In 19 seasons, Billy Donovan led the Gators to a 467-186 record with 4 trips to the Final Four and back-to-back NCAA championships.
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – Billy Donovan coaches the Chicago Bulls and has for half of his 10 NBA seasons. He has steered them to the playoffs just once, and even if you add his five successful seasons in Oklahoma City, he has gotten his team out of the first round only one time.
His NBA record, a solid 438-365, ranks him 50th in regular-season victories and tied for 68th with Larry Brown with a .548 winning percentage. Of the 49 coaches who have won more often in NBA history, 33 are not in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
But Donovan will be as of Saturday night, when his enshrinement as a member of the Class of 2025 becomes official in a ceremony at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Mass. He will go in with Carmelo Anthony, a player he coached for one season in OKC, and Dwight Howard, whom he tried but failed to recruit to play for him at the University of Florida.
And they’ll be joined by others, including WNBA stars Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles, as well as longtime NBA referee Danny Crawford and Miami Heat owner Micky Arison.
Class of 2025: Micky Arison, Danny Crawford and Billy Donovan receive Hall of Fame jackets.
In other words, like most enshrinement classes at the Naismith Hall, this one is a basketball tapestry. It is unlike the other major sports’ shrines, where its halls of honor almost entirely are focused on NFL, NHL and MLB players, coaches and contributors. The hoops hall is set up to recognize greatness across the sport. That means both domestic and international players, high school and college coaches, male and female participants.
That’s how people as diverse as Larry Bird, Oscar Schmidt, Lisa Leslie, Barbara Stevens, Bo Ryan, Spencer Haywood, Dino Radja and Ben Wallace can all qualify for the same Hall of Famer discount. This place is inclusive at being exclusive.
Which gets us back to Donovan. By NBA standards, the native of Rockville Centre, N.Y., has been solid, with a competitive fire that has served him well both with contending (Thunder) and forever-rebuilding (Bulls) teams.
But his work in college, notably the 19 seasons he spent at the University of Florida, is the reason Donovan will slip on the orange sport coat that is part of the Naismith Hall’s tradition.
Donovan’s work in Gainesville was nothing short of spectacular. In 19 seasons from 1996 to 2015, he led the Gators to a 467-186 record (.715), with four trips to the Final Four and back-to-back NCAA championships in 2006 and 2007. Add his two seasons at Marshall (1994-96) and his collegiate record is 502-206 (.709).
Donovan seemed to know there was another basketball world out there for him and he nearly entered it after that second national title. In June 2007, he signed a five-year, $27.5 million contract with the Orlando Magic – only to have a sudden change of heart. Within six days, the Magic let him out of the deal to return to Florida, with the provision that he not coach in NBA for at least five years.
Donovan stayed in college for another eight. And he sent six more players to the NBA Draft, upping to 18 his total that includes Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Bradley Beal, Corey Brewer, Jason Williams, Mike Miller and a dozen others.
Now he’ll be on the sideline in Chicago as the league’s only active Hall of Fame coach (Dallas’ Jason Kidd and Portland’s Chauncey Billups were enshrined as players). He hasn’t reached a Finals, never mind won a Larry O’Brien Trophy. But as Donovan sees it, the factors that made him so successful at Florida translate to the NBA, for others if not yet for him.
“To be sitting up here in the Hall of Fame, you have to have great players,” he said Friday at a media session at the Mohegan Sun Convention Center. The enshrinement weekend is split each year, with a banquet at the resort and casino one day, the ceremony in Springfield the next. A large contingent of Donovan family, friends, and former and current players made the trip to celebrate the honor.
“For me,” Donovan said, “it’s just a reflection of someone who’s had a lot of good quality people in their life from start to finish.”
An obvious influence was Rick Pitino, who coached Donovan when he was a point guard at Providence and again for 44 games when the 1987 third-round draft pick got waived by Utah and picked up in December 1987 by New York.
Less obvious? Three men who were NBA players and coaches – Maurice Cheeks, Monty Williams and Mark Bryant – who helped Donovan make the switch from college to pro ball. All were on the Thunder bench, and Cheeks spent nine years next to Donovan there and with the Bulls.
“There was a lot of wisdom they could impart on me,” he said.
Numerous college coaches have tried the NBA only to flame out, such as Mike Montgomery, Lon Kruger, Leonard Hamilton and more. Donovan knows he got fortunate when he took over OKC only three years removed from the 2012 Finals.
“There are a lot of great coaches out there who maybe don’t get to coach a Carmelo Anthony or a Kevin Durant or a Joakim Noah or an Al Horford or Brad Beal,” he said. “That doesn’t mean every year we won, but those kinds of situations put you in a position to do something special.”
Like earning a spot in the Hall of Fame, landing a contract extension in July and still being driven enough for a fresh canvas of 82 games that begin next month.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
