NCAA BASKETBALLL TOURNAMENT : RICK PITINO : Even If Providence Falls in Final Four, He Has Already Suffered 2 Worse Losses

NEW ORLEANS —  On the day Arturo Brown died, Rick Pitino told himself, “This is it, the saddest day of my life. As bad as it gets.

“To have such a fine young man collapse right there in the gymnasium, playing basketball. To see someone die of a heart disease before he even got to be a college senior. To endure the death of a student whom you loved and trusted so much, he even used to baby-sit your children.”

Arturo Brown was going to be Boston University’s best player during the 1982-83 season, Pitino’s last year there as coach. But after he crumpled to the floor in a preseason practice and died shortly thereafter at a nearby hospital, Pitino, who was only 30 years old, called his young players together and told them Arturo must have been too good for this world, must have been destined to be brought up in a better place.

Pitino doubted that anything could ever again hurt him so much.

Then one of his children died.

Daniel Pitino was born last Sept. 4, three months premature. The fourth son for Rick and Joanne, he was in trouble from the minute he was born. Kidney trouble. A hearing loss. Difficulty gaining weight. He spent five of his first six months in various hospitals.

Rick Pitino was positive that his baby would get better. It bothered him that he was so busy coaching the basketball team at Providence College that he couldn’t get from Rhode Island to Boston immediately after work to look in on Daniel. “I wish I worked 9 to 5, like everyone else, so I could see my boy,” he said.

This was just before a Big East Conference rematch with Syracuse, which defeated Providence the last time they had met. Syracuse was coached by Jim Boeheim, one of Pitino’s best friends. Pitino was once an assistant coach at Syracuse. He and Joanne often vacationed together with Jim and Elaine Boeheim. They shared a lot of advice about parenthood.

Before the game, Pitino was optimistic. Not about the game--about Daniel. He was due for a kidney operation any day. Pitino told friends the baby would be fine after surgery.

Providence played Syracuse, and then three more games after that. The Big East postseason tournament at Madison Square Garden would be next.

Joanne called Rick from the hospital in Boston. The doctors said it was OK for Daniel to go home.

The Pitinos relaxed for the first time in weeks. They hired a nanny to stay with their sons while they went to New York for the tournament.

Georgetown defeated Providence by 18 points in the tournament semifinals March 8. It was a sad time for Pitino and the team. A boring three-hour bus ride back to Rhode Island awaited them. Joanne got on the bus with the team.

At the Connecticut border, the bus was stopped by a state trooper. Pitino and his wife were asked to step off. As the players looked out the windows, their coach and his wife got into the squad car and took off.

In the middle of the afternoon, Daniel Pitino had suffered cardiac arrest. He was rushed to a hospital in Warwick, R.I., and was given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage.

At 2:45 p.m., he died.

That very afternoon, officials of the NCAA announced the invitations and pairings for the national tournament. Providence was assigned to a regional at Birmingham, Ala., where its first opponent would be the host team, Alabama Birmingham.

The day before the game, Rick Pitino was at St. Pius church, near the university, for a memorial Mass for his youngest son. Boeheim, the Syracuse coach, was there with him. So were the Seton Hall coach, and the Boston College coach, and many other good friends from the business.

At the regional site, an assistant coach took charge of the team and represented Pitino at all the press conferences. When the Friars went out and shocked Alabama Birmingham on its own floor by 22 points, the postgame celebration was very low-key, and Pitino went straight to the hotel.

The next game went into overtime, but Providence won that one, too, over Austin Peay, 90-87. Once again, Pitino skipped the press conference. He felt like working but not like talking.

The work continued. Providence eliminated Alabama in a game that was supposed to be a toss-up from the opening jump ball, 103-82.

The players seemed driven. And the coach, Pitino, began to realize something. That the games were a welcome distraction. That they kept him occupied, kept him too busy to sit back and think. It was late at night by the time he would get home, and the later the better.

The later you come home, he said, you “end up crying less hours.”

One more game, one more victory, would put Providence into the NCAA’s prestigious Final Four for the first time since 1974. This was only Pitino’s second year as head coach.

