In the winter of 1997, when onetime Villanova center Ed Pinckney was playing for the Miami Heat, the last stop in a peripatetic 12-year NBA career, he found himself riding in a hotel elevator with then-Heat coach Pat Riley. It was just the two of them. As the elevator rose, Riley turned to Pinckney and said, "Someday you’ve got to tell me what Massimino said at halftime of that game." Riley didn’t need to specify which game he was referencing and Pinckney most definitely didn’t need to ask. They both just knew. Anybody would know.
Rollie Massimino, who died Wednesday at the age of 82 after battling lung cancer and other illnesses, coached 1,278 college basketball games (he won 816 of then, including 481 at the Division I level) in a 41-year career that started at Stony Brook University on Long Island in 1969 when he was 35 years old and ended last winter at tiny Keiser University in West Palm Beach, Florida, when he was fighting for his life.