INDIANAPOLIS – This night is for the father too, because the father has been there every step of the way, living his old basketball dream through his son, who tonight tries to beat UCLA and become a champion.
“I coached [St. Agnes] CYO basketball, and when he was about two or three, we used to bring him down there,” the whitehaired man sitting in a Houlihan’s next door to the RCA Dome was saying yesterday.
His name is Billy Donovan too. “The kids used to just always throw the ball and let him throw it up underhand, ya know, try to get it up to the rim and stuff, and they just took a liking to him.”
He is a fast-talking son of New York just like his son. Loved basketball every bit as much. “We used to shovel snow off the court and play all the time,” Donovan said. One day he wrote a letter to his hero, Jerry West. “He wrote back, he said, ‘It’s great having a Laker fan in Boston,’ because I was at Boston College at that time playing ball,” Donovan said. He was a two-guard. “I only shot when I had the ball,” Donovan said, chuckling.
The Celtics had his territorial rights. “They had K.C. Jones, Sam Jones, [Bob] Cousy and [Bill] Sharman,” Donovan recalled, “and they just drafted [John] Havlicek.” So he married and served in the army and wound up in sales at J.P. Stevens and the first of three children, Billy, the only boy, was born in 1965.
“I used to take him to a lot of the Knick games when they had [Dave] DeBusschere and [Bill] Bradley,” Donovan said. “My wife used to drop him off on the train at five o’clock at night and I’d come meet him at the platform and take him out to dinner and then we’d go to the game.”
Late at night, the boy – very religious, always a joy – could be found at the St. Agnes High School gym. “They ripped the matchbook cover off and then gum it so the door would not close,” Donovan said. This didn’t surprise the old man one bit. “I used to do it when I was a kid too,” he said.
It helped when the 18×18 cement court in the backyard was built. Father and son would play H-O-R-S-E. “My neighbors would finally call him and say, ‘Stop bouncing that ball, it’s 11:30 at night,’ Donovan said, chuckling.
The boy flourished at Providence when Rick Pitino turned him into a slimmed-down Billy The Kid gunslinger. They made it to the Final Four in 1987. “Almost like a miracle,” Donovan said. “Almost like a miracle.”
The boy played point guard for Pitino, with the Knicks. “You can’t put this stuff into words,” Donovan said. “Here’s someone who’s really not gifted athletically. He doesn’t jump very high. He doesn’t run very fast. But just because of sheer determination to make himself better, made it to the highest level. Which is special, I think, in anyone’s life.”
The boy was 25 when it ended. “I said, ‘Billy, you’ve gotta do something in your life that you love. Whatever that is. And that’ll make you successful. The rewards’ll come later,’ ” Donovan said.
Why say that? “Because I always wanted to coach,” he said. “But you couldn’t earn a living when I was growing up coaching. So I went into sales. I guess my frustration was taken out by coaching the CYO kids.”
The boy’s journey: Graduate assistant under Pitino at Kentucky. Marshall head coach in 1994. Florida head coach in 1996. Surprise NCAA runnerup to Michigan State here six years ago. Tonight.
Donovan will sit next to the boy on the bus. “I tell him that I love him and I wish him the best of luck,” Donovan said.
Donovan will watch nervously from courtside with the Gators radio network team. He has attended virtually every game his son has played and coached.
Remember, Roy Williams cried last year when he finally won it all. The boy? “This is not about me,” he said yesterday. To one 65-year-old grandfather of 10 it sure is. “It would be a dream come true for our family,” he said.