WHAT I’VE LEARNED: HOW TO LEAD:14 16THE REAL MOMS

BY ETHAN BAUER

Mark Pope loves the word relentless. He recruits “relentlessly.” He scouts relentlessly. And during his six seasons in the NBA, the the team discussed how to hollow out the bricks, Pope showed up with patio pavers, much heavier than standard bricks. Nance once told Pope he needed BYU men’s basketball coach hustled relentlessly as the self-titled “worst to improve his leg strength and should spend more time on a bike. Rather NBA player ever.” But his dedication to the concept started as a child, with than opting for a stationary bike, he bought a road bike and started riding his parents. it between his Bellevue home and the University of Washington campus —

They drilled it into him, and later on, it became central to a career that between 15 and 20 miles per day. “He was, and still is to this day, the hardfrom the outside might look like an unqualified success, but to Pope, has est-working basketball player I have ever been around,” Didrickson said. been just as marked by failure. It’s in those moments, those disappoint- In his first season, Pope started every game and was named Pac-10 ments and setbacks common to everyone, that Pope turns to the relent- Freshman of the Year by setting a Washington freshman record with 8.1 lessness he’s cultivated since childhood. rebounds (perhaps the most relentless statistic) per game — a record that

His dad, Don, was “relentlessly honest,” Pope said. And his mom, Lin- still stands. But Washington finished with a disappointing 12–17 record. da, relentlessly chased big ideas. Like in sixth grade, The next year, after the Huskies underwhelmed yet when Pope needed to design his own country for again with a 13–14 mark, Nance resigned. a school project. He started with simple pencil Pope blamed himself. He was supposed to carry sketches, but that wasn’t enough for his mom, a the team, he thought, and despite practicing harder, perfectionist. She knew he could do better. And so hustling harder, lifting harder than anyone could’ve Linda brought in Play-Doh to build a three-dimensional map and paint to color-code the regions, and POPE BLAMED HIMSELF. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO reasonably expected, he couldn’t save the program or his coach. He’d failed before, but this was one of his they planted a handful of miniature flags. He doesn’t CARRY THE TEAM, first “big failures” on his path toward a self-bestowed “ remember what he named the country — “I’m sure AND DESPITE Ph.D. in failing.” “What he views as failure most of us it was something ridiculous,” he said — but he does PRACTICING HARDER, wouldn’t,” Didrickson said. But the Washington years remember he had to turn it sideways to fit it through the classroom door and lost a couple of the flags HUSTLING HARDER, LIFTING HARDER, HE COULDN’T still burden Pope even now; he calls it an “epic failure” where he “just wasn’t good enough to save his coach’s along the way. “Which was, like, 10 times more than SAVE THE PROGRAM job.” But in failure, he found perspective: Setbacks are what the assignment was supposed to be,” Pope said, OR HIS COACH. momentary, he realized. They only define you if you with a laugh. “My mom was never satisfied with a dwell on them. status-quo product.” Every assignment, in Linda’s So in search of a fresh start, he transferred to Rick eyes, could be made rewarding by doing more. By Pitino’s Kentucky in 1993 and, after sitting out for a doing extra. By making it special. By being relentless year because of NCAA transfer rules, suited up for the in the pursuit of excellence. 1994-95 season. As an off-the-bench center, he aver-

Pope applied the same attitude to basketball, and by the time he was aged about 20 minutes per game in his two seasons in Lexington as UK’s a senior at Newport High School in Bellevue, Washington, he was a na- sixth man, supporting Southeastern Conference Player of the Year Tony tionally sought-after recruit. He decided to stay close to home and in Delk and future NBA All-Star Antoine Walker, among others. Named 1991 committed to the Washington Huskies and coach Lynn Nance as a team captain his senior year, Pope and the Wildcats won a national a 6-foot-10, first-team all-state center — a “huge recruiting ‘get’” for title in 1996. the program, per the Seattle Times. Pope wanted to elevate the Hus- Sure, it helped that he was 6-10, but he wasn’t the fastest or the highest kies to national prominence, and the stories about how he went about it jumper. He was, though, the most dedicated. One time, after gobbling up are legion and legend — well beyond the cliche about starting early and some delicious Memphis barbecue the night before a game, Pope threw up leaving late. on his shirt at practice and kept playing — without protest from his team-

In the summer before Pope’s freshman year, teammate and roommate mates. “Nobody missed a beat,” former teammate Jeff Sheppard said via Scott Didrickson recalls, an assistant coach concocted a conditioning text. “It was just another day with Mark Pope.” Another time, Sheppard scheme that involved running 3 miles while holding bricks. While most of remembered, Pitino told Pope he needed to put on a few pounds of muscle.

