Welcome to Lavin’s World. Enjoy the Ride

March 30, 2010

By BILLY WITZ

New York Times

A little more than a month before Steve Lavin, with John Wooden as his best man, was to marry the actress Mary Jarou at an exclusive cliffside resort in Laguna Beach in 2007, several hundred wedding guests received an e-mail message from the couple. 

Sorry to inform them, it read, but too many guests had accepted their invitations to the wedding, far more than the resort could accommodate. Instead, the couple announced, they would be heading to Europe to marry. 

The couple apologized for any inconvenience and assured guests that they would receive photographs of the wedding. 

The story of Lavin’s nuptials should prove instructive for fans of St. John’s, which made its own commitment to Lavin, an ESPN analyst and former U.C.L.A. coach, on Tuesday when he agreed to a six-year contract worth at least $9 million. The Red Storm and its fans are about to be welcomed into Lav’s World, where wedding plans are not the only decisions that are made by the seat of the pants. 

Lavin, who was little more than a year removed from being a part-time assistant earning $17,000 a year when he was named the coach of U.C.L.A., one of college basketball’s most storied programs, spent a dizzying 7 seasons there. 

His teams were good and they were bad, but they were rarely boring. The Bruins had 10 losses of more than 25 points and created season highlights for the local programs, like Cal State Northridge, that usually played in their shadows. 

But those defeats were often followed by stunning victories. In 2001, two days after losing by 29 points at California, the Bruins shocked No. 1-ranked Stanford. The next season, after losing to Ball State and Pepperdine, they upset No. 1-ranked Kansas. 

In Lavin’s final season, when it became clear he would be fired at the end of U.C.L.A.’s worst season (10-19) since 1946, the Bruins toppled No. 1-ranked Arizona in the Pacific-10 tournament. The Bruins had lost to the Wildcats by a total of 71 points in two previous meetings. 

But sustaining success eluded Lavin, who was personable and outgoing, a charismatic ambassador but one who often gave the impression he did not seem to enjoy the actual work that accompanied his job. Once, when the Bruins took the court for a game against Gonzaga, he turned to an assistant to ask if the Zags played zone or man-to-man. One summer, he left the recruiting circuit to fly to Boston to watch baseball’s All-Star Game at Fenway Park. 

At a high school tournament near Seattle, while coaches and scouts sat in the bleachers taking notes on prospects, Lavin watched the games from the side, pedaling away on an exercise bike until he was soaked with sweat. 

It was incidents like these that prompted Baron Davis, a former N.B.A. all-star who played for Lavin during his two years in college, to remark on a return to Pauley Pavilion that his U.C.L.A. teams should have been recognized along with the university’s 11 national championship teams with a banner of their own — as the first team to make the N.C.A.A. tournament without a coach. 

Many players felt similarly about Lavin, but they liked him personally, and many said those relationships were a reason they seemed to play best when Lavin was under fire. One such time was in 2001, when the U.C.L.A. athletic director at the time, Pete Dalis, acknowledged that he had spoken with Rick Pitino, who had recently been fired by the Boston Celtics. 

Lavin portrayed himself as the victim of unrealistic expectations among U.C.L.A. fans, who he claimed found unacceptable anything less than annual trips to the Final Four. Lavin, who had served for 3 years as an assistant at Purdue, arrived at U.C.L.A. as an assistant schooled in the art of hard-nosed, man-to-man defense. And he received credit for toughening up the Bruins during their national championship run in 1995. 

But when he became the head coach, the Bruins’ offense and defense changed as regularly as the seasons — from a motion offense to double high-post sets to pressing and trapping and back to the motion. 

Though Lavin played up his relationships with Wooden and the Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell, an old family friend, he surrounded himself with friends and neophytes. Three of the 5 assistants who worked for him at U.C.L.A. were his former high school or college teammates. The others had little coaching experience. 

“You have to really take an honest look at yourself in what your strengths and weaknesses are,” Newell told The Los Angeles Daily News on the eve of Lavin’s firing in 2003. “Some of us are motivators and not X’s and O’s guys. Some are teachers, but not really strong in game planning and assessing players.” Others were strong in recruiting, Newell said. 

“As coaches, we’ve got to get assistants to reinforce us where we’re weak,” he added. “Steve has shown great leadership by bringing his teams back from the ashes — that’s a real strength.” 

What Lavin needed, Newell said, was “an older guy who could shape him into a better X-and-O guy, or if he’s not good on defense, a good defense guy. In these areas, there was just no growth.” 

It will be interesting to see what Lavin learned in his last seven years in broadcasting. The names that have been mentioned as possible assistants at St. John’s — Manhattan Coach Barry Rohrssen and the former Virginia and DePaul coach Dave Leitao — were lauded as assistants for their recruiting expertise, not their strategic acumen. 

After St. John’s made overtures to Billy Donovan and Paul Hewitt, its mission was clearly to make a splash, to land a big-name coach. 

It can be said with certainty that the Red Storm at least got it half right.