Zak Keefer

Indianapolis Star

Stevens won a Division I-record 166 games in his first six years at Butler

He was at Butler for 13 years

He received seven-year deal from Celtics

Brandon Gaudin sat in the front seat of his car, which sat in the parking lot of a Michaels arts and crafts store, which sat in the sweltering heat of the Ft. Worth, Texas, summer. His air conditioning hummed while his emotions raced.

An email had just flashed across his phone. "STEVENS HIRED BY CELTICS" read the subject line.

In town visiting family, Gaudin, the radio voice of Butler basketball, had stopped by Michaels to pick up a Father's Day gift. Now, that would have to wait.

This had to be a joke...

Surely, he would've heard about the head coach leaving before a press release popped up on his phone. Wouldn't he?

Frantic, he fired off a text message to Josh Rattray, the Butler sports information assistant who'd sent the email out moments earlier.

"Haha," Gaudin wrote. "That's funny."

***

Six hundred miles north of the Michaels parking lot, Roosevelt Jones lay flat on his back in a tattoo parlor in St. Louis. He was getting some new ink: A pair of wings covering his chest.

A text message rolled in. "Call me ASAP," it read. It was from Brad Stevens.

But Jones, at that point Butler's top returning player for the coming season, couldn't call anyone - not until the tattoo was finished. While the needle stung his skin, his mind scattered in anticipation.

What could this be about?

A half hour later, he called his coach. Stevens spoke slowly, his carefully chosen words laced with torment.

"I'm not going to be your coach next season," he began.

Jones stopped him.

"Could you say that again?"

***

As Championship Day wound down at the Brad Stevens Butler Basketball camp that afternoon, Alex Barlow checked his phone. He had a text from assistant coach Michael Lewis.

"Team meeting at 5:30," it read. "Be there and be on time."

Nothing serious, Barlow assumed. Most of the players and coaches were headed out of town that night, eager to spend the Fourth of July weekend with family. The meeting, he presumed, was probably called to discuss the schedule for the week they returned.

Barlow, a junior point guard for the Bulldogs, was off to his hometown of Cincinnati. He had Reds tickets.

But hours later, as he sat in the locker room inside Hinkle Fieldhouse and watched Stevens stroll in with watery eyes and a quickened cadence, he realized this wasn't about the schedule. This was serious.

Something's wrong...

A choked-up Stevens addressed his players.

"I never thought I'd have to say this..." he began.

***

While Stevens fought back tears in the locker room, Ken LaRose, a Butler associate athletic director, chatted with his wife in the kitchen of their Carmel home. That's when their son, Kenny, called.

"Tell me it's not true!" he pleaded. "Tell me Brad's not going to the Celtics!"

LaRose, a top athletic administrator closely involved in day-to-day operations, was baffled.This can't be right...

"What are you talking about? There is no way..."

LaRose had worked a full day at Hinkle Fieldhouse before heading home. He'd seen Stevens there earlier, running the final day of camp, shuffling through the halls like usual. LaRose had even chatted with Stevens' wife, Tracy, about their family's summer vacation plans.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

So he hung up his phone and told his wife to turn on the television. And that's when they saw it.

There it was, the story of the sports summer erupting before their eyes, at once stunning the college basketball world and shaking Butler University to its collective core. A day they'd long feared had arrived.

Brad Stevens was gone. Just like that.

Brandon Gaudin, sitting in a parking lot in Ft. Worth, Texas, hadn't seen this coming. Roosevelt Jones, getting his chest tattooed in St. Louis, hadn't either. Neither had Alex Barlow. Or Ken LaRose.

Then again, who had?

PART I: THE BREAKFAST MEETING

It was 8 a.m. when Brandon Miller and Michael Lewis exited the Hinkle Fieldhouse parking lot that morning, off to grab a cup of coffee, when their phones rang. It was their boss, Brad Stevens, letting them know he was about to sit down with members of the Boston Celtics front office.

It was the first they'd heard of it, but Lewis had a hunch. He turned to Miller.

"That dude's gone," he told him.

