For years, Rick Pitino and Jim Boeheim have been telling the story of the obsessive basketball coach who interrupted Pitino’s wedding night with the offer of a job _ and how Pitino wangled some extra money out of Boeheim before getting back to his honeymoon.
They fit the two parts perfectly, these two coaches who will meet Monday night for the national college championship. The still-brash Pitino will be coaching Kentucky while the still-competitive Boeheim will be coaching Syracuse. But as Boeheim put it, “I coach against players and what they do, not against coaches.”
What with the honeymoon experience, they know each other fairly well, and Pitino said Sunday: “If we happen to lose, God forbid, one small part of me would be happy. If I had to lose to one coach, I would pick Jim Boeheim. He gave me my break 20 years ago.”
The break took place on April 3, 1976, the day Syracuse University committed itself to Jim Boeheim, and Rick Pitino and Joanne Minardi committed themselves to each other, and checked into a Manhattan hotel.
But let Pitino tell it with new variations, which he did Sunday: The phone rang in the newlyweds’ room and “I heard this whiny voice,” Pitino said, recalling how Boeheim introduced himself and said he had an assistant job for Pitino, who was honored.
“But I said, ‘Literally, Jim, I just carried my wife across the threshold, and being Italian, it’s going to take me five or six hours.”‘ Boeheim clearly did not understand what Pitino was talking about. “I probably wouldn’t do it that way now,” Boeheim admitted Sunday. “I was pretty fired up.”
“Jim’s different now,” Pitino conceded.
But back on April 3, 1976, Boeheim insisted he was heading over to the hotel and would meet Pitino in the lobby in a few minutes.
“It wasn’t like I made a special trip,” Boeheim said Sunday. “At least, that’s what I told him.”
They keep refining this story. Pitino used to do a riff about thinking the caller would be his mother-in-law while Boeheim has never before admitted lying about not making a special trip.
In fact, Boeheim had made a detour from Syracuse to Manhattan, en route to recruit Roosevelt Bouie in Chicago, just so he could recruit the honeymooner. Pitino had come well recommended by a mutual friend, and Boeheim would not take no for an answer. The half hour stretched to two and a half hours, with Pitino calling his new wife every half hour to give her an update.
“Jim thought I was stalling for more money, so I went up from $14,000 to $17,500,” Pitino said Sunday.
The worst part was that Boeheim wanted Pitino to begin recruiting Louis Orr in Cincinnati. Immediately. Oh, all right, the next morning. So the Pitino honeymoon was canceled.
Rick used to say: “I thought it was perfectly normal. I mean, you always can take a honeymoon, but you can’t always recruit a player.”
Joanne Pitino has continued to suffer because of her husband’s peregrinations to foreign places like Kentucky. Fortunately, Rick can afford to maintain a house north of New York so his wife can keep her taste buds alive on frequent trips home. Syracuse was only the first phase of the long march.
“Actually,” Pitino said, “he is charming and funny and the life of the party. He is also flat-out one of the premier coaches in the business.”
Pitino better say that. His pal has a 6-1 margin over him, including the national semifinals in 1987, when Pitino coached at Providence, without nearly the manpower or the expectations he has in Kentucky.
The Pitinos have stayed close with Boeheim, who later married and is now divorced. They tell the story of sharing a Caribbean vacation, discussing the place they would most like to live in the world.
“Rick picked some place exotic; Joanne said something like San Francisco,” Boeheim said Sunday. “I picked Syracuse.”
Boeheim is just ornery enough to stay in one place a long time. Rick and Joanne Pitino learned that 20 years ago.
