Gregg Doyel

gregg.doyel@indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS – This is a Tom Crean story, but like so many Tom Crean stories, it’s not about him. It’s about somebody else.

Meet Gary Parrish. Writes about college basketball for CBSSports.com. As such, Gary was in Bloomington in the fall of 2015 — he was there to write this story about Tom Crean — when his phone rang. It was Gary’s wife, Kelly, calling with the glorious news: They were having another baby, their third.

Gary’s in Bloomington, mind you. He’s spending time with Tom and Joani Crean for a story. So he tells them the good news. Everybody’s happy.

Now it’s February 2016. Back home in Mississippi, Gary and Kelly get the horrible news: Their baby, the one in Kelly’s womb, has died. They will have a stillborn delivery. I’ll let Gary pick it up here.

“When we lost the baby,” Gary was telling me this week, “I reached out to Tom by text: ‘Hey, before you hear about it another way, I want to let you know.’ Well, the phone rings. I mean, right away. It’s Tom.

“He kept checking in. He checked in on us and checked in on Kelly more than almost anybody that isn’t related to us, and in some cases more than some people who are related to us. There’s never been a four-day period since February 2016 that Tom Crean didn’t call. Not to ask me what I think about a job. Not to ask if I think OG (Anunoby) is going to turn pro. Just to ask how Kelly’s doing.

“Here’s the thing: I think a whole lot of people have stories like that.”

Yeah, Gary. I have a story like that.

And I once tried to have Tom Crean fired.

***

There’s a reason you’re reading this story now. Well, two reasons. One, it’s not the kind of story a sportswriter should or even can write about a coach he covers for the newspaper. But Crean isn’t the IU coach anymore, is he?

Two, the "Dan Dakich Show." Dakich interviewed Crean earlier this week and it was amazing. What was scheduled to fill a 15-minute segment of a midday hour instead filled almost the whole hour. Crean was talking and Dakich was listening and listeners were loving — and you don’t end something like this just because the clock says otherwise.

The listeners’ reaction to that interview was telling. Some people had no idea how nice, how likable, Tom Crean is. They see him on the sideline and he’s intense almost in a cartoonish way, pacing and clapping and hitching up his pants as they’re sagging. Imagine having a beer with that guy? No thanks.

But away from the action, Crean is what people heard on that radio interview. Did I know that when I took this job in October 2014? Not really. I’d known Tom casually for 10 years, so I was no expert, but people who knew him better would tell you what I’m telling you now: He has mellowed, softened. His faith has become the core of his being. He’s still intense on the sideline, you can’t turn something like that off, but it’s not who he is when the game ends. Coach Tom Crean now gives way, completely, to Dad Tom Crean and Husband Tom Crean and Friend Tom Crean.

I could tell you about the prayer or the phone conversation with a 94-year-old man, but first you need to know about — or be reminded of, perhaps — the story I wrote in 2014 about Tom Crean, a story that was about Tom Crean:

He needed to be fired. That’s what I wrote on Nov. 3, 2014, barely two weeks onto the job here. In hindsight, that story shouldn’t have been written. Not by me, anyway. Two weeks into the job — two weeks in the state, and I hadn’t even moved here yet from Cincinnati — was not enough time for mine to be a credible voice on a topic this passionate in Indiana. Honestly, I hadn’t earned the right to write that story. Didn’t see it then. Do see it now.

Crean was fine about that story, or as fine as he could be. Kept returning my calls when I asked for a quote. Kept answering my texts when I asked for information. Professional, always professional.

One time, Crean returned my call when I was visiting a friend, a Greenwood retiree who went to IU medical school in the 1940s. Not wanting the basketball coach at IU to go to voicemail, I took the call, asked Crean my question and then told him I needed to go; I was visiting a 94-year-old friend.

“Who is he?” Crean wanted to know.

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A retired anesthesiologist, I said. Cantankerous old coot we call Grumps. An IU alum, as it turns out.

“Put him on,” Crean said.

Almost two years later, Kenneth “Grumps” DeVoe still brings up the time he was sitting in his house — in this chair right here — talking to the basketball coach of Indiana.

Over time, Crean’s professional demeanor with me gave way to something more relaxed. I was skeptical, told friends I suspected Crean was being nice to me just to keep me off his back, but his consistent kindness wore me down. His kindness, plus what I had been learning from other people:

From Gary Parrish, I learned his story. From our IU Insider, Zach Osterman, I learned in August 2015 about Tom Crean’s “quiet, random acts of kindness.”

From a big-time recruit in this state, an IU target who chose another school, I learned about a private gesture Crean had made months earlier — an expense Crean incurred — to do something so amazing, I wish I could tell you what it was. I called the recruit this week to ask for permission, but he has sworn me to secrecy. Just know: It would make you cry. Something had happened to the recruit’s family. Crean, no longer a rejected coach, now just a friend, reached out to the family.

Then something happened to me.

Well, it happened to someone in my family. Might as well have happened to me. Everything is OK now, but for a while there I was scared and even depressed, and when Tom returned one of my interview calls around that time and asked about my family, I fell apart. Then told him why. Then he said:

“Can I pray for you?”

Listen, this isn’t me proselytizing. What any of us do or don’t believe, that isn’t the point. The point isn’t the prayer. The point is the sincerity, the heart, behind that offer. I took an ethics class years ago in journalism school, but the book had no chapter about a source offering to pick you up at one of your lowest moments.

Yes, I told the IU basketball coach. Please do pray for us.

***

I’m telling you that story, and telling you Gary Parrish’s story, and reminding you of Zach Osterman’s story, because Tom Crean is no longer the basketball coach at IU.

Not sure, but it’s possible I contributed to that.

As recently as March 11, some of the best sources possible had told me Crean would be returning next season to coach, but something changed on March 12. That was the night the NIT called to offer the Hoosiers a first-round game at home — and IU turned it down. The Hoosiers chose to go on the road, to play Georgia Tech in Atlanta, thinking that would be a better environment than playing before a half-empty, mostly angry crowd at Assembly Hall.

God help me, I wrote it again: Tom Crean shouldn’t be coaching here any more. Fired, resigned, whatever — if everyone involved concedes the atmosphere is that toxic, why continue the relationship? As serious as Tom takes his job? That's how serious I take mine. Had to write it. Tom would understand, I was sure of it.

A few days later, probably unrelated to my story but I'll never know, he was fired.

A few days after that, he sent me a text message. Had nothing to do with his job or my story. It was about fatherhood. It was uplifting. Two days after being fired, Crean was sending me an inspirational text message.

He doesn’t know I’m writing this. He probably doesn’t like it. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned since November 2014, it’s this: Tom Crean doesn’t hold a grudge.

Also, I learned this: The day after Tom Crean lost his job at Indiana, a cellphone in the South started buzzing. Gary Parrish picked it up and smiled. It was the former basketball coach at Indiana.

How’s Kelly?

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter:@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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