Billy Donovan, Florida’s basketball coach for nearly a generation, returned to Gainesville Saturday night to rapturous and reverent applause from a packed house with full hearts and lumps in their throats.
The sellout crowd didn’t come to see an underachieving by their own admission Florida team play a Vanderbilt squad with 1 SEC win in their last 30 games.
They came to see Donovan, and to see the basketball floor at Exactech Arena at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center christened “Billy Donovan Court,” in honor of the future Hall of Famer who brought 2 national championships, 6 SEC Championships, 4 Final Fours and so much joy to Florida basketball and the city of Gainesville.
The move to rename the court in Donovan’s honor was put into motion by the University of Florida trustees last October and, one could argue with some justice, was long overdue.
As Donovan stood at center court, surrounded by his family and former players, it was hard to not think that just for a bittersweet moment, in his strange and thus far disappointing season, Florida basketball felt whole again.
Acknowledging that is not, or shouldn’t be read, as an indictment of Mike White, who has admirably tried to do the impossible in replacing Donovan at Florida. White has come under fire a bit this season from a frustrated fan base, but in the main, he’s done an admirable job guiding Florida to 4 20-plus win seasons, 3 NCAA Tournament appearances and an Elite 8 and has done so with relentless effort on the recruiting trail and a Donovan-esque level of integrity off the court.
It’s just that Billy Donovan is Florida basketball. Anyone that follows is merely a custodian of the culture Donovan built.
For 19 seasons — a period of time long enough to see a child born and leave home for college — Donovan roamed the O’Connell Center sidelines, cultivating a championship culture and coaching a host of future pros.
That so many of them, from NBA stars like Bradley Beal and Al Horford to program-building blocks like Udonis Haslem and Teddy Dupay to late-era legends like Patric Young and Chris Chiozza, made it back for this special night speaks volumes as to what Donovan meant to his players. That basically every able-bodied person in the building stood speaks to what Donovan meant to the fan base.
So maybe, on this warmer than usual February night in Gainesville, it’s fitting to blame the lumps in fan throats or the redness in fan eyes on the early oak pollen and wipe away memories thick as August night air on the banks Lake Alice. There were so many memories to recall on this perfect night, so many ways to remember how Donovan built what once was a parochial afterthought in college basketball into a national power, memories like Mike Miller’s runner in the lane to beat Butler in Winston-Salem (the second time this writer hugged a Gator he didn’t know) or Brett Nelson’s 3-point barrage against Duke or Al Horford’s back-to-back shimmy-shake in the ATL or Patric Young, prostrate on the Jerry World floor chasing a ball in a Final Four game that was hopeless, because in Donovan’s culture, the Gators might lose from time to time, but they didn’t quit or get outworked.
Kevin Brockway, who now covers Indiana basketball for CNHI, had a front row seat to the greatness of the Donovan era as the talented young beat writer covering the Gators for the Gainesville Sun from 2003-2018. In an interview conducted for the Florida Basketball Hour podcast, Brockway said naming the court after Donovan was an incredible and deserved honor, not just for his impact on the court, but for what he meant to the city of Gainesville and University of Florida community.
“To have a piece of Florida named after him forever is so well-deserved because it wasn’t just basketball where Donovan made his mark. It wasn’t just the 2 national championships, all the SEC Championships. It’s the way he built something sustainable and enduring on the court while becoming such an invested, important member of the community off of it,” Brockway told me.
“He was such a big part of UF, of the city of Gainesville, from St. Francis School to he (and wife Christine’s) investment in the children’s hospital and pediatric cancer unit at Shands to his belief that all of Florida’s programs should be excellent. He was close to so many of Florida’s coaches, from Urban Meyer to his good friend Kevin O’Sullivan, whose teams he would speak to regularly. Donovan truly shared Jeremy Foley’s vision that every Florida program should be committed to excellence and that commitment would benefit all programs.”
At Florida, the administrative commitment to basketball excellence, led by Foley and Donovan, put the Gators ahead of their time in the football-first South.
“When you look at how Donovan and Foley built the program, their administrative and institutional commitment to basketball was something you didn’t see in the South,” Brockway remembered.