The fact that Stevens and Celtics brass were meeting in person was telling. Lewis knew this. In recent years, Stevens had become nothing short of the most sought-after coach in college basketball, chased every offseason by athletic directors looking to make a splash. Stevens typically ended the speculation quickly. Thanks, but no thanks. He was happy at Butler.

But this was the Boston Celtics. This was different.

Around 8:30 a.m. Celtics president Danny Ainge walked past Jan Stevens' shitzu poodle, through her garage and into her home. Stevens and his family were staying with Brad's mom while they shopped for a new house, so it was here, over a breakfast table draped in plastic — to shield it from the kids' arts and crafts projects — where Ainge, co-owners Wyc Grousbeck and Stephen Pagliuca and assistant general manager Mike Zarren made their final pitch.

It was Day 10 of Ainge's recruitment of Stevens, and Ainge knew full well prying the 36-year-old coaching star from Butler — his employer for 13 years — would be no easy feat. To that point, pursuing Stevens had become a predicable story with a predictable conclusion, be it Oregon, Illinois or UCLA. Rumors swirled. He always stayed put.

"I tried to put myself in the position of having to tell our players I was leaving for another school," Stevens said. "And I couldn't do that."

After speculation spread last spring — erroneous reports pegged him as the next coach at UCLA — Stevens made up his mind.

"Butler," he says now, "was the only place I wanted to coach at in the college game."

But this was the NBA, a challenge he'd grown fascinated with in recent years. Stevens had bought the league television package after a former player, Gordon Hayward, was picked ninth overall by the Utah Jazz in the 2010 NBA Draft. Soon enough, he was peppering Hayward with questions.

"He'd call me, and I'd think we were going to have a conversation about Butler or my progress, but a lot of times we'd end up talking about the NBA," Hayward says. "He'd want to know if a certain play would work or if a certain defense would work in the NBA.

"He always told us he could never leave Butler for another college, so that only leaves one place."

Now the Boston Celtics were at his door, the opportunity of a lifetime staring at him from across the table. He knew he could not turn this one down.

An hour into the breakfast meeting, he turned to Tracy.

"Let's do it."

And so it was done. Ainge, Grousbeck, Pagliuca and Zarren flew back to Boston. Stevens hopped in his SUV and headed to Hinkle Fieldhouse, where he'd run the final day of his youth basketball camp and tell his boss, athletic director Barry Collier. That day, July 3, would be his last at Butler University.

On the way, he called a close friend.

"I have to tell you something you're probably going to see on the news later..."

And that's when it began to hit him — the gravity of it all, the hours that lay ahead. That's when his eyes began to well up for the first time. It wouldn't be the last.

"I've probably cried three times in my life," Stevens says. "I cried three times that day."

PART II: WHEELS IN MOTION

At noon Barry Collier sat in his office, helpless as he's ever been. There was nothing he could do to make him stay.

Brad Stevens, the unknown he'd hired six years earlier, the coach who'd won more games in that span than any in history, the steadying hand that led the Bulldogs to back-to-back national championship games and became the humble face of the university, had made up his mind. He was leaving.

"It wasn't a matter of me saying, 'What can we do?'" Collier remembers. "We'd been there before. This was something Brad either did or didn't do."

From the beginning, Stevens had kept him informed as discussions with the Celtics progressed. So Collier woke up that morning anxious, mindful if the morning meeting in Zionsville went well he'd have to begin a search to replace the most successful coach in Butler basketball history that afternoon.

So as Stevens sat in his office, telling him he'd accepted the Celtics offer, Collier knew the cold reality: A counteroffer did not exist.

Instead of raises or incentives or a new contract, they reminisced. To Stevens' right hung a framed photo from the 2010 national championship game in Indianapolis, a memento of the unforgettable rise they shared. Before long, both were in tears.

"I had never seen Brad like that," Collier says. "It was very, very emotional for both of us. And still is."

They spoke for an hour before Stevens left to tell his assistants, who were scattered on different courts running the final hours of camp. He called them into his office and told them the news.

At 1 p.m., Collier went to work. It was a day he'd dreaded but a day he'd prepared for. His began his coaching search immediately.