Pope pounded protein shakes and ate an absurd amount of food through- Pitino, among many others, questioned his judgment. Why, they all wonout his entire redshirt year. “Coach was killing me!” Pope texted. But in dered, would Pope give up his spot at one of the world’s most prestigious the summer before his redshirt junior season, Pitino reversed course. Pope medical schools to pursue something as unpredictable as coaching basketneeded to lose weight, Pitino told him, because he was too slow. Pope was ball? The truth was, he’d always had doubts about a career in medicine. disappointed but not deterred. “His next meal,” Sheppard said, “he was School kept him away from his family more than basketball ever did (he eatin’ a salad.” Another time, he injured his knee during a game and con- and his wife Lee Anne have four daughters), and though he stayed retinued hustling up and down the court, forcing Pitino to remove him. lentless, he couldn’t ignore the brilliance of his classmates and feared he

“He played through fatigue and injury and illness better than anyone couldn’t compare. So he started working his basketball rolodex and in 2009 I’ve ever been around,” Sheppard said. found a spot under Mark Fox in his first year at the University of Georgia

However hard he worked, though, he knew he just didn’t have the natu- — not as an assistant coach, but as the director of basketball operations. ral talent to star at the highest level. He often thought about Pitino during He spent one season there (2009-10), then one season as an assistant coach his six seasons in the league. “He just — was never off,” Pope recalls. Pitino at Wake Forest (2010-11) before joining Dave Rose’s staff in Provo. always found new ways to test his players’ limits, to the point where on oc- In 2015, six years after deciding to coach, he took over the Utah Valley procasion, Pope and his teammates felt something close to hatred for the man gram. He inherited a team that’d gone 11–19 the year before and led it to a 12-18 he’s affectionately labeled “a tyrant.” When it felt like practices and meet- record in year one. In year 4, the Wolverines went 25-10, good for second in the ings couldn’t get more difficult, Pitino found a way; Western Athletic Conference regular-season standings, he always found a way. Like after Kentucky lost in the and lost by just four points in the conference tourna1995 Elite 8. Pitino re-watched the game with the team ment’s semifinal; if they had won the tournament, they’d twice that night, personally crushing players along the have made the school’s first-ever NCAA Tournament. way. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” Pope recalled Utah Valley is no basketball powerhouse, though, and in 2019. The next morning, Pitino scheduled individual meetings to crush them some more — a necessary evil, Pope realized in hindsight, to trample any sense of entitlement among the blue-blood high-achievers who “WE WERE JUST TRYING TO BE AS CREATIVE AND FUN AND that kind of success required relentless creativity. He once, back in 2016, visited four recruits, from Provo to Twin Falls, Idaho, in a Winnebago covered in Wolverines stickers and flags and banners. All in under 24 hours, end up at UK. “He was so brutal to us that the only CRAZY AS WE just before the beginning of a recruiting “dead period.” option we had was to turn to each other to try and sur- COULD BE “He wanted to do something no one else was doing,” vive him,” Pope said. “And I’m telling you, it wasn’t by TO LEAVE AN assistant coach Chris Burgess remembered. It worked; mistake. It was genius.” IMPRESSION.” three of the four signed with UVU. “We were just try-

Pope applied that wisdom to his career. The les- ing to be as creative and fun and crazy as we could be to son wasn’t relentless brutality, but relentlessness in leave an impression.” general. After he became one of four UK players His success brought him back to BYU in 2019 afchosen in the 1996 NBA draft (he was last among ter Rose retired. He already had the Cougars — and them, at 52nd overall), he realized many fringe play- the larger basketball world — buzzing. For the first ers like himself didn’t have the mental and physical time since Jimmer Fredette was named the consenstamina to last in an NBA training camp. Some might be better pure sus national college player of the year in 2011, BYU was nationally relevant; players, with more athleticism and better jump shots, but they wouldn’t they’d blown out No. 2 Gonzaga at the sold-out Marriott Center, and mulbe able to battle every single day for six weeks. Using what he learned tiple pundits had declared them a dark horse Final Four team, led by from his parents and Pitino, Pope could outlast them, even if he couldn’t seniors Yoeli Childs, Jake Toolson and TJ Haws. Then COVID-19 happened. outplay them. Seated in BYU’s film room on Thursday afternoon, March 12, 2020,

“He literally worked harder than anybody else,” Didrickson said. Pope told his players their season was over. He had no encouraging words

He lasted just two seasons with all three NBA teams he played for be- or cliches. Nothing could ease their grief, he knew. So he turned to what tween 1997 and 2005. And after each stop, he moved on quickly in search he knows best. “The day of or the next day, he was already talking about of new opportunities. Failure and relentlessness became his yin and yang. recruiting and about the next season and about how to get better,” Toolson “Sports is failure,” he said. “If you’re an athlete, you know failure, and you remembers. “He’s just like, ‘There’s work to be done.’” know it really well.” Entering the 2020-21 season, Toolson and his standout classmates are

Knowing his time in the NBA would likely be short, he planned for gone. But there’s some reason for optimism. Starters Alex Barcello and a backup career. He considered many options, but despite studying En- Kolby Lee are back, and BYU outflanked Kentucky, Arizona, Gonzaga and glish in college, he chose medicine. To catch up to other aspiring doctors, others for the services of 7-foot-3 Purdue graduate transfer Matt Haarms; he took science classes at the universities closest to his NBA employers, Haarms was one of the top graduate transfers available, and BYU’s recruitand he studied on team flights. When his playing career ended in 2005, ing win cemented its position as a team of consequence. his efforts paid off with excellent grades and a high MCAT score, and he And if it doesn’t work out, if Pope fails to build on last season’s success, landed interviews with Columbia, Yale, NYU and Harvard. He spent three history says that within hours — not days or months — of the final buzzer, years at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons before he’ll be looking toward next season, toward new opportunities, and toward dropping out to coach basketball. attacking them relentlessly.