Q&A: Jim Boeheim on retirement, the last year and why change is good

SYRACUSE, N.Y. Three of his kids play college ball. Jimmy is a junior at Cornell. Twins Sissy and Buddy are sophomores at Rochester and Syracuse, respectively. The campuses all sit within 90 minutes of his home. He likes to fish. Just a few weeks ago, he visited his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, in Montana, and snagged himself 15 rainbow trout. He doesn’t play golf as much as he used to, but at one point he was a 2- or 3-handicap. He could easily grab his sticks and resurrect his game.

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Instead, Jim Boeheim is here, back behind the desk that overlooks the practice gym inside the Carmelo Anthony Basketball Center, waiting to begin his 44th season as the Syracuse men’s basketball coach. He already ranks first among active coaches for longest tenure at one institution and is nearing Jim Phelan’s 49-year record run at Mount Saint Mary’s. Of course, if you want to get technical and include Boeheim’s entire Syracuse legacy, he’s nearly as old as the first brick laid in the Hall of Languages. Skinny Jimmy Boeheim, a decent shooter from Lyons, N.Y., walked on the freshman team in 1962 and never left.

His basketball scrapbook reads like any life collection, filled with highs and lows. Some are hard-earned, some self-inflicted; others are the product of good fortune, and still others the result of crummy twists of fate. Marriage, divorce, remarriage, kids, cancer, championship, scandal, joy, stubbornness and tragedy. Boeheim has experienced it all while living as not merely the single most recognizable man in his city, but also its damned near personification. To those who don’t know of its hidden beauty in the summer, Syracuse is a perpetually gray, dreary, and almost pessimistic city. To those who don’t know of his hidden wit and intelligence, Boeheim is a perpetually gloomy, whiny and pessimistic hangdog.

The university announced in 2015 that Boeheim would retire in April 2018. And then his successor, Mike Hopkins, took the Washington job. The school instead extended Boeheim, and, well, he’s still here. With a 75th birthday coming next month, he is the oldest man to coach in a Division I college basketball game John Chaney was 74 and 41 days when he retired from Temple in 2006.

All of which serves as the backdrop to a simple theme for an interview as Boeheim sits down in his memorabilia-stuffed office for an hour-plus interview. Why is Jim Boeheim still here?

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To which Jim Boeheim responds with that trademark smirk. “Why leave?”

You lose four players (Tyus Battle, Oshae Brissett, Paschal Chukwu and Frank Howard) from last season’s team. What do you expect this season?

I think we’re going to be good, better than we’ve been because we can score. We couldn’t shoot last year. We were 14th, 15th in the league in shooting (12th, actually) and we still had a decent team. But you’re not going to be able to outscore every team in this league. We’ve got five guys now, maybe six, who can shoot it. Elijah Hughes, he’ll be in the at worst top five players in the league this year. At worst. Tyus averaged 17 points a game last year, so he’ll get all of those shots and Oshae’s too. If he doesn’t average 20 a game, I’ll be surprised.

People rate you because we lost four starters. That’s it. They see that, and they stop right there.

So you’ve teased that your team will play some man-to-man this year. True?

Yeah, we’ll play some. We’ve played some in the past, but it’s been a while. Last year I only had seven guys. I had two guards. We couldn’t do much. You play your best defense, so we’ll play zone the most but unlike in the past, we can play man a little more. We can probably press a little more.

Why do you think people act as if you’re saying the Earth is flat when you talk about playing man-to-man?

The first 30 years or so I coached, we played both. I think it was like 10 years ago that we completely went away from man-to-man.

Why’d you change?

Why? We lost to Le Moyne in an exhibition game, and we played Carolina 10 days later and beat ’em by 20. (This was in 2009-10. Syracuse beat the Tar Heels by 16.) I figured that was a good reason to play the other defense. And our teams have evolved into longer, skinnier guys.

People don’t think I’ve changed, but I’ve changed radically on offense, defense. How we play the zone, it’s different every year, in games even. And for the most part, we’ve been in the top two or three in the league in defense. My question is, why do people want me to change? We’re not a bad defensive team. Nobody ever said that about us. Nobody is telling Tony Bennett to play zone. Generally speaking, your second defense isn’t as good as your first, and for the most part, teams are better against a man because that’s what they practice against. We go to a man and they’re probably going to think, Oh, thank you!

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The critics always say, “He won’t change!” Well, maybe you shouldn’t change. Change isn’t always good. And I know one thing, they don’t say anything about it when we win.

So you were supposed to retire in 2018, and people still want to know when you’re going to retire. What’s the answer?

They don’t ask so much anymore. I’m just going to coach. I don’t even talk about it. There is no timetable. I am definitely coaching for a while. It’s not like I’m deciding at the end of this year. I feel good. I think it’s a bad myth. I’m not doing construction. I’m not operating on somebody. I’m telling people how to play basketball. I can do that without a lot of exertion. It’s not one of those jobs where, hey he’s getting old, he may not be able to do it. I’m healthy. I can do this job until I’m 80. The only reason people don’t is because of this myth about retirement, and people are exploding that myth. Warren Buffett, he’s still pretty good and what’s he? Ninety? (He’s 89.) There’s no reason to retire.

The reason Mike (Krzyzewski) and Roy (Williams) are still coaching is because I’m doing it. They’re like, Well if he can, why can’t we? When I first got with Mike for USA Basketball, he was thinking about retiring. That was 13 years ago. Why retire?

