GAINESVILLE, Fla. – An overwhelming majority of the audience was in pre-school when Billy Donovan was making history at the University of Florida. Donovan, one of the greatest coaches ever to walk a college basketball sideline, acknowledged as much Tuesday morning as he stood in front of the present-day Billy (as in Napier) and the 2024 Gators football team in the auditorium at the Heavener Football Training Center. As far as Donovan's message to the guys wearing orange and blue, it was evergreen. It was loud, also.
Donovan, set to enter his 10th season as a NBA head coach, did not need a microphone.
"You have to be obsessed with winning," he told them. "It begins with the guy next to you."
His first three rules of winning: love, care for and accept your teammates.
Clearly knowing his audience, Donovan recalled how he visited the Seattle Seahawks after the team won the Super Bowl in 2014 and was in awe with the ferocious, chaotic nature with which they practiced – in non-contact situations, no less – but especially how the players on defense challenged one another every repetition to the point the confrontations came
thisclose to crossing the line. Afterward, Donovan spent time with All-Pro defensive backs and "Legion of Boom" stalwarts Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor. He asked how they managed to navigate the verbal bedlam without it getting personal.
It was all love, Sherman explained. A couple times each week, the Seahawks would gather away from football, with their families, to bond and grow their relationships. That way, Sherman said, if he let Chancellor down he also was letting Chancellor's wife and children down. That took the accountability factor to another level.
"Your legacy will be the relationship with your teammates," Donovan said.
Billy Donovan, flanked by his players and family, raises the 2007 NCAA championship trophy after defeating Ohio State in the national title game for a second straight crown.
It was 45 minutes of this kind of real talk and firebrand anecdotes. The players, coaches and support staff ate it up. Donovan, who spent five seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder and is set to enter his fifth with the Bulls, still closely follows all things Gators. He spoke from the heart and without any notes or pre-prompting from Napier relative to preferred subject matter.
"I wanted him to talk without giving him any insight into the current dynamic of our team," said Napier, who like Donovan upon his arrival in 1996, inherited a UF program in need of major talent and culture resets. "So to hear him hit on all the things we've been talking about, I think, maybe validates that we're on the right path and emphasizing the right things, [given] his unique experience with the university. He knows this place and all the expectations that come with it."
Among those riveted in their seat was Brandon Spikes, now a post-graduate associate for GatorMade.
"That's greatness right there," Spikes said. "I'm getting emotional just thinking about it."
Brandon Spikes was helping lead UF to two national championships in football while the Gators were winning back-to-back NCAA titles under Billy Donovan.
Spikes, the two-time All-America linebacker, was at UF and winning two national championships when Donovan and the incomparable "'04s" – Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Corey Brewer and
Taurean Green, all of them Spikes' buddies – became the first team in 15 years to win back-to-back NCAA titles in 2006-07.
Back then, Donovan brought in famed sports psychologist and motivational speaker Harry Edwards to talk to his teams. Edwards spoke of "climbing the mountain," and how there were three ways for a team to try and do so: with the coaches dragging the players up the mountain (never works); the coaches and players going arm-and-arm up the mountain (sometimes works); the players carrying the coaches up the mountain (always works).
The Donovan-led Gators chose the latter.
"He knows how to climb that mountain," Spikes said. "For these [football players], hopefully their takeaway was the brotherhood, the camaraderie. You can't accomplish anything yourself and you can't let your brother down. We preach it all the time, but it's different coming from a living Gator legend."
From left: Al Horford, Corey Brewer, Taurean Green and Joakim Noah
Donovan also spoke of how Noah, Horford and Brewer, all projected NBA lottery picks, returned to school after the first title because of their love for Green, who was not on any NBA draft boards. They refused to leave him behind. Alone. Instead, the foursome came back, won that second title together, then left together.
"When the talent is equal, the connection will be what separates you," Donovan said.
President Bush and Adrian Moss (2006)
He told the story of Adrian Moss, the senior backup forward in '06 who (initially) resented the up-and-comers taking his minutes. Eventually, with some aggressive Donovan prodding, Moss grew into a mentor to the foursome. The night the team walked into the Hoosier Dome to face UCLA for the national title, Moss pulled Donovan aside and told him, "I get it now, Coach." That same night, Moss was needed because of foul trouble, scored eight first-half points and several weeks later was selected by his team to present the UF No. 1 jersey to President George W. Bush at the White House.
To this day, when Noah wears a Florida jersey, he wears Moss's jersey.
"Legacy is not what they're saying on ESPN," Donovan said. "It's what goes on behind closed doors when no one is watching. It's what your teammates will tell their children and grandchildren about you."
And, of course, he talked about adversity. Donovan's greatest teams thrived on it. If adversity didn't exist on a daily basis, he created it. He did it, surely, to prepare players for the inevitable in-season and in-game pitfalls, but also for life beyond basketball. Is training camp hard? Sure, he said. But what about years from now when bad news comes from a doctor? Or a bill can't be paid? Or there are struggles in the family?
Those instances are coming, so might as well deal with adversity now. In fact, players should crave it.
"Tell your coaches, 'Bring it on! Bring more! Try to break me,' " Donovan said. "Bring it all, so you can rise above it together."
The 2024 Florida football team may not have known much about "Billy D" when they woke up Tuesday morning.
"They do now," Napier said.
And they won't soon forget him.
