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Tucson Region

Return to coaching highly unlikely after unexplained leave of absence

Opinion by Greg Hansen
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.07.2007
On a vacation to Napa Valley this summer, former UA assistant basketball coach Jerry Holmes visited a winery and was struck by an autographed picture on the wall.
It was Lute Olson.
"Lute was here?'' Holmes asked, almost incredulously.
Holmes was told Olson had been at the winery a few weeks earlier; a tourist with a famous face.
"It stunned me,'' Holmes said Thursday night. "Lute just didn't take vacations. He didn't have hobbies. He was all basketball. To me, Lute visiting that winery was the surest signal that things had changed.''
Olson won't coach the Wildcats again this season. It's highly unlikely he'll ever coach again; the odds of a man who turns 74 in September returning to the grind of college basketball are overwhelming.
Each day Olson remained on leave, or as a part-time coach/consultant, the grip on his beloved Wildcats slipped. His once-total control of a Top 10 program vanished as if overnight.
That is the pace and the way of college basketball. It waits for no one, not even a legend.
It doesn't have to be sad.
No one says we have to remember Olson at 73, unable to pull the trigger on a full return to coaching, but yet unwilling to let go and to walk away until it became painfully obvious that Arizona has become Kevin O'Neill's team.
Ultimately, Olson realized what his players and UA Athletic Director Jim Livengood had come to understand. It would be in the best interest of everyone, especially for Olson, if he steps back, rests and re-evaluates.
The coach couldn't possibly understand that his image and legacy are untouchable. No matter what happens next, his he will be remembered for maintaining his excellence over a quarter-century without a notable slip.
It has always been more than just basketball with Olson and Tucson. It was about a healthy self-worth, for him and for us.
Over the past week or 10 days, Livengood met with O'Neill, UA President Robert Shelton and UA players, most notably senior Jawann McClellan, to discuss a possible exit strategy that would best protect Olson's dignity.
The school says he will return next season. Our instincts tell us such a return is not probable.
"It's a remarkable, amazing story,'' said Holmes, who coached on Arizona's staff the season before Olson was hired, in April 1983. "What he did here will never be duplicated. It won't happen again. Now it is time to take a step back and appreciate what he has accomplished.''
The first concern is not an appreciation of Olson but his health and well-being. Whatever kept him away from his all-consuming identity as Arizona's basketball coach remains troublesome. He is a fighter, stoic and stubborn, who never gave an inch.
He would never consider leaving, not for a heartbeat, unless something was keeping him from being a diligent coach, hour after hour and game after game.
When Olson left the team for six games in the winter of 2000-01, mourning the death of his wife, Bobbi, he was back in 17 days.
"It took him about three minutes to regain control and take charge,'' former assistant coach Jim Rosborough said. That was the only Lute Olson we've known. He was 66 then, hardly a young man. And yet he jumped back into the deepest waters of college basketball, led his club to the national championship game, and, in 2003 and 2005, to NCAA Regional championship games, one bucket from more Final Fours.
A preferred scenario would be for Olson to have orchestrated a tidy exit, a Big Finish, in which he announced his retirement and anointed a successor. But we should've known he would work until he almost dropped; his Depression-era work ethic was the one constant of his Arizona years.
In retrospect, you could almost see this coming. The only way he is going to go out is when it is not physically possible for him to stay.
What remains is an empty canvas. Olson is not the type to serve as an emeritus coach or a co-pilot. He is either in or he is out. Now it becomes a complicated question of what is fair to him, to O'Neill and to the UA players.
In the short-term, the fairest way is to permit O'Neill to finish the season and try to evaluate if he is a worthy choice to succeed Olson. Across the next four months, Olson, Livengood and Shelton should be able to agree on the sort of grand retirement celebration befitting a man who was seven times, unprecedented, the Pac-10 coach of the year.
And if by the grace of the basketball gods, Olson is indeed fit and hale enough to coach another season, 2008-09, there will be no rush to decide if and how it can be done.
Olson can move forward now. The rest of us will enjoy looking back.
coverage continues in sports • more wildcats news at azstarnet.com/wildcats
● Contact Greg Hansen at 573-4145 or ghansen@azstarnet.com.
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