Steve Fisher didn’t want to go.

He had set foot once on the Michigan campus since the school unceremoniously fired him as head coach a few weeks before the 1997-98 basketball season, for the 2006 funeral of former football coach and Athletic Director Bo Schembechler. He walked past Crisler Arena, the basketball team’s home. Couldn’t bring himself to go inside.

The last time he did was in 1997, to see the Wolverines play Duke after his former players begged him to see a game.

Since then, Michigan has spent tens of millions of dollars over three renovations of what has been rechristened Crisler Center, but as recently as 2012 Fisher said: “I don’t have any burning desire to see what they’ve done to it. I don’t have any plans to go back.”


But there he was Sunday afternoon, standing at center court in Crisler to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his 1989 NCAA championship team, hearing his name called, waving to the crowd, feeling a thunderous ovation wash over him.

“I’m glad that I went,” Fisher said Monday. “And I almost didn’t.”

Fisher, 73, has been friends with current Michigan coach John Beilein since the 1990s, long before Beilein went to Ann Arbor. And Beilein, publicly and privately, has been working to bring Fisher back to Crisler. To have him stand at center court and receive the recognition he was due.

Until two years ago, Fisher had a convenient excuse: He was coaching San Diego State and couldn’t get away during the basketball season.


Beilein kept pushing once Fisher retired, and with the 30th anniversary of the 1989 championship approaching he offered four possible dates for a reunion. SDSU played on three of them, and Fisher said he wouldn’t miss an Aztecs home game.

That left Sunday against Michigan State.

Fisher recounted how the conversation went.

Beilein: “We really need you to come back. It would be closure for some things, and be good for you, good for the team, good for the community.”


Fisher: “John, I don’t know, I’ll be honest with you. I know you would like for me to come back. I’m not sure that sentiment is universal.”

Beilein: “We really want you back.”

Beilein had former 1989 players Mark Hughes (who once was an assistant on Fisher’s staff at SDSU) and Rob Pelinka (now the Lakers general manager) lobby him. A student manager from that team called, too.

Fisher told Beilein to give him a week to think about it. Beilein called back a week later. Fisher said he needed another week.


He asked his son Mark for advice. Mark asked his father why he’d want to go back, and he said to see his former players, some of whom he hadn’t seen in decades. Mark’s response: “Then you should go.”

Fisher told his wife, Angie: “If I go, you go.”

So they did. There was a private dinner at a steakhouse, followed by an event at a local club. There was a reception before the game Sunday, a press conference, then the halftime ceremony that included a 4-minute video tribute to the fairy-tale championship — Bill Frieder being fired on the eve of the NCAA Tournament because he had accepted a job at Arizona State, and Fisher, his assistant, leading the Wolverines to Michigan’s only national championship in men’s basketball.

When he saw the list of expected attendees, Fisher noticed four players didn’t plan to come. One was forward Loy Vaught. Fisher got Vaught’s number through a friend and called him. Vaught ended up coming.


Same with another player.

In all, 11 members of the team — Glen Rice, Sean Higgins, Terry Mills, Hughes, Pelinka — were there.

After the halftime ceremony, Fisher gathered them in the locker room and spoke to them, as he had 30 years before. He told them “it’s about what you now have become, more than winning a national championship.” He told them how much they meant to him.

“I really felt good about that,” Fisher said.


Did it provide overdue closure?

Fisher paused to consider the answer.

“I loved my time in Michigan,” he said. “I was there 15, 16 years. I didn’t like the way it ended. I thought I would be there my entire career and they’d name the building after me. But what appeared to be the greatest professional blow and disappointment to me and my career and my family turned out to be the best. I wound up in San Diego for 18 years, and it’s home now.

“What happened at San Diego State is what we thought would happen at Michigan. Not many coaches get to leave the way I did, where I know I’m appreciated, where I know they want me. It probably was good that we went back. The players were all very, very, very pointed in saying not to just me but the media as well that they felt like mission accomplished now that I came back.


“But you’ll always have the feeling and know that you were fired there.”

As Fisher walked onto the floor at Crisler Center on Sunday, he gazed up at the rafters. At one end hangs a lone NCAA championship banner from 1989. At the other end are other banners from other accomplishments.

“There are some missing banners that really should be there,” Fisher said.

He is referring to the 1992 and ’93 Final Four banners from the Fab Five that were removed as part of NCAA sanctions in the Ed Martin booster scandal.


In that sense, there is not closure yet. Beilein has said it is goal to have the university properly acknowledge and cherish those teams again, but that requires more moving parts. The first step was getting Fisher back to Crisler.

“We are doing everything we can,” Beilein said at the Final Four last year. “We have more banners to raise, we have more jerseys to raise over time. Just stay tuned to all that. The university, when you have the NCAA violations, it takes some time to heal. But I’m looking forward to the time when we get everybody in that group together.

“All of that isn’t under our control, if you understand that. But one day — was it the Supremes (who sang it)? — one day we’ll be together.”


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mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutzeigler