AP News, March 30th, 2007
Before he was Billy the Kid, Billy Donovan was really just a kid. A pudgy kid with a funny push shot just waiting for the day when the 3-point line would come into college basketball and Rick Pitino would come into his life.
"You hear the expression gym rat," Pitino said. "Well, look it up in the dictionary and Billy Donovan's picture will be next to it."
The kid had designs on being the next great banker on Wall Street, mostly because slow point guards from Providence weren't terribly in demand by the NBA. Pitino gave him a shot with the Knicks, but his proverbial cup of coffee soon ran dry.
The kid was going to make his money the old-fashioned way, dressed in a suit and tie. Someday there might be a corner office, perhaps a summer home in the Hamptons.
"Wall Street was always going to be his thing," Pitino said. "I didn't really see him doing anything else."
The kid is all grown up now, and the Wall Street thing never really worked out. He makes Wall Street money, but instead of working out of a corner office he works off a prime spot at the end of a bench.
And now everyone wants a piece of the kid.
They salivate over him in Kentucky, where Tubby Smith fled town almost as soon as the Wildcats were ousted in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The official excuse was that he left for greener pastures in Minnesota, but there's nothing green about Minneapolis in the winter.
The rumors in the Bluegrass are that Kentucky will double the kid's $1.7 million salary in a multiyear deal that would make him one of, if not the highest paid coach in basketball. If you believe them, the only thing standing in the way of an offer are a couple of games being played in the Georgia Dome over the next few days.
Then there's the story that what Donovan really wants to do is to coach in the NBA, and that he's just waiting to follow Pat Riley as coach of the Miami Heat. Or that he's going to get Phil Jackson money to replace Jackson as coach of the Lakers.
OK, kid. Fess up.
What do you do with yourself after winning one national title and getting your team in the Final Four the next year? How can you resist parlaying being the hottest coach in college basketball into one of the biggest coaching contracts in basketball?
"I haven't even thought about any of that stuff," Donovan said Friday. "My total focus is really on UCLA. I don't even have my phone. I don't talk to anybody."
The kid can afford to be coy because he'll cash in no matter what he does. Odds are, though, that phone will be turned on either sometime after Saturday night's semifinal with UCLA, or sometime early Tuesday morning when his Florida team could be celebrating a second straight national championship.
Odds are even better the people from Kentucky will be on the other end of the line, inviting the kid for a chat. They'll offer tons of money, private schools for the children, a private jet for the coach and a spot somewhere for the wife.
They might even throw in a racehorse or two.
And the kid will tell them no.
The kid, you see, is all grown up now. He's got kids of his own, and a mind of his own.
He may go to Pitino for advice, like he did when he was hired 11 years ago at Florida and Pitino told him to turn down the job unless they offered him a long-term contract with the understanding it would take a few years to rebuild.
But he won't need Pitino to tell him from personal experience how difficult the Kentucky job is, and how high expectations would be. He'll make his own decision, and this one shouldn't be all that hard.
He'll simply tell Kentucky thanks, but no thanks.
There's no reason other than money to do anything else. Donovan's family is both active and settled in Gainesville. Donovan helped lead a fund-raising drive to build a Catholic high school where his oldest son is a freshman and on the basketball team.
He's done what many thought impossible by making basketball count once again at a school where football is king, a school where students now sometimes camp out for days to get one of 2,500 prime seats the kid made sure were set aside for a raucous cheering section.
And with Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley promising a substantial boost in Donovan's $1.7 million salary, money shouldn't be an issue unless, of course, the NBA comes calling with an offer of its own.
"I think Billy Donovan will be a fixture at Florida until and unless he gets to the NBA," Pitino said. "He's doing at Florida what Coach K did at Duke. I don't see him leaving."
He shouldn't, because the parallel Pitino draws is a good one. Don't forget that Mike Krzyzewski became a coaching legend and got a court named after him as a reward for his success and loyalty at Duke.
The kid won't get that at Kentucky, where Rupp Arena is already named after one legendary coach. It wouldn't, however, take many more Final Fours to get the ultimate gym rat's name on a piece of Gator hardwood.
And Billy the Kid Court really does have a nice ring to it.
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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org
