The news Thursday that Butler head coach Brandon Miller will be taking a medical leave of absence for an indefinite period of time came with both a great amount of concern for the well-being of the 35-year-old father of two as well as a great amount of concern for the well-being of a team that struggled last year in the inaugural season of the new Big East.
As Butler begins practice on Saturday, one of the main themes coming from the university has been privacy for Miller. Athletic director Barry Collier said in a statement that the university granted the leave of absence. "We are not in a position to further elaborate, and we ask that everyone respect Brandon's privacy," Collier said.
Assistant head coach Chris Holtmann was named the interim coach. When I spoke with him Friday morning, Holtmann told me pretty much the same thing: "I'm really limited in what I'm allowed to say," he said. "Some of it I know but can't say, and others I just don't know."
People I've spoken with have said they don't believe the medical issues are life-threatening, but citing Miller's privacy, they didn't go further.
In any medical situation, whether it's mental health or physical health, it should be left up to the person going through it whether he should divulge information publicly.
Instead, we must turn to Miller the basketball coach as well as to Butler the basketball team, and what all this means for the coming season -- a silly and unimportant issue in the face of something more serious, but something worth talking about nonetheless.
Here's what I can tell you about Brandon Miller: He's one of the best dudes in the business. Straight shooter. Down to earth. Not someone who performs for the cameras. A guy who believes in and coaches the "Butler Way" -- doing the little things, focusing on the team, forcing turnovers and grabbing rebounds. He was a stud point guard for Butler in the early 2000s, then coached at Xavier, Ohio State, Butler and Illinois before leaving the game for a year to work as a pharmaceutical salesman in southern Indiana.
But he missed the game, and he missed being part of a team, and when then-Butler head coach Brad Stevens offered to bring him back into the fray in spring 2013, Miller jumped at the chance. A couple months later, Stevens surprisingly took a head-coaching job for the Boston Celtics, and Miller was named the new head coach as Butler headed into the new Big East.
"That year (away from the game) gave me so much perspective on who I wanted to be and how I wanted to coach, how I wanted to go about it on a day-to-day basis," Miller told me in the middle of last season. "You take a step back and you realize how much you value being a part of the team. You realize how much you value being able to coach guys, the atmosphere in the locker room, being part of a staff, and really just how much you love college basketball. The other thing about that year is I try not to ever lose perspective in terms what's really important in the big picture."
Whatever it is Miller is going through now, it makes me so sad to think back to a year ago, when he was bubbling over with excitement at his opportunity. I saw him at a recruiting event last summer a couple weeks after he got the job, and it was as if the guy had won the lottery. When I watched Butler beat Seton Hall on the road in February to get its second conference win (after a ton of painful, close losses), Miller grabbed me in the bowels of the arena. He was again bubbling over. He told me he saw me courtside in warm-ups and knew that I was his team's good-luck charm.
Basketball-wise, that first year in the Big East was a painful season, no doubt. Their all-everything forward, Roosevelt Jones, lost his season before it started due to a wrist injury in the summer. The team went 14-17 and only won four conference games -- but the Bulldogs rarely got blown out. It seemed like every other Butler game was a one-possession or overtime game that they lost. It was Butler's first sub-.500 season since 2004-05, but Miller was really put into an impossible situation in that first year, especially with Jones' injury and with a lack of depth in the backcourt and in the post.
This season, with Jones back and with Butler returning two of the three top scorers from a year ago in Kellen Dunham and Kameron Woods, has felt like a better opportunity. Yes, five players transferred out of the program in the offseason, but Miller signed five new ones, including Butler's first McDonald's All-American in N.C. State transfer Tyler Lewis.
Not to mention another new beginning: Historic Hinkle Fieldhouse -- yes, the place of those famous scenes from the movie "Hoosiers" -- is nearing completion of its renovation, and the team is scheduled to move into a new locker room and film room later this month.
Then came Thursday's announcement, two days before the team's first practice and six weeks before the season begins.
"The hardest part is seeing a friend going through a difficult time health-wise," Holtmann, who had been the head coach at Gardner-Webb for three years before taking an assistant job last season under Miller, told me Friday. "The most immediate thing I have done since I got the news was with your players and players' families and parents â-- all of which we still haven't chance to visit with, parent-wise -- your immediate community and family, just reassuring them, communicating the direction we may be going, getting them settled in a difficult time."
Sure, there's planning practices and getting ready for the opener in mid-November, but basketball-wise things will be pretty much the same. This team is deeper than a year ago. Holtmann plans to play more players. But the Butler Way is still the Butler Way, just like it was when Stevens was the head coach. Whether Miller returns or not, that will not change.
"It's uncharted waters for all of us," Holtmann said. "It really is. There's not a blueprint for it. I think you try to navigate it with compassion, both for Brandon and for our players in the situation they're in, and the families. You try to communicate as effectively as you can, but there are times you just don't know things or you're not at liberty to say. It's certainly difficult, but you try to remember we're dealing with a person we care about and a situation that's unfortunate, but it's our job to be a great teammate and great person first, and then later attack trying to be a basketball team."
This will be the toughest schedule a Butler team has ever had. Non-conference games include North Carolina, Big Ten up-and-comer Northwestern, in-state rival Indiana, and Tennessee, coming off a Sweet 16 appearance. There aren't many lay-ups in the new Big East, either; last season it was a conference that sent four of its 10 teams to the NCAA tournament and had three more hovering on the bubble. Holtmann said players are excited for the challenge, and to live up to one of the most impressive recent histories in college basketball.
Here's what I know: I'm going to root for Butler. I'm going to hope that this program, whether it's under Miller or Holtmann or someone else, finds success, because Butler basketball -- with its scrappiness, its history, its nostalgia -- is all that's great about college basketball. I'm going to hope that all those excruciating close losses from last season turn into close wins this year.
But more than that, I'm going to root for Brandon Miller. Whatever it is he's going through, he's a guy who doesn't deserve it, and we should all wish him a speedy recovery.
Email Reid Forgrave at reidforgrave@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @reidforgrave.
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