Bill Self’s return to KU basketball is a reminder of his motivation
Bill Self is staying.
We’re going to skip over the obvious rationale for why that’s the best outcome Kansas could have hoped for this offseason. His 23-year tenure includes two national championships, two other Final Four runs and 17 regular-season Big 12 Conference titles. That these last few years have been appropriately characterized as disappointing is a compliment to the 20 that preceded it.
OK, so mostly skip over the rationale.
Self’s return — made official with a short statement Wednesday evening — answers the most pressing question the program has faced since he arrived a quarter-century ago, looked at the quote-unquote official coach’s chair and quipped that it “already feels very hot.”
But it doesn’t answer all of the immediate questions.
Who else is staying?
Who might be coming in?
How much will Kansas spend in NIL funds to load up the roster around him?
Pretty much: What can make Kansas in the full-fledged transfer portal era look like Kansas before the full-fledged transfer portal era?
For the past 10 days, Self has been contemplating the decision he publicized Wednesday, an examination mostly centered on his own health. But in the hours after he made it, that last question — how can Kansas return to playing in weekends like the one that awaits in Indianapolis — almost certainly will be at the heart of his immediate work.
In that sense, KU will get a competitive, motivated Bill Self after failing to reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament four straight years (though he missed the first of that streak with the initial health scare he made public). That will be part of the narrative of his return.
But they’ve always gotten an ultra-competitive, ultra-motivated version of Bill Self. He treats every possession as though it’s the most important he’s ever coached, whether it’s diagramming “Chop” or leading the literal first game on the Jayhawks’ schedule.
He doesn’t need to return. He wants to return.
That is a different type of motivation. This era of college basketball — the NIL and portal combination — has either robbed Self of his greatest strength or at least sneaked a few pennies from the community tray. He is masterful at developing players from year to year, and that’s not just about five-star talent — in fact, it’s almost exclusively about the opposite.
Kansas has not been a program built on turning over its roster every season but rather generating improvement from those already on it — and then trying to find ways to fill in the gaps when necessary. Yet as Self returns, he jumps back into the middle of turning over his roster, with the portal set to open next week — and perhaps his own track record suggests that before he puts both feet into the portal, he recruits his own.
Flory Bidunga, a player who seemed occasionally lost defensively as a freshman, became the Big 12 Conference defensive player of the year and a finalist for the national award as a sophomore. The difference between his first season in Lawrence and his second is drastic. What could he be with another year? What might Bryson Tiller turn into with an offseason and a second full year in the system? What about Kohl Rosario?
All of those possibilities return to the aforementioned question — how much Kansas is able to invest in its roster. Because there’s already a talented freshman class on the way, and the very real possibility No. 1 overall recruit Tyran Stokes will be part of that class.
Can they afford both what’s on the way and what’s still here? Will they shove more chips into the pot knowing it could be Self’s last year?
There’s so much left unanswered, even after Wednesday brought the answer. Those questions are not KU-specific. That’s how it works across the country now.
As so many of his peers have run from that reality, Self is embracing the challenge, with precisely nothing left to prove. It speaks to his personality, to his investment, to his desire.
But it also speaks to why he’s been so darn good at the job for so long. He sidestepped the opportunity to rest on his own achievements and shrug his shoulders at the era that forces him to go about it a little differently. He could’ve left it to the next guy.
He’s instead evidently determined at how he can go about it a little differently — because that will be a requirement for his 24th season.
It was 2003 that he arrived, and it’s easy to forget the uneasiness, even the uncertainty, of the transition — but only because somehow what followed Roy Williams’ tenure became even more illustrious. He’s never forgotten those years, sharing stories before he was in Lawrence or bringing past players along for the ride — one of them is now on his staff.
But he’s never rested on those past accomplishments, either.
Same as his own, apparently.