This article originally appeared in the Jan. 11, 2016, issue of Sports Illustrated. Subscribe to the magazine here.
The king has been gone, but all the while his throne has remained tantalizingly available.
“I’m going in,” said Syracuse assistant coach Gerry McNamara one afternoon not long ago. McNamara was standing in the tiny, windowless and, needless to say, nonbathroomed office of Kip Wellman, the Orange’s director of basketball operations. “I gotta try it.”
“I wouldn’t do it,” said Wellman, feigning terror. “He’ll find out. Somehow. Some way.”
“It’s a chance I gotta take,” said McNamara, nodding and setting his jaw as if he were about to take a hill.