He called Butler president James Danko and shared the news, then walked down the hall to the basketball offices and found all three of Stevens' assistants — Miller, Lewis and Terry Johnson — sitting in the same room, absorbing the news they'd just been told.

"I want to interview each of you for the job," Collier told them.

So while Stevens bid farewell to the campers, Collier listened as each of them made their case to become his next head coach.

Joel Cornette, a former Butler player and now a sports agent, was walking into his office in downtown Chicago when he got a call from an old teammate. It was Miller, one of his closest friends, telling him the news: He was interviewing for his dream job that afternoon, and he was nervous.

They spent two hours on the phone, Cornette recalls, running over what Miller would say.

"Brandon is a really humble guy, so I spent the first hour reassuring him it was his job," Cornette said. "I told him nobody would fit the program better, nobody could put together a better resume."

After camp concluded, Stevens sat down and wrote his comments for the press release that would be sent out that evening. He finished, then tried reading them aloud to Tracy.

"We truly love Butler University and Indianapolis..." he began. But he could not continue.

"I broke down big-time," Stevens said.

Collier, meanwhile, was busy following the process he'd laid out. The university trustees would have to know. Then the sports information director. Then the school's public relations coordinator. The players. Then, finally, the public.

The school's longtime media contact, Jim McGrath, was out of the country on vacation. That left his duties to Josh Rattray.

PART III: CHANGE OF PLANS

In a hospital room in his hometown of Crown Point, Ind., Rattray cradled his one-day-old niece in his arms. His sister had given birth to a baby girl the day before, and he'd made the drive upstate to spend the weekend with family and friends.

Around 3 p.m. his phone rang, so he handed the newborn to his sister and looked to see who was calling. It was Barry Collier.

"I already know what this is about," Rattray told him. "What would you like me to do?"

Rattray had been tipped by a friend in the coaching business earlier in the day: The Celtics were close to hiring Brad Stevens. So when he glanced at his phone and saw Collier calling on the eve of a holiday weekend, he knew. Vacation was over.

He passed the news along to his mom and sister, then told them he had to drive back to Indianapolis. The school would host a press conference at Hinkle Fieldhouse that night.

"Wait a minute!" his sister shouted from her hospital bed as he rushed out the door. "What do you mean Brad Stevens is leaving?"

Reliving the story, Rattray laughs.

"They were way more concerned with Brad leaving Butler than with me leaving the hospital," he says.

An hour later, Rattray typed away on his laptop in a Starbucks in Crown Point, revising the press release that would, in a matter of minutes, stun the sports world.

By 5:30 p.m. he was ready to send but needed to check with Collier first. Only one issue: His phone had no reception. He walked to the counter and asked to use the landline. When the Starbucks attendant hesitated, Rattray began to panic.

"A national sports story is going down right here, right now," he pleaded. "I need to use your phone."

The attendant, spotting Rattray's Butler polo, finally caught on. He got a hold of Collier, who gave him the go-ahead. Stevens was meeting with the team as they spoke. Hit send at 5:35 p.m., Collier told him.

Rattray made his final edits then typed out the subject line in capital letters: STEVENS HIRED BY CELTICS. He hit send.

Then, for a few moments, he jumped on Twitter, he says, "to watch the fire spread."

PART IV: THE LOCKER ROOM

Khyle Marshall sat in anticipation, oblivious to the bombshell about to be dropped. A team meeting had been called, and the players had no idea what it was about. Someone must be in trouble...

Then, like Barlow, he saw Stevens stroll into the locker room, his face red, his voice hampered. Then he heard.

"I never thought I'd have to say this," Stevens said.

Then, a pause.

Then, tears.

"... but I'm not going to be the coach at Butler next season."

Silence soaked the room. Barlow's head shot down. Why? Was he sick?

He saw coach, tears in his eyes. He saw Tracy, tears in her eyes too. He thought of Chuck Pagano and the Colts last fall, of Rick Majerus as the St. Louis basketball team last winter.

"Honestly, it was the first thing that entered my mind," Barlow recalls. "Was he sick? Was someone in his family sick?