Are you afraid to retire?

No, not at all. I could do a lot of things. I could go watch my kids play for the next two, three years. I could fish. I do a lot of things even now in the offseason, so I get a lot of the things people retire for. I get two, three months where you’re not doing a lot.

Everyone says it’s because Buddy’s here. It has nothing to do with him. I’m coaching because I like to coach. We came through like an eight-year period, a long period of time, where we didn’t have all of our scholarships (due to NCAA sanctions), we didn’t have this. I was retiring. We lost guys I know we would have gotten otherwise. And we came through all of that. We survived it. We didn’t do great in the league, but good enough to make the tournament, and we went to two Final Fours and two Sweet 16s.

Now we’re at a point where we’re getting more players, and we have more depth than we had. This program, it’s in as good a shape as it’s been in in a long time.

When we win, no one says things like I should retire, or I won’t change. The only people who say that are people who are negative, and there’s always going to be a group that’s out there when you lose. It’s just the way it is. It was the same way when I was 50. I can’t win. I can’t beat this team. There’s always somebody who will say a coach should go.

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But what’s your motivation? Isn’t it like Groundhog Day?

No, because Groundhog Day, you wake up and do the same thing every day. Here, it’s completely different. Completely different team, completely different players, completely different pieces. I feel like this is my first year. I always do. I don’t think about last year, or any other year for that matter. To me, it’s always been like this is my first time with this team so it’s my first year. I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 35, 45, 55 or 65. Not one bit different, except maybe I appreciate it a little more.

Why’s that?

Well, I know I’m not going to be around forever. Rick Pitino, when he was my assistant, he said I’d coach forever. He was right.

Last season was especially difficult with the accident. (Boeheim struck and killed a man with his car in February, hours after the Orange hosted Louisville. Jorge Jimenez was standing near a guardrail after his car was involved in an accident. Boeheim was not charged.) How does that affect you?

I’ve had 500 emails, people who’ve been through the same thing. It’s one of those things; it happened. It’s just, there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a tragic thing, and I feel … (Boeheim pauses for five beats, then sighs.) It will always stay with me. Most people have dinner, and they have two drinks. If I have two drinks, it’s not a DWI, but I still would have had two drinks. That changes everything.

I used to drink a little bit. The football coach many years ago, Frank Maloney, he hit a mailbox on the way home. Nobody knew right away, but it came out a few days later. I thought, that can happen to me. So I said, that’s it. That was a long time ago — 20 years.

Do you get nervous when you drive now? On a rainy day, or just whenever you sit behind the wheel?

No, but it’s on your mind. I drive on that road all the time. I go that way once a day, and it’s there. It comes up. You think about it. It will always be there.

So after that, after cancer (prostate cancer in 2001) and the NCAA investigation (which cost him 101 games in the NCAA record books), why bother to come back?

Well, I mean everybody’s wired differently. All I’ve ever done is play basketball and coach basketball. It’s what I do. And we’re famous for talking to our players about: This is going to be tough. This is going to be hard. You have to get through this. You have to keep going. That’s what we talk about. That’s what we teach. Well, we have to be able to do that. These things, bad things, they happen to everybody. You gotta figure out how to get through it and come out on the other side and be better.

The game is fun, and the challenges of the game are fun. I love the the game. I may not be winning as much as I once did, but I’m better than I was.

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That’s funny. You’d think if you were a better coach, you’d be winning more.

Sometimes you get better players. Sometimes the league is better. Sometimes you’ll get a lot out of a team, and sometimes you can only get so much. One year you can go to the Final Four, and the next year you don’t make the tournament. It’s just how it goes. I’ve coached a lot of games. It happens.

Do you ever think about how long you’ve been here? You couldn’t have imagined it, right?

I didn’t think for sure I could even play here. During my freshman year, it was a struggle. But I got better, and then I didn’t think I could make it in the NBA. I played on the weekends in the Eastern League while I was helping here as a grad assistant. I think after my second year, Paul Seymour my Eastern League coach, was coaching the Detroit Pistons. He told me he had a spot for me. I would have been the fourth guard behind Jimmy Walker, Dave Bing and Howie Komives. I said, “Well I ain’t playing,” so I think I’ll stay here.

What was your salary?

Well, my first five years, I was a grad assistant and I got $2,000 for coaching the golf team, and my credits. I got no money from basketball for five years. Then I got the assistant’s job, and I made $8,000.

Were you a good golf coach?

We won a lot. I had pretty good players. I would send them out on the front nine, and I’d go out on the back nine. When I finished 18, they finished and I’d ask, “How’d you do?” Everybody thought we were undefeated because I only called the scores in when we won.

It was fun. We didn’t have any scholarships or anything like that. Our budget, it was maybe $10,000. We traveled to two tournaments. We went to Bethpage. I played the Black course. This was like 1967, 1969. They cut the greens. That was it. It was too hard.

Did you ever think about leaving?

I interviewed once. That’s it. They came in from Ohio State before they hired Gary Williams (in 1986). I didn’t want to talk to them. I didn’t want to go there. I think the interview lasted 10 minutes. I said, “Go get Gary Williams. He’d be good. I’m not going.’’

Why not?

I just never thought someplace else was better. Maybe it was. Maybe I was wrong. But I was comfortable here. It’s a good fit. We have great fans. We have great facilities, a great building to play in. Why would I leave?

(Photo of Jim Boeheim: Jeremy Brevard/USA Today Sports)

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