arms and deploy him in the hellscapes of Clevelend or Detroit. This cannot stand.
Listen up, NBA. Kevin Ollie is ours. He’s UConn bred. He belongs in Storrs. And you can’t have him. Seriously. We will cut you.
There have been a lot of “unnamed sources close to Ollie” (read: his agent and his agent’s minions) who have been dropping little nuggets into reporter’s ears about teams wanting to talk to KO and whether KO will listen. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but those cleverly deployed quotes seem designed to get Warde Manual to back the truck up (and make sure said truck is filled with all of the money). And back it up he should. Neither Warde nor KO have commented on their contract talks, but the rumor swirling around now is that it’s neither money nor years that is the sticking point. It’s the escape clause. And that basically makes me want to hurl.
KO seems destined for coaching greatness. If we’re blessed to have two Hall of Fame coaches in a row, then it seems a little ungrateful to expect KO to stay forever and ever amen. (Though that would be amazing. Please don’t go, KO. Please.)
The NBA seems to have set the house on fire with basically all of the teams giving their coaches the boot, so there are a lot of job openings. But I don’t think KO leaves Storrs for Detroit or Cleveland or even LA. The NBA coaching circuit is just one big round robin. There is no such thing as job security. The Laker’s are old, broken and expensive. It’s not a great time to be heading to the west coast. The Cavs fired Mike Brown twice(!) in four years! And Detroit is, well, Detroit. And let’s not forget that Golden State just fired Mark Jackson, a more accomplished and respected NBA veteran, after he took them to the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time in decades. There’s also the possibility, shrinking with every game the Clippers lose, that the OKC job opens up this season. KO has ties there. As we all know, he was offered a front office job in Oklahoma City, which he turned down to become an assistant at UConn. That’s an OKC team currently in the second round of the NBA playoffs. So much for loyalty.
But even if hopping on the NBA coaching merry-go-round was attractive at this moment, KO has plenty of reasons to stay in Storrs. Despite his journeyman playing career, KO and his family have lived in Connecticut since he went to UConn. His kids are in the local schools and will be for a few more years. And I genuinely believe KO when he talks about how he’s more interested in making his guys better men than better basketball players. KO isn’t a hypocrite. He talks about loyalty, Ten Toes In, and he means it. And he knows what a body blow to the program, hell, to the university, his leaving would be. And he wouldn’t do that to us. Not our Kevin Ollie.
If we get another seven years of Ollieisms, and maybe another national championship or five, I could live with him going on to be an all-time great NBA coach. That’s an amazing legacy. And really, UConn Head Coach Ricky Moore wouldn’t be a terrible thing, now would it?
Tyler Wilkinson contributed to this post.
