Dave Hyde: There'll never be another like Jim Larrañaga in South Florida sports

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Let’s begin this ending with the right story. There are plenty who don’t get it right. The right story lends direction and purpose for what Jim Larrañaga was about as he resigns and begins where everything did for him, which was with his Miami basketball team around him.

So, you could tell about him dancing in the locker room — shimmying, really, in that old-school, elbows-akimbo manner he did — after beating Houston as players clapped after reaching the Final Four just 20 months ago.

You could tell about meeting his players as they came out of the game, one by one, for a quick handshake or hug in the spring of 2022 as they lost in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.

But here’s the better story as he leaves a life of coaching basketball: Each practice, each year, for decades, Larrañaga had signs propped up against chairs lining the baseline for players to see as the word. “The Ten Commitments,’’ he called them, and each one spoke of a different angle to his basketball philosophy.

“We will set ourselves defensively every time,’’ read No. 1.

“We will share the ball,’’ read No. 7.

Then, for weekend practices, the Ten Commitments were replaced by signs of motivational author Stephen Covey’s ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood,’’ read No. 7.

Isaiah Wong, who’s now with the Charlotte Hornets, could recite The Ten Commitments and Covey’s Seven Habits after being in Larrañaga’s program for four years. He developed from a role-playing freshman in that time to the ACC Player of the Year.

Something wasn’t right anymore for Larrañaga, 75, who resigned suddenly Thursday. The 4-8 record spoke of it. But so did what a Miami official said last week while I watched a practice: His players might know The Ten Commitments but probably didn’t know the Seven Daily Habits just yet. That’s because 10 of them just came through the transfer portal. They hadn’t been around long enough.

The portal and its real-life bedfellow in name, image and likeness money has changed more than college sports. It’s changing the cast of coaches teaching them. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Virginia’s Tony Bennett, Villanova’s Jay Wright — some titans of the games are leaving.

Now, Larrañaga, too. The new game isn’t for him. He told of a player’s agent wanting $1 million for his player. “I said, ‘What?’ he said. “A million dollars to play college basketball?”’

Now he tried to explain it all.

“It’s hard to put into words why I’m doing this, ” he said Thursday. “I love the game, love the university. … But because I love the game and the university that much, I felt, ‘OK, there’s one thing you have to constantly ask yourself: Are you going to give everything you have, the commitment it deserves?' "

He said, “I’m exhausted.”

He told a story of meeting his team after their Final Four trip in the spring of 2023. Eight said they were transferring. They liked Larrañaga and Miami, too. But they had a chance to make money somewhere else.

He showed up for his final press conference in form. No suit and tie. He wore a sweat suit. He’s a coach. He saw himself as a teacher even more. He taught more than dribbling a ball. He taught life. Each day he would give players a daily quote.

“Life is about balance,’’ he’d say, talking about not just offense and defense but time management outside the locker room.

It was about winning, of course. That meant building an unsteady program, too. When he arrived at Miami in 2011, he took pizzas to dorm rooms and talked at fraternities to invite them to games and tell about the importance of a homecourt advantage.

Whether that’s why they began to fill up the student section or winning did the trick is anyone’s guess. But they came. And he built. And, man, will Miami miss him.

He was a coach of routine. Most every day for lunch, he’d walk across campus talking to everyday students and order the same strawberry and banana smoothie at a shop. He’d then continue on to a food court to order the same six-inch toasted tuna sub with provolone cheese.

He brought a slice of humanity like that to the big-time coaching pressure. A day before leaving for the Final Four, he invited me into a coach’s meeting where they drew up their game plan followed by a team meeting where he addressed the players on strategy. No coach does that.

It wasn’t always fun and good games for him. There were a couple of empty Miami years due to an FBI investigation into shoe deals over his and other programs that went nowhere. Last season, he thought he had a team to sustain back-to-back Elite Eight and Final Four seasons but injuries derailed everything.

“I was heartbroken,’’ Larrañaga said last week.

He didn’t golf, fish or have any hobby beyond coaching basketball. The only thing he did was watch movies with his wife, and he’d incorporate clips from the Last Samurai or Cobra Kai into talks. When Miami led Auburn by a point near the end in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, he trotted out a Mel Gibson line in a timeout huddle from a Braveheart clip they’d all seen.

“Are you ready to go to war?” he said.

For 44 seasons, he went to basketball war. His career started as a Davidson assistant in 1971 and ended with an overtime loss to Mount St. Mary’s on Saturday. Something wasn’t right anymore. He saw it.

“It’s a new world,’’ he said a week ago in his office, talking about the portal and the NIL.

It sure feels like a new world around Miami sports now. Larrañaga is gone, and so much of what a good coach should do goes out the door with him. Just as anyone who played for him can tell you. They’ll recite Stephen Covey’s seven habits of effective people, too.