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Jim O'Brien: Booed at UD, cheered in NBA

Former Flyers’ head coach led the Celtics  and 76ers before landing at the Pacers’ helm

Contributed by the Indianapolis Jim O'Brien, coach of the Indiana Pacers. Coach at UD from 1989-94.

By Marc Katz, Staff Writer Updated 9:37 PM Saturday, February 27, 2010

INDIANAPOLIS — You may not know this — Jim O’Brien acted as if he didn’t — but when the University of Dayton won a first-round game in the NCAA tournament last season, it was the first time the Flyers had done that since 1990, when O’Brien was the coach.

O’Brien, now head coach of the Indiana Pacers, says he does not follow UD today.

“Not at all,” he said matter-of-factly during a recent interview at Conseco Fieldhouse.

His reaction to the fact that he was the last guy before Brian Gregory to lead UD to an NCAA victory was just as subdued.

“Really,” he said, making more of a statement that posing a question. “Huh.”

O’Brien turned 58 on Feb. 11 and is working his eighth season as an NBA head coach, with his third team. He has done well with all of them, the current plight of the lowly Pacers notwithstanding.

He recently took a few minutes following a game-day shoot-around to reflect on his past and talk about his current job, addressing each topic sincerely and without emotion as he stood in a tunnel leading from the Pacers’ home court to the locker room and his office. He neither smiled nor frowned.

Only a little more gray at his temples suggested it had been 16 years since he coached the Flyers.

O’Brien sprinkled his comments about most of his stops with thoughts on relationships. He mentioned without going into detail ones he did and didn’t have in Dayton, where athletics director Tom Frericks hired him and five years later Ted Kissell let him go.

“It was tremendously painful,” O’Brien said in an even tone. “Not that they let me go. There were situations that happened that just added to the failure of what happened there. It was very disappointing.”

Highs, lows at UD

From a euphoric first season, in which UD went 22-10 and beat Illinois in the first round of the 1990 tournament before losing to Final Four participant Arkansas by two points in the second round, the Flyers tumbled to 14-15 and 15-15 seasons, then bottomed out at 4-26 and 6-21.

It is the measure of O’Brien’s private but pleasant personality that Kissell, now retired, continues to speak highly of him.

“Jim O’Brien was a great fit at the University of Dayton,” Kissell said. “It (the firing) didn’t have anything to do with anything but the state of the program, and the trajectory of the program. You don’t keep your job when you win 10 games and lose 47 in a two-year period.”

Kissell said he was under pressure to fire O’Brien after the 4-26 season, then had no choice after the Flyers failed miserably again. Even then, Kissell was surprised at O’Brien’s reaction to the decision.

“In my recollection, we sat around somewhere between an hour, two hours, just talking,” Kissell said. “He couldn’t have been more professional. He told me, ‘You’re making a mistake.’ It wasn’t in any way disagreeable, or brief.”

Kissell said he’s only talked to O’Brien one time since that meeting, when he called his former coach to notify him of the tragic death of former Flyer Chris Daniels, one of O’Brien’s recruits.

“He appreciated the call,” Kissell said.

A friend of O’Brien’s, Duane Lapp, who hired several Flyers during summers in his roofing and sheet metal business, said O’Brien called him to get the details about Daniels’ death.

Lapp also believes that following the legendary Don Donoher, then winning big in his first season, may have been too much, too soon for O’Brien.

“Maybe that was a no-win situation,” said Lapp, who now lives and owns businesses in Hilton Head, S.C. “Then he won a game in the NCAA and lost by two to Arkansas, one of the best teams in the country. That set the bar pretty high.”

Bouncing back

Since leaving Dayton, O’Brien has been a winner.

He was an assistant coach on Kentucky’s national championship team in 1996 and its 1997 runner-up.

He helped rebuild the Boston Celtics franchise before walking away in what was a difference of opinion with a new ownership group — a move, he said, that prolonged his coaching career.

“I was a lame duck,” O’Brien said. “They had decimated the team and it was very difficult to win. I would have been fired and I don’t know if I ever would have gotten another job.”

He resurrected the Philadelphia 76ers to a 43-39 record and playoff appearance in 2005, then was fired when the general manager hired a buddy.

He currently is working his third season with the Pacers, where team president and basketball legend Larry Bird is backing him through a rebuilding process.

Some Pacers fans want O’Brien removed — maybe because the flash is not there — yet Bird has said he’ll make roster changes before he’ll fire O’Brien, whose father-in-law, hall-of-fame coach Jack Ramsay, encouraged him toward the pros, even though he began his coaching tenure as an assistant at several colleges.

O’Brien then spent five years as head coach at Wheeling Jesuit and two years as a New York Knicks assistant to Rick Pitino before he was hired by UD.

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