By Lee Strawther
The Sporting Tribune
The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
Generally speaking there haven’t been many college basketball coaches that have found success when making the leap to the professional ranks. Billy Donovan is one of those rare exceptions.
William John Donovan, Jr was born May 30, 1965 and raised in Rockville Centre on Long Island, New York. He was the team’s point guard at St. Agnes Cathedral High School where he led the Stags to a Long Island Catholic High School Championship his senior year.
After graduating, Donovan accepted an athletic scholarship to Providence College in Providence, RI. Limited playing time, however, led him to average only three points per game his first two seasons there.
In 1985 New York Knicks assistant Rick Pitino took over as head coach of the Friars and advised Donovan to get in better shape if he wanted to compete for a rotation spot the next season. A “gym rat,” Donovan followed Pitino’s advice and was named the Friars’s starting floor general his junior year, where his scoring jumped to 15.1 points per game
As a senior Donovan posted over 20 points and seven assists per game and led the sixth-seeded Friars to the 1987 Final Four while earning Southeast Regional Most Valuable Player honors. He was also named to the 1987 All-Big East First Team, the 1987 Big East All-Tournament team, and was an Honorable Mention All-American.
“I’ve never in my life had anyone work as hard to improve,” Pitino would say of him.
Donovan was selected by the Utah Jazz in the third round of the 1987 NBA Draft but was waived before the season began. He signed with the Wyoming Wildcatters of the Continental Basketball Association just as Pitino left Providence and returned to New York as the new head coach of the Knicks.
In December of that year Pitino and the Knicks signed Donovan to a one-year contract but later waived him. He did not receive another NBA offer and realized that his time as a player had come to an end and finally left the game in January 1989, taking a job on Wall Street.
Unhappy as a broker and with basketball in his blood, he contacted Pitino seeing advice about getting into coaching, but was advised to give Wall Street another crack before rushing into a career change.
Donovan would reached out again while Pitino was in the process of leaving the Knicks to become the head coach at the University of Kentucky, and he agreed to bring Donovan along as a graduate assistant.
The Wildcats quickly returned to national prominence, and Donovan’s coaching career progressed as well. After one season he was promoted to assistant coach, then to associate head coach by 1992. He then served as Pitino’s lead assistant during Kentucky’s 1993 Final Four run.
Kentucky’s success earned Donovan his first head coaching position at Marshall University in 1994, making him (at age 28) the youngest head coach in Division I basketball at the time.
The Herd doubled their win total from the previous year, finishing with an 18–9 record, and won the Southern Conference North Division crown with Donovan earning Southern Conference Coach of the Year honors. In his second season (1995–96) they went 17-11 and led the Southern Conference in scoring.
In March of ‘96, Florida was in search of someone young and energetic to bring long-term success to the program, and felt Donovan was the best fit. They were correct.
Donovan’s first two seasons weren’t exactly memorable but there were signs of progress as the 1997-98 team reached the postseason with an invite to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT).
The next season (1998-99) Florida went 22-9, beginning a streak of 16 consecutive 20-win seasons for the Gators. They continued to play well in the postseason making their third NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearance.
In 2000 Donovan led Florida to its first regular season Southeastern Conference championship and second Final Four appearance, and would again win the SEC regular season title in 2001.
By the 2005-06 season, Donovan’s sophomore-led Gators ran off 17 straight wins to start the year. The young group took second place in the SEC Eastern Division however, but came together in the postseason, winning the school’s second-ever conference tournament. In that year’s NCAA tourney, the third-seeded Gators again reached the Final Four and went on to defeat UCLA to win the university’s first-ever NCAA crown.
Florida was the preseason favorite to repeat as champions the following year and went on to win the SEC Tournament again earning them the No. 1 overall seed in the 2007 NCAA tourney. When it was all said and done, the Gators repeated as