ORLANDO, Fla. — Spending the weekend at the Amway Center, Florida coach Billy Donovan has been reminded often how he almost worked in the building as the coach of the Magic.
After winning his second straight national championship in 2007, Donovan accepted the position, only to instantly change his mind and be released from his five-year contract less than a week later.
Now, Donovan said he would consider giving a first stint in the NBA a second chance.
“The NBA part of it, the intrigue part of it for me is just the fact that it’s basketball 24 hours a day,” Donovan said on Friday, with his No. 1 Gators preparing to play No. 9 Pittsburgh in the third round of the South Regional of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday. “I got into coaching because of the basketball piece of it, and there is an intrigue as it relates to that. … That’s all you’re dealing with is basketball. That’s all you do is basketball.”
Donovan, 48, has been in Gainesville since 1996 and said he is extremely happy at the school, but he didn’t know if that meant he would never leave.
“When you say a lifer, that means to me I’m never, ever going to go anywhere and be there. Who knows?” Donovan said. “They may get sick of me at Florida and want me to move on. But I don’t like coming out making bold predictions or statements.
“One of the things that I think I’ve learned, when you try to project where your future is, where you’re going to be, and you don’t know because I don’t have a crystal ball.”
When Donovan first considered taking the Magic job, two-time NBA coach Rick Pitino, who coached Donovan in college at Providence and with the Knicks, said he was the only one in the Gators coach’s inner circle against him leaving Florida. Pitino said he had no insight to whether Donovan would ever actually leave, but if his protege did go to the pros, Pitino said he believes he would have the same success he always has had.
“If he wants to try it someday, that would be great,” Pitino said. “Just like Brad Stevens. Brad Stevens will be a great Celtic coach. Billy, if he wanted to do that, will be a terrific pro coach because he’s always thinking of plays, defenses, and he’d be great at it.”
But not in New York, though the Long Island native — Donovan — still considers himself a Knicks fan.
“He would never coach the Knicks. I know him,” Pitino, the former Knicks coach, said with a smile. “He grew up in New York, but he’s not a New Yorker.”