When he was hired away from his job as assistant coach of professional basketball’s New York Knicks, Pitino had promised only two things: That Providence would be invited to the NCAA tournament within four years, and that the Friars would be “the hardest-working team in America.”

He ripped the players, rode them, ran them like crazy. He called practices at dawn or immediately after games. He made them run with bricks in their hands and buckets around their necks. He had them practice three times on Thanksgiving Day. He also counseled them on personal matters, demanded good table manners and social etiquette and, above all else, attendance at class.

He hoped to be a father image.

“I’d be hurt if my players didn’t love me,” he said.

Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. One of them said the best thing about playing games for Providence was that it was a day off from one of Pitino’s practices.

And yet, they knew he was on their side, ready to be their general in battle. If nothing else, the night they saw the 5-11 Pitino in a screaming match with Georgetown’s 6-11 John Thompson convinced them of that.

A Providence player fouled a Georgetown player on an open breakaway a little too violently to suit Thompson. The Georgetown coach barked at the officials and then at Pitino. They strode toward one another, like gunslingers. They yelled, as the crowd went nuts. More than one person thought punches might be exchanged.

Afterward, Thompson, a Providence graduate, curled an arm around Pitino’s shoulders and walked him off the floor. They were friends again.

Last Saturday, though, they were at coaching odds again in the game to determine which of them would reach the Final Four. Georgetown was a considerable favorite. But Providence won the game, 88-73. Their average margin of victory in four Southeast Regional tournament tests had been slightly more than 15 points a game.

The players had done for Rick Pitino precisely what he had asked them to do, just after the baby’s death. Not win. He had no right to expect that. No. “Play hard,” Pitino had told them. “Look, there’s nothing you can do for me or my wife. We have to handle our grief privately. The best thing you can do for us is to go out and play as hard as you can.”

What they could really do for him and his wife, senior Dave Kipfer understood, was keep winning and “keep them from thinking about it.”

Now, Rick Pitino has come to the Final Four. He has a hot team and he is a hot property. Reportedly, the Knicks are interested in hiring him as head coach. If the Knicks don’t want him, supposedly the Phoenix Suns do.

Pitino said Thursday that he hasn’t yet heard from the Suns, other than to receive condolences on his son’s death and congratulations on his team’s success from General Manager Jerry Colangelo.

“I have too much else to do right now to think about anything else,” Pitino said.

The NBA has always held some interest to him. As a point guard at the University of Massachusetts, he believed he had the talent to become a good pro, but ended up spending most of his time passing to a very gifted teammate, name of Julius Erving.

Pitino often spent summer afternoons pleading with his cheerleader girlfriend, Joanne, the girl he would marry, to retrieve the ball for him at the gym while he shot baskets. He promised if she did that, he would take her to the beach. Then he would shoot and shoot for hours. They never got to the beach.

The Knicks were Pitino’s favorite team. After a Queens and Long Island upbringing, he fantasized about playing for them. Later, as Hubie Brown’s assistant, he waxed romantically to the players about the golden era of Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley and such. They looked at him blankly. They were either too young to remember or had grown up in some other city with some other favorite team.

Same thing happened at Providence when he took over as coach. Pitino tried to impress upon his players the school’s glorious history, mentioning Ernie DiGregorio, Marvin (Bad News) Barnes, Lenny Wilkens, Thompson and other Friar heroes of yore. All he usually got back were yawns.

Pitino hoped to get close to his players, just as he had in 1978-83 at Boston University. He reminded himself how difficult that had been. The players he had inherited seemed like a bunch of thugs at first. They were loose and undisciplined. He demanded better behavior from them, even better posture.

One player, Desmond Martin, recalled: “I thought I was in boot camp.”

Pitino got so angry at the players after one game that he called an instant practice, before they could even leave the floor. Spectators reaching for their coats looked on in amazement.

Eventually, he came to like and even love those players. Particularly Arturo Brown. They used to talk for hours, talk about Brown’s chances of being a pro, of making big money, of making a name for himself in the national tournament if he could get the other Providence players to play as hard as Arturo.

The night Arturo died, Pitino wound up sitting in a bar with some of those players, drowning sorrows. For a night, at least, they were no longer teacher and students. They were father and sons. They were family.

He thought he would never hurt like that again.

He was wrong.