MIAMI _ Perhaps it is fitting that John Beilein never made it to AmericanAirlines Arena for Saturday night's game, or that he won't be coaching against the Miami Heat on Monday night when the teams meet again in Cleveland.
Because when it comes to college coaches finding the errors of their ways _ or in one case, avoiding such a misstep _ there is plenty of Heat history that is part of the process.
With all due respect for what Brad Stevens has accomplished in his move from Butler to the Boston Celtics or Billy Donovan from Florida to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the college-to-pros coaching path has largely proven a treacherous one, for both coach and NBA suitors.
Just ask Beilein and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Or Fred Hoiberg and the Chicago Bulls.
Or before that, John Calipari and the New Jersey Nets or Rick Pitino and the Boston Celtics.
And on and on and on, to the point where Stevens and Donovan stand as outliers.
Or do we need to mention Lon Kruger, Tim Floyd, Mike Montgomery, P.J. Carlesimo, Jerry Tarkanian and Leonard Hamilton?
While some have made it back out of the rabbit hole, as has been the case with Calipari at Kentucky and Hamilton at Florida State (or Pitino before other issues at Louisville), it was not before hard truths were accepted.
Which brings us back to Pitino and Calipari and Miami as a Waterloo.
For Pitino, previously successful at Providence and Kentucky, the zero hour came on Feb. 6, 2001, after a 112-86 Celtics humiliation at the hands of the Heat at AmericanAirlines Arena. He remained behind in Miami as the Celtics moved on without him.
"It's heartbreaking to me, what's happened here," Pitino said after that loss to the Heat. "I love the Boston Celtics and I'll always be a fan."
He would never coach another NBA game.
For Calipari, who earlier had college success at UMass, the end came at Miami Arena, on March 14, 1999, after he coached the Nets to a 102-76 loss, when team owners met with him at the Heat's former arena and told him it was over. Like Pitino, he did not depart with his team.
"We hit a bump in the road," he said after that loss to the Heat.
Like Pitino, he would not work as an NBA head coach again.
But before all of that, before Pat Riley in essence coached Calipari and Pitino out of the NBA, there was the curious case of Bob Huggins _ and a college coach who said no.
That was in June 1995, when, after assuming control of the Heat months earlier, Micky Arison sought to make a splash.
So he went to school on Bob Huggins, who, at that time, was the NCAA's Calipari or Pitino, the hot name from a hot school, in his case Cincinnati.
Huggins was intrigued. So intrigued that if Riley had not faxed in his resignation with the New York Knicks, he well may have started the alliance with the Arisons that Riley instead fostered.
"We came within 24 hours of hiring Bob Huggins," Arison would reveal on the day he signed Riley. "Had Pat not resigned that day, we would have that weekend probably hired Bob Huggins. We would have made him an offer. I don't want to assume, but I think he would have accepted it."
That's where the history gets fuzzy.
"I pulled out," Huggins would say months later. "I pulled out because that's not what I wanted to do at that time."
While uneven times followed in Cincinnati, success would ensue at Kansas State and West Virginia, where he remains, coaching at 66 _ 25 years after that conversion with the Heat.
Recently, as he moved past Adolph Rupp on the NCAA's all-time victory list, he spoke to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about his Heat moment in time, reflecting on a conversion he had with his former Cincinnati point guard Nick Van Exel back when he said the Heat were dangling a $5 million annual salary.
"I told him if I took the Miami job, I could take care of my family forever," Huggins said of that conversation with Van Exel, the long-time NBA veteran who now is a Memphis Grizzlies assistant coach. "He said, 'Coach, how much money do you need? These guys need you just like I needed you.' I called my wife and said, 'I can't go.' "
Whether fact or folklore, what matters is one coach seemingly got it right before other college coaches found Miami to be the place with their NBA careers ended, or, in Beilein's case, never made it back to.