“The standalone basketball facility was huge in recruiting and Foley and Donovan got that done before other programs had one. Joakim Noah, Bradley Beal — they both told me that building was a huge reason they went to Florida. They knew (Florida) had the facilities and infrastructure where there would be an opportunity to get better. That was a commitment to kids that not many SEC programs made. Kentucky built one after Florida, that’s how much it mattered. And now you’ve seen Ole Miss, Auburn, others follow suit because they saw what that type of commitment could bring.”
Blake Lovell, the host of the Locked on SEC podcast and in many respects the godfather of SEC basketball coverage, agreed that Donovan’s influence on the league itself and what was possible in the sport in the SEC is an immense part of his legacy.
“The late Mike Slive gave the SEC the push it needed to get serious in investing in basketball,” Lovell told me this week. “But even before that, think about the reaction from the other conference schools after Donovan won back-to-back titles. Some were slower to react than others, but nearly every program was thinking the same thing: How can we do that? That alone was a huge positive.
“(Donovan’s) success forced other SEC schools to think differently about basketball. Not everyone has gotten it right, but it at least interrupted the habit of complacency at certain schools around the league. They were forced to try things and even if they failed, they had tried, rather than ignoring fan bases that cared about the sport. Eventually that paid off. The SEC’s coaching roster from top to bottom has never been better, and there’s no doubt that Donovan played a role in helping the league reach that point.”
Building a great program, building a better community and being a trailblazer in a league that suddenly cares about college basketball. That’s a heady legacy, but Donovan hasn’t stopped there. As veteran Florida writer Chris Harry wrote this week in a masterful piece on Donovan, Donovan has become the most successful coach to transition from college to the NBA in the last quarter century. Donovan’s NBA win percentage stands at 60.5%. The closest “college to NBA” coach? Brad Stevens of the Celtics, at 55.9, in a weaker conference. Donovan’s mentor, Rick Pitino, won 46.6% at the NBA level. Donovan’s close friend and rival, John Calipari? A miserable 39.2%.
Count Brockway among those not surprised.
“I think part of the delay on naming the floor after him was that there was always this idea that if he failed in the NBA, he’d come back and be coaching against Florida on a floor named after him,” Brockway said. “But he’s done so well in the NBA, especially this season with a team that is frankly overachieving, and he’s so comfortable in his skin as a NBA coach now, it finally made sense. And it’s a great thing. But I’m not surprised he’s doing so well in the NBA. (Donovan) was always so humble and his ability to self-evaluate, to adapt, has always been his strength. It’s the reason he turned the corner at Florida and it’s served him well again in the NBA, whether it was losing Durant and adapting to Westbrook or this season with Chris Paul and Danilo Gallinari and a young group.”
It’s sometimes hard to believe it has been five years since Donovan departed Gainesville to scratch his NBA itch, taking the job as head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It didn’t feel like that long Saturday night. It felt like he just walked away yesterday, his immense shadow still looming over everything this program is and hopes to again be.
To his credit, Mike White has consistently acknowledged that, refusing to take a mural-sized image of Donovan down in the basketball facility and constantly pointing out that he and his staff feel the privilege and pressure of carrying on Donovan’s championship legacy on and off the hardwood.
The question is whether, like a young Donovan, White can eventually adapt and correct a few of the things that have held the program back from being truly nationally elite, despite their relative success.
“When I arrived in 2003, Billy had already had so much success early, but they had been really good teams that peaked a little early and had first weekend exits for a couple years,” Brockway remembered. In truth, it was 5 consecutive seasons with first weekend exits.
But then Donovan adjusted.
“Billy always knew defense was important — he emphasized turning teams over and pressuring the ball as a young coach in ways that Mike White could do more of. They always had those guards who were pests defensively — Brett Nelson, Scottie Wilbekin, Kasey Hill, Chris Chiozza — but Donovan turned the corner when they emphasized defense,” Brockway said. “He adapted, brought in Larry Shyatt and the rest is kind of history. That ability to adapt, to recognize a flaw and correct it, takes humility and is part of what made Billy so special. He was always learning.”
Saturday night, Donovan was rightly rewarded for that perseverance with an unforgettable ovation and his name on the floor.
It felt perfect. Even if it was a little hard to once again watch him walk away.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
