‘We felt like he was on his way’: Amir Abdur-Rahim’s death is an immeasurable loss for college basketball

When he landed his first head coaching job five years ago, Amir Abdur-Rahim didn’t pounce on the offer right away.

His concern wasn’t that Kennesaw State was coming off a 26-loss season, nor that his potential salary wouldn’t be sufficient. 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 that he’d built a relationship with and helped persuade to sign with the Bulldogs.

“If you need me here, I’ll stay. I’m perfectly OK with it,” Abdur-Rahim promised Anthony Edwards when he called the future Minnesota Timberwolves superstar about the Kennesaw State offer.

Only after Edwards and everyone else involved in the recruitment told Abdur-Rahim that it was too good an opportunity to pass up did he finally accept the Kennesaw State job.

“That was a relationship four years in the making,” Abdur-Rahim told the “Coaching Origins” podcast in 2022. “There were people around it that I had real relationships with, that trusted myself and the coaching staff at Georgia and trusted me to be there. This may not be normal, but it’s just who I am and how I was raised.”

That story resurfaced after Thursday’s heartbreaking news that Abdur-Rahim had died following complications during a medical procedure at a Tampa-area hospital. It epitomizes 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 just 43 is such a horrific loss that labeling it a tragedy doesn’t begin to do it justice.

Winfred Jordan, Edwards’ coach with the AAU Atlanta Xpress, first met Abdur-Rahim as a teenager more than two decades ago. Jordan told Yahoo Sports that it’s a testament to Abdur-Rahim’s character that he would offer to pass up a head coaching opportunity to keep a promise to a teenager.

“You could really hear the tone of sincerity in his voice when he called to ask us about it,” Jordan said. “It meant the world to us that he was willing to make that sacrifice. Most people in his position would not have done that.”

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 with South Florida Athletics are grieving with the loved ones of Coach Abdur-Rahim,” athletic director Michael Kelly said. “He was authentic, driven, and his infectious personality captivated all of Bulls Nation.”

In a statement on behalf of the family, older brother Shareef Abdur-Rahim said, “On behalf of my family, I want to express our gratitude to all who have reached out regarding Amir’s passing. Please remember our family in your prayers. As @sunsetAMIR would say, to God be the Glory.”

The fourth-oldest of 13 siblings, Amir Abdur-Rahim came from a basketball family. Shareef was the No. 3 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 times while playing guard for Billy Kennedy at Southeastern Louisiana.

Abdur-Rahim once explained that he decided to dedicate himself to coaching while working as a graduate assistant under Kennedy at Murray State. Players would describe the goals that they wanted to achieve to Abdur-Rahim, but he said “their habits didn’t match those words.”

It was Abdur-Rahim’s hope that he could “teach life through basketball” and help the players he coached avoid that pitfall. As he once put it, “I just want them to have a great example of what a man looks like, what a leader looks like, what a husband, a father looks like.”

That motivation helped propel Abdur-Rahim up the coaching ladder. He started as a first-year assistant coach making $38,000 per year at Murray State and later worked at Georgia Tech, College of Charleston and Texas A&M before spending that lone year under 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, guiding the Owls to an Atlantic Sun title and an NCAA tournament berth in his fourth season and pushing third-seeded Xavier to the brink of elimination.

In the postgame locker room after that season-ending 72-67 loss to Xavier, Abdur-Rahim stood in front of a whiteboard that had only the words “Love wins” scrawled in the upper right-hand corner. Tears in his eyes, Abdur-Rahim told his players that they’re leaving as winners no matter what the scoreboard said.

“Fellas, we won because you guys love each other,” Abdur-Rahim said. “We won because you guys committed to each other. We won because when times got hard, y’all dudes didn’t back down.

“These are tears of joy right here,” he added. “I ain’t disappointed one bit.”

The rebuild that Abdur-Rahim engineered helped attract the attention of bigger programs, as did the passion he displayed during a tearful postgame news conference after the Xavier loss. South Florida hired him in March 2023, hoping he could resuscitate a program that hadn’t made the NCAA tournament since 2012 and hadn’t finished .500 in league play since moving to the American in 2013.

At his introductory news conference, Abdur-Rahim offered a window into who he was as a man and a coach. He promised that “there will not be a day that you’ll feel cheated with me as your head coach.” He pledged not to be outworked on the recruiting trail. He vowed 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 you’re going to have to get up on that ladder one day to cut down those nets.”

That day came sooner than Kelly — or anyone at South Florida — expected.

In his inaugural season, Abdur-Rahim oversaw a staggering 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 recorded a collective 3.20 GPA for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Sellout crowds at the Yuengling Center were not 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 waiting in line in the rain before a game.

Last spring, Abdur-Rahim’s name was again connected to bigger jobs. He instead chose to stay at South Florida and sign an extension through 2030.

“I was so happy for him and so proud of him,” Jordan said. “We felt like he was on his way.”

Not even five months later, Abdur-Rahim is gone, a devastating blow for college basketball as a whole and those close to him in particular.

When reached by Yahoo Sports on Thursday night, Crean and Kennedy both politely declined 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, “Knowing and working with Amir was a true honor and a gift.”

“Drive your kids to school tomorrow,” Crean added. “He loved doing that.”