NBA

Former Nets coach taking Alabama to new heights

PITTSBURGH — It sounds impossible because it seems impossible: Alabama basketball once was better than Alabama football.

In the early years of the 21st Century, while Mike Shula was struggling to put together winning seasons with one of the most storied programs in the nation, Mark Gottfried was treating the largely indifferent Tuscaloosa campus to five straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including an unlikely run to the Elite Eight as a No. 8 seed in 2004.

But current Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban knew what was possible when he left the NFL and entered a world in which the crowd determines the value of life on every down.

When Avery Johnson arrived as men’s basketball coach in 2015 — leaving his job as an ESPN analyst and returning to the sideline for the
first time since being fired by the Nets more than two years earlier — and took over a team that had made the NCAA Tournament just once in nine years, the first-time college coach understood the inherent rebuilding issues attached to a long-suffering basketball team at a football school.

“Even though it’s challenging, it’s a good challenge, and it’s one that I wanted to embark on,” Johnson said Friday. “We talked about Year 3. Sometimes people are sick of me talking about it, but we always talked about Year 3 being in this position.”

After many seasons falling even further into the shadows at its own school, No. 9 Alabama (20-15) has emerged on the country’s biggest stage after winning an NCAA Tournament game for the first time in 12 years Thursday against No. 8 Virginia Tech.

The Crimson Tide will try to extend their first appearance in six years as double-digit underdogs against No. 1 Villanova (31-4) in Saturday’s second round at PPG Paints Arena.

“I’m enjoying this tournament,” Johnson said. “It’s a little bit different. It’s win or go home. It’s like the seventh game of a seven-game series.”

The transition from the NBA — where Johnson was once cut on Christmas Eve and fired on his wife’s birthday — has been “easy,” he said, and as fulfilling as he hoped.

“I think the college coaching is different because you’re responsible for a longer period of time for your student-athletes,” Johnson, a former Nets coach, said. “We wear a lot of different hats. Practices are longer. They lean on us to be father figures and teachers and mentors. We’re responsible for them 24 hours a day.

“Hopefully I’ve been a positive role model to set an example for them, whatever they do in the future of their lives. So, I like that part of it.”

The Crimson Tide’s rebuilding sprinted towards reality on Nov. 10, 2016.

That day, prized recruit Collin Sexton chose Alabama over Kansas, while fellow five-star guard John Petty picked Alabama over Kentucky.

Battling with the most powerful programs in the country, Johnson beat out national championship coaches John Calipari and Bill Self to land the players necessary to make the leap.

“Honestly, he just told me that he believed in me,” Sexton said. “That was big, because nobody else really like knew what I could do. He was one of the first few coaches that came and started recruiting me pretty hard, so I feel like from Day 1, he knew what I could do, and we just built that trust.”

Johnson trusted Sexton when the coach put the season in his freshman’s hands and told him to race up the floor, watching his star guard deliver a buzzer-beater against Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament.

If the shot had missed, Alabama probably would have been in the NIT right now.

But one player can change a program. One coach, too.

Suddenly, everything seems possible.

“I don’t think anybody’s, at this point, thinking that we’re going to win this game,” Johnson said of the Villanova matchup. “But we just got to play ball. Weird things happen in the NCAA Tournament. We’ve already seen it.”