The Bob McKillop Way – Being Happy With Yourself
Before the days of NBA 2k, there used to be a college basketball video game produced by the 2k guys. The one that I had the most experience with was NBA2K6, which had a coaching dynasty mode. That mode put in charge of a small school with hardly any basketball reputation and you worked your way up to becoming the coach at one of the cornerstone schools of college basketball.
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Usually I started at Nicholls State, but one of the first jobs to come open was always the Davidson job. The game tended to promote the long serving high quality coaches into bigger jobs. I took the Davidson job, but looked to see where the avatar of Bob McKillop had ended up. He was at Seton Hall, which has been good in basketball before but was stuck on the bottom of the Big East looking up.
After a few simulated seasons, I noticed that McKillop’s avatar had lost the Seton Hall job and he was somewhere else before he retired. It is precisely for this kind of reason that McKillop has never left Davidson in real life. An ESPN article by Dana O’Neal makes precisely this point and a point about putting life ahead of basketball.
On way of putting it was a quote used by McKillop himself in giving advice to another coach: “”What do you want to be? A mercenary?…It’s about fit. In order to do this job well, you have to sink both feet solidly in the door. You can’t try the job. You have to commit to it. If you look at this job as some sort of corporate climb up the ladder, it’s a mistake.” This quote is useful not just to college basketball but to anything people decide to do with their life.
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The article made a point that McKillop isn’t at Davidson because nobody wants him. He’s at Davidson because he wants to be there. McKillop is a New York guy and there was some attraction to going back there. Seton Hall did call, not in my 2k6 Dynasty, but in real life. They offered the job to someone else, and McKillop got Steph Curry for three years.
The McKillop story is about being happy where you are, and Bob McKillop has it in spades. It’s about living across the street from your job, enjoying the people you are with, and recognizing where home really is.
For his efforts, McKillop did get to move up a league. That is something that probably would not have happened to Davidson if he was not there.
If McKillop had taken the Seton Hall job and washed out, how much would he have missed?