On Amir Abdur-Rahim and Our Leadership Void
The tragic passing of a young basketball coach underscores our need for more leaders who promote character along with winning.
University of South Florida men’s basketball coach Amir Abdur-Rahim dead at 43 due to complications during a medical prodecure.
The news alert buzzed my iPhone late Thursday night, and I wasn’t sure if I believed it initially. I scoured news sites that confirmed, yes, this wasn’t a mistake or a hoax. The most tragic part is that three children lost their father, a wife lost her husband, and 12 siblings lost a brother.
Countless others also lost a mentor and key figure at a pivotal time in their lives, from the players Abdur-Rahim had on his upcoming USF roster to those who played for him as a head coach at Kennesaw State and as an assistant at various stops.
Even some who didn’t play for Abdur-Rahim felt his influence. The coach’s most famous recruit, Anthony Edwards, landed at the University of Georgia because of Abdur-Rahim’s recruiting efforts.
Among the stories pouring out to eulogize Abdur-Rahim is his hesitance to take the head coaching vacancy at Kennesaw State in 2019 specifically because of the commitment he had made in recruiting Edwards.
This anecdote reflects the most valuable qualities that the game loses with Abdur-Rahim’s passing, which transcend his success on the court.
In an October leading up to the 2024-25 college basketball season already rocked by coaching news, Abdur-Rahim’s death affected me in a way that Tony Bennett’s sudden retirement couldn’t.
Not that the two situations are at all comparable, of course, but I couldn’t help but draw one meaningful parallel while processing my thoughts. Regardless of one’s position on Bennett’s explanation for his abrupt departure from the University of Virginia, it was another example of a shift in the college basketball landscape.
The exits of longtime luminaries like Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams, along with the early retirements of national championship winners with plenty still in the tank, like Bennett and Jay Wright, raise the question of who will fill the game’s leadership void. Sometimes, this refers to the thousands of combined wins they accumulated.
To that end, Abdur-Rahim was on a trajectory to be one of those coaches who filled the void. He took over a moribund Kennesaw State program, and in just four years, coached the Owls to their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance, where they took Xavier to the wire.
In his first year at USF, Abdur-Rahim led the Bulls to their first Top 25 ranking and a regular-season American Athletic Conference championship. I felt last March, and still do now, that USF deserved an at-large invitation to the Big Dance.
Yes, wins make up a significant portion of how a basketball coach is evaluated. A coach who channels the best qualities of Theodore Roosevelt, Gandhi, and Dr. King rolled into one, but who can’t devise a zone-busting offense, isn’t going to last long enough to make any measurable impact.
However, that doesn’t mean we should expect coaches to abandon the characteristics of true leadership in the sole pursuit of wins. In the evolving landscape of college athletics, it’s not an unfounded concern that losing coaches like K, Wright, or Bennett will create a void that allows winning at all costs to take over.
Abdur-Rahim’s presence and rapid rise in the profession suggest that needn’t be the case.
When framing a college coach’s impact in the context of leadership and positive influence, or evaluating the truthfulness of their claims to be committed to players, I doubt cynicism has ever been higher. Big-time coaching is a lucrative profession that rewards ambition, after all, and in any walk of American life, ambition and empathy don’t often coexist.
However, I think back to reading about Abdur-Rahim’s family when his brother, Shareef, was on the rise to superstardom. Their background provided a framework that instilled traits of positive leadership, with their mother teaching high school special education and their father working as a religious leader in a mosque.
Earlier this year near the conclusion of a banner debut season at USF, Amir explained to the school’s official athletic website how volunteering in his mother’s classroom and how working with the homeless as part of his father’s mission shaped his worldview.
We are at a time in our society beyond sports when far too many supposed leaders care only about themselves in a way that goes well beyond the aforementioned idea of ambition. Kindness and understanding aren’t just spurned, but are oftentimes treated with outright contempt; qualities for which we should all aspire are somehow portrayed as weaknesses.
College basketball may be a frivolous little niche in the greater framework, but sports have so often been at the forefront of landmark societal change. There’s a reason so much time, effort and money is placed into bringing Culture War fallacies into sports.
We need more leaders in all phases of society who prioritize winning with character. In basketball and in life, we need more leaders who follow Amir Abdur-Rahim’s example.