Lute Olson is viewed as one of college basketball’s greatest coaches, and in Tucson, where he built his legacy, there was no bigger celebrity. His former players, though, view him as the patriarch of a family bigger than basketball.
TUCSON, Ariz. — Lute Olson is viewed as one of college basketball’s greatest coaches, and in Tucson, where he built his legacy at the University of Arizona, there was no bigger celebrity. His former players, though, view him as the patriarch of a family bigger than basketball.
Olson’s attentiveness and tough-love shepherding of his players from adolescence to adulthood were evident long before he arrived in Tucson. At the University of Iowa, where he spent nine seasons before being hired by Arizona, he lifted the program from mediocrity to prominence. “He felt like he was in a fishbowl while he was coaching there,” Brase said. “After my mother lived in Minnesota and my dad lived in North Dakota, they knew the cold too well.”
Olson earned his players’ respect by holding them accountable not just on the court, but off it, too. Olson nurtured his players, yet he was also a strict disciplinarian. To outsiders, Olson had a Hollywood-esque aura, but his players saw him as a no-nonsense father more than anything else. Fraser’s close relationship with Kerr led him to work as Steve Nash’s personal shooting coach from 2010-13. After that, he became an assistant on Kerr’s Golden State staff, where his duties include working with the offensive star Steph Curry on his shooting.
Pastner’s playing career ended after college, but he wasn’t done with basketball. Like many of his former teammates, Pastner pursued a career that grew Olson’s family tree in coaching. He landed head positions at the University of Memphis in 2009 and at Georgia Tech in 2016. Like Olson, Pastner took two programs to the NCAA tournament.“I’ve got to be myself, I’ve got to run my own program. But every decision I make, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking what would Coach Olson do,” Pastner said.
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