He sat inside a parking lot construction trailer, papers all over the place, with a large chunk of cardboard serving as a curtain to block…
He sat inside a parking lot construction trailer, papers all over the place, with a large chunk of cardboard serving as a curtain to block out the sun’s glare hanging over a makeshift desk that might have been from IKEA.
This was John Beilein when I first met him, and at the time, I was sure there was no place else he’d rather be.
«You want any of this coffee?» he asked with a smile, back in the summer of 2011.
[ Michigan basketball’s John Beilein leaving to coach NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers]
Back then, Michigan basketball wasn’t what you know it as today. And Beilein wasn’t exactly who he is right now. The Crisler Center was still called Crisler Arena. There was no practice facility. Beilein’s office was in a parking lot. His program hadn’t raised a banner yet. He was only one year removed from the belief that he was entering a season coaching for his job.
But Beilein seemed like a guy who had just won the lottery. Beyond excited about where the next part of his evolution as a basketball mind would take him and his team. A few weeks later he gathered a bunch of media folks onto the floor at Crisler to give us a demonstration about ball screens and why they were about to be really important. He talked faster than a mile a minute. None of us had any clue what he was saying. He didn’t care. He kept teaching.
«It’s always been about trying to figure out this puzzle that is basketball,» Beilein would later tell me. «It always keeps going. That’s the journey. (And) the journey never ends.»
The journey doesn’t end. It evolves. And no one in basketball evolves like John Beilein.
He evolved from a school teacher to a Division III coach. Then to Division II. Then low-level Division I. Then a little higher. Then West Virginia. And, ultimately, Michigan. At some point along the way, at each stop, his evolution grew to a point of no return.
And that process continued Monday.
Beilein took the job at Michigan sight unseen in 2007 and, 12 years later, turned himself into the greatest coach the program’s ever had. But you can’t stop evolution. And Beilein’s puzzle never finishes.
If a few conversations had gone different last spring, Beilein would’ve already made his next move.