Stevens continued, painful as it was. He told them about his new job. Barlow's gaze remained fixed on the floor, his worst fears alleviated yet the shock still hard to grasp. Of all the days to hear this, today, his 21st birthday?

For Barlow, Marshall and the rest of the players, it was a tough sentence to hear.

"Once the news hit, you could just see a bunch of guys moving in their chairs," Marshall remembers. "You could see it in their body language, like, 'Did this really just happen?'"

It had. Erik Fromm, a Butler senior forward, was in Hilton Head, S.C., celebrating his mom's 60th birthday when Stevens called to tell him. Hayward was browsing Twitter after an afternoon workout in Salt Lake City. Darnell Archey, a former Butler player who worked on Stevens' staff for four seasons, had just pulled into his driveway in Birmingham, Ala. when his phone began ringing. He walked into the house, turned on ESPN and told his wife, Amanda, to come into the room.

"You're going to want to sit down..." he warned her.

In the locker room, Stevens wiped the tears from his face and told the players he'd be in a little-used office behind the baseball field if they wanted to talk, away from the media, away from the cameras, away from the questions.

"I was probably incoherent in that locker room," Stevens says. "But that's probably a sign of how much we appreciated our 13 years there. To work with so many great people, to make so many great friends, to go on the rise we went on..."

After he finished, Collier stepped in and addressed the team. He assured the players little would change, that Butler, he promised, would stay in the family for its next coach.

On his way out of Hinkle Fieldhouse Stevens, still red in the face, ran into Mike Freeman, one of Butler's associate athletic directors.

"God, that was hard," he told him.

PART V: THE PRESS CONFERENCE

While the news spread – shocking alumni, fans and the world of college basketball – Stevens and a handful of players crammed into that office, sharing stories, hugs, laughs.

He spent the rest of his night on the phone consoling the rest. Butler had hired four coaches since 2000, he told them, and got better each time. This would be no different.

Miller, Johnson and Lewis did the same. The news was especially rough on the six incoming freshmen, a group that arrived on campus that summer eager to learn from Stevens. Now, three months before the season began, they were being told they wouldn't get that chance.

"You try to put yourself in their shoes," says Miller. "What's going through their mind?"

Collier, meanwhile, readied for a 9:30 p.m. press conference, where he'd face questions from an equally-aghast media contingent eager to know how this all came about. He met with senior members of his staff, including LaRose, Freeman and Rattray, at 9 p.m. in his office to prepare.

Thirty minutes later Collier stepped into the Wildman Room inside Hinkle Fieldhouse and took a seat next to Danko. The glare of a half-dozen television lights glimmered off their foreheads. There wasn't an empty seat in the room.

Collier praised and thanked Stevens. He described the day's events as "somewhat of a sudden thing," but insisted, repeatedly, that the Butler basketball program would be just fine. The goals, the process, the expectations — nothing would change.

He headed home around 10 p.m. but his day didn't end there. Around 50 agents, representing up to 75 coaches, reached out regarding his vacant head coaching position. Collier was on the phone until midnight.

But, as he said all along, Butler would stay in the family. He hired Miller three days later.

Months later, Collier looks back on that day, one intensely trying on a personal level and equally challenging on a professional one.

"It probably took a year off my life," he jokes.

At noon, he said goodbye to a close friend. By 2:30 he was looking for his next head coach. Three hours later the news broke, simultaneously startling and saddening the college basketball community. By 10 p.m. that night, Butler University closed the door on the Brad Stevens Era.

For so many, it was a hard truth to know. Hard for Brandon Gaudin, sitting in his car in Ft. Worth. Hard for Roosevelt Jones, laying on his back as the ink of his newest tattoo dried on his chest. Hard for Alex Barlow and the players in that locker room. Hard for Ken LaRose and the Butler athletic department.

Stevens had become one of them, authoring from the sidelines a most improbable narrative: Butler, the Cinderella team that just kept winning, March after March after March. The heart-stopping victories. The Final Fours. The moments the players, coaches and fans will never forget.

None were quite ready for it to end.

Zak Keefer also writes for the Indianapolis Star.