When he landed his first head coaching job five years ago, Amir Abdur-Rahim didn’t immediately accept the offer.
His concern wasn’t that Kennesaw State was coming off a 26-loss season. Nor that his potential salary was not enough. Abdur-Rahim didn’t feel right leaving his job as an assistant coach on Tom Crean’s staff at Georgia without the blessing of the top-five recruit he had spent months persuading to sign with the Bulldogs.
“If you need me here, I’ll stay. I’m perfectly fine with that,” Abdur-Rahim promised Anthony Edwards when telling the future Minnesota Timberwolves superstar about Kennesaw State’s offer.
Only after Edwards and everyone else involved in recruiting reassured Abdur-Rahim did he finally accept Kennesaw State’s offer.
“That was a relationship that was four years in the making,” Abdur-Rahim told the “Coaching Origins” podcast in 2022. “There were people around him that he had real relationships with, who trusted me and the Georgia coaching staff. and they trusted me. be there. “This may not be normal, but this is who I am and how I was raised.”
That story resurfaced after Thursday’s heartbreaking news that Abdur-Rahm had died following complications during a medical procedure at a Tampa-area hospital. He embodies the type of man and leader the University of South Florida men’s basketball coach was, why he was considered a rising star in his profession, why his death at age 43 is such a horrible loss to label it as a tragedy it doesn’t begin to make sense. do him justice.
Abdur-Rahim died just 10 days before he was supposed to open his second season at South Florida with a Nov. 4 matchup against Florida. He is survived by his wife, Arianne, and the couple’s three young children, daughters Laila and Lana, and son Aydin.
“All of us at South Florida Athletics grieve with Coach Abdur-Rahim’s loved ones,” said athletic director Michael Kelly. “He was authentic, driven and his infectious personality captivated all of Bulls Nation.”
In a statement on behalf of the family, elder brother Shareef Abdur-Rahim said: “On behalf of my family, I want to express our gratitude to everyone who has reached out regarding Amir’s passing. Please remember our family in your prayers. As @sunsetAMIR I would say, to God be the Glory.”
Amir Abdur-Rahim, the fourth oldest of 13 children, came from a basketball family. Shareef was the third overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft and played 13 seasons in the league. Amir Abdur-Rahim followed in his older brother’s footsteps, averaging 19.5 points and earning All-Southland Conference honors three straight while playing guard for Billy Kennedy at Southeast Louisiana.
Abdur-Rahim once explained that he decided to get into coaching while working as a graduate assistant under Kennedy at Murray State. The players described the goals they wanted to achieve to Abdur-Rahim, but he said that “their habits did not match those words.”
Abdur-Rahim hoped he could “teach life through basketball” and help the players he coached avoid that danger. As he once said, “I just want them to have a great example of what a man is like, what a leader is like, what a husband is like, a father.”
That motivation helped propel Abdur-Rahim up the coaching ladder. He started as a first-year assistant coach making $38,000 a year at Murray State and then worked at Georgia Tech, College of Charleston and Texas A&M before spending that one year with Crean at Georgia and then taking over a program of his own at Kennesaw State. .
In Abdur-Rahim’s first year at Kennesaw State, he endured a dismal 1-28 season. He went on to execute a remarkable turnaround, leading the Owls to an Atlantic Sun title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament in his fourth season and pushing third-seeded Xavier to the brink of elimination.
In the postgame locker room after the 72-67 loss to Xavier, Abdur-Rahim stood in front of a whiteboard that had only the words “Love Wins” scrawled in the top right corner. With tears in his eyes, Abdur-Rahim told his players that they will walk away winners no matter what the scoreboard says.
“Friends, we won because you love each other,” Abdur-Rahim said. “We won because you were committed to each other. We won because when times got tough, you didn’t back down.
“These are tears of joy right here,” he added. “I’m not disappointed one bit.”
The reconstruction that Abdur-Rahim designed helped attract the attention of larger programs, as did the passion he showed during a Tearful post-game press conference after Xavier’s loss.. South Florida hired him in March 2023, hoping to resurrect a program that hadn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2012 and hadn’t finished .500 in the league since moving to the American League in 2013.
In his introductory press conference, Abdur-Rahim offered a window into who he was as a man and as a coach. He promised that “there won’t be a day when you feel cheated with me as a head coach.” He vowed not to be outdone in the recruiting process. He promised to hang banners and win league titles as South Florida’s coach.
“I asked (Kelly), ‘Are you afraid of heights?’” Abdur-Rahim said that day. “Because someday you will have to climb that ladder to cut those nets.”
That day came sooner than Kelly, or anyone in South Florida, expected.
In his inaugural season, Abdur-Rahim oversaw an astonishing transformation, leading South Florida to a school-record 25 wins, a conference title and an NIT berth. The Bulls also earned the program’s first AP Top 25 ranking and posted a collective GPA of 3.20 for the 2023-2024 academic year.
The sellout crowds at the Yuengling Center weren’t solely a product of the team’s success. Abdur-Rahim sparked interest by handing out free ice cream sandwiches or donuts to students, buying rounds of coffee at the campus Starbucks and shaking hands with fans standing in line in the rain before a game.
Last spring, Abdur-Rahim’s name was once again linked to bigger jobs. Instead, he opted to stay in South Florida and sign an extension through 2030.
“In his first season, Amir’s leadership and vision generated one of the most exciting and memorable seasons in Bulls basketball history,” Kelly said at the time. “A conference championship, electrifying crowds at the Yuengling Center and an exciting style of play were on display at the home of Tampa Bay basketball. “We are excited to continue investing in the success of USF men’s basketball under Amir’s leadership.”
Not even five months later, Abdur-Rahim is gone, a devastating blow to college basketball in general and those close to him in particular.
When contacted by Yahoo Sports on Thursday night, Crean and Kennedy politely declined to comment because they were not ready to speak publicly about Abdur-Rahim. Crean, who was with Abdur-Rahim’s family at the hospital at the time, later tweeted: “Meeting and working with Amir was a true honor and gift.”
“Take your kids to school tomorrow,” Crean added. “He loved doing that.”
