Baker might be Self’s biggest fan.
“Bill Self is an awesome human being, just a real good dude,” Baker began telling me five years ago.
Baker would repeat his praise of Self almost every time I’d write a column reminiscing about Roy Williams. Baker, now an assistant at Colorado, thought I was missing the boat on Self because I wouldn’t let go of Williams.
“I’m telling you, man, Bill Self is a real good dude,” he would say.
After the Kansas Jayhawks won the national championship, Baker called me with one more assurance: “Bill Self won’t change. He’ll be the same good dude today as he was yesterday.”
And then Baker shared a story. He told me that when he was a junior-college coach, he called Self when he was the head coach at Oral Roberts. Self had met Baker when Self was an assistant at Oklahoma State.
“When I called, Bill remembered me and invited me over to watch practice,” explained Baker, an assistant on Jim Wooldridge’s staff at Kansas State. “Years later when we got let go at K-State, Bill Self was one of the people who called and checked on me and just said, ‘Bake, you all right?’ ”
OK, we’ve established that Bill Self is an awesome human being, and that fact is not likely to change. Oh, he’ll be busier now, a bigger star, more in demand, but whatever you’ve grown to love about Bill Self won’t change because he’s now in super-elite company.
In a strange, ironic twist, in trading Williams for Self, Kansas basketball fans might have gained the most beloved college coach since Dean Smith.
Disliking Bill Self is really hard to do. I tried it for a few days when we butted heads over J.R. Giddens and the Moon Bar fight a few years ago. It didn’t last very long. By the time the summer was ending, I was writing columns begging then-prep-school-star Brandon Rush to come home, enroll at Kansas and play for Self.
You can’t hold a grudge against Self. He smiles too much, laughs too easily and his memory is too short. His ego doesn’t control him. More than anything, he’s controlled by his desire to have a good time.
And winning basketball games is about the most fun Bill Self can imagine having, at least between November and the first week of April.
That’s why I never considered him leaving Lawrence for Oklahoma State as a real strong possibility. Self is going to chase the next national championship as hard as the first one. Remember, he’s not going to change.
Success can spoil a man or woman, kill your drive. Some people believe you learn the most about a person when you see how they handle failure. You learn just as much watching them deal with success.
Some people view victory as an excuse to exhale. Others see it as a challenge to breathe deeper and climb higher.
In the moments after Self and athletics director Lew Perkins agreed that Kansas could afford to retain Self, my suspicion is Self immediately fantasized about the scenario that could make Kansas back-to-back NCAA champions.
All he needs to do is convince Rush, Darrell Arthur and Mario Chalmers that they could be the next Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer, the Florida trio that returned for a third season and opportunity to defend their title.
Chalmers should be an easy sell. He’s probably a second-round NBA draft pick. After hitting the miracle three-pointer that forced overtime in the title game, he’s the heir to Danny Manning’s throne and he might as well cement his Lawrence legacy with a senior season. Plus, his father is on the KU coaching staff.
Rush and Arthur are a bit more tricky. If Self could get one of them to commit and join Chalmers, then Chalmers and the second returnee would have an outside shot at convincing the holdout.
Self should recruit Arthur, a sophomore, first. He reminds me of Horford, who benefited greatly from a third year in school. A lot of NBA experts believe Horford will eventually be a better pro than one-and-done Kevin Durant, and Horford just might steal the rookie of the year award from Durant.
If Rush comes back for his senior year, he could enter the NBA draft completely healthy. His knee still is not 100 percent. Rush could also establish himself as a Kansas all-time great worthy of jersey retirement. He may not understand the value of that now, but he will when he reaches 35.
If the Big Three return, we know Self wouldn’t change; we’d have good reason to believe the results wouldn’t change, either; and the kids just might all improve their draft stock.
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