One important distinction between Mike Rice and your average public figure looking for redemption is that Rice isn’t guilty of some discreet transgression that arguably had little or nothing to do with how he did his job. His transgression was how he did his job. This is going to make it more challenging for Rice to get back into basketball. But he is determined to coach again.

After his son’s game against Brick Township, as Rice and I drove to a pizzeria in a nearby strip mall, I asked him if he had any leads on basketball jobs. He was vague but sounded encouraged. He said that he would have to work his way back up, probably starting as a scout for an N.B.A. team, but that he thought he would eventually get another shot.

Over the past several months, Rice told me repeatedly that he was going to emerge from this experience a better man, a better father and a better coach. It was the sort of thing that anyone in his position would say, and I always glossed over it in our conversations. But it’s actually an interesting issue. It’s not, as it might seem on the surface, simply a matter of whether Mike Rice has “learned from his mistakes.” It’s a more universal, even philosophical question: Can we really change who we are?

I was impressed by Rice’s coaching during his son’s game that evening, in particular how focused he was on every little thing his players were doing. This is exactly what most serious athletes want: a passionate coach who’s doing everything he can to make you a better player. But I also wondered how difficult that intensity must be to corral, especially for someone with Rice’s background and makeup. It’s possible that Rice might be a better man and father if he could learn to harness his intensity and get past the need to always have to prove something. But that might not make him a better coach.

A lot of coaches do start their careers unable to calibrate their intensity. They gradually figure out that it doesn’t much matter if this approach is successful, to say nothing of appropriate. It’s not sustainable. An important part of this proc­ess is becoming self-aware, learning how to truly stand outside yourself. Another is absorbing something we were all told as kids: Winning isn’t everything. Or maybe it would be more precise in the context of Mike Rice to say that if winning is everything, you’re probably going to wind up damaging a lot of people, yourself among them.

“I wish I would have been more thoughtful in how I went about making them forged as a team, making them tougher as a unit,” Rice told me. By now, the restaurant had emptied, and our waitress was resetting the tables around us for the next day, making sure we knew that it was time to leave. Rice paused for a moment, before either saying what he knew he was supposed to say or trying on a new identity. “Or maybe just accepting that sometimes you have to accept that you are who you are. Look, we’re not very good, but we’re going to try every day, and we’re going to do the right things.”