Fisher receives Wooden coaching award

Dean Smith. Mike Krzyzewski. Lute Olson. Roy Williams. Denny Crum. Pat Summitt. Geno Auriemma. Tom Izzo. Jim Boeheim. Jim Calhoun. Billy Donovan. Bill Self.

And now, Stephen Louis Fisher.

The San Diego State coach was named the 2014-15 recipient of the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award on Wednesday at the preseason tipoff luncheon in Los Angeles. It is a small, exclusive club of the biggest names in college basketball, and the opening ante is generally a national championship.

An annual honoree has been named since 1999, meaning Fisher becomes just the 17th winner – the 14th from men’s basketball. Perhaps more impressive, he is the first recognized from a Southern California school and the first from one that doesn’t belong to a Power 5 conference.

Much of Fisher’s legacy, of course, was chiseled at Michigan and the Big Ten in the 1990s. But it is his resume entry from San Diego State – from 5-23 to five straight trips to the NCAA Tournament, two 30-win seasons and two Sweet 16s, from an empty arena to sellouts in August – that provided the whipped cream on the cherry pie.

The annual luncheon at the Los Angeles Athletic Club features head coaches from Southern California’s Division I programs, and most spoke glowingly about Fisher during their time at the microphone.

Said UC Santa Barbara coach Bob Williams: “He does conduct himself an awful lot like Coach Wooden when you see the demeanor, how they carry themselves, how generous they are with their time, and the legacy they’re going to leave.

“You start looking at the effect of Coach Wooden’s legacy and Coach (Pete) Newell’s legacy, and it’s everywhere. I think when you look at Steve Fisher, he’s going to have the same effect. He will have generations that will talk about him as a great man and what he did in San Diego.”

Added UCLA and former New Mexico coach Steve Alford: “You do it the right way.”

The award carries personal meaning to Fisher, who met and revered Wooden, once calling him “the greatest coach of any team sport in the history of sports.” Fisher’s first trip to a Final Four was in San Diego in 1975; he was a math teacher and varsity basketball coach at Rich East High in Park Forest, Ill., paying his way to San Diego see the legend at work in the final act of a legendary career at UCLA.

“No finer compliment could be paid to anybody than to have your name associated with John Wooden,” Fisher, 69, said Wednesday. “You look at the previous winners, it’s a who’s who of college basketball. It’s a testament to a lot of things that have happened in a lifetime, and to have it given to me is tremendously humbling.”

Fisher was handed the microphone and asked to discuss his 2014-15 team, as the other coaches there had. He declined, wanting to utilize his time talking about Wooden instead.

Fisher told the story 1993, in the days after Chris Webber infamously called a timeout that Michigan didn’t have in the waning moments of the championship game. Later that week, Fisher and his star forward were in Los Angeles for the player-of-the-year Wooden Award banquet when Wooden asked if he could speak with Webber alone.

“They went into a back room and when they came out, Chris had this smile on his face and said to me: ‘This is the greatest thing that’s happened to me in my career,’” Fisher said. “(Wooden) knew what to say and how to say it in a fashion that all of us could identify with.

“As a role model for anyone, a CEO or a father or a coach or a teacher, we all need to pay a little more attention to how he did things and the respect he had for others and the way he always put others first. All of those things you learn from. And it was not phony, it was genuine.”

Several times at SDSU, Fisher took teams to Wooden-associated events – the Wooden Classic games in Anaheim and the inaugural Wooden Legacy tournament there last season. At one of the pre-event banquets when Wooden was alive, Fisher noticed the name tags at the tables and furtively switched them so he could sit next to him.

“I asked too many questions,” Fisher said, “and he patiently answered with a smile on his face.”

Fisher remembered something else about that night.

“I vividly remember as the dinner was ending, each place had a dessert,” Fisher said. “They were not all the same. He looked at me and said: “Steve, I know you would prefer this pumpkin pie as opposed to the cherry pie that you have.’ He reached across and took the cherry pie that he wanted.”

A decade later, the ghost of John Wooden slid a piece of cherry pie back across the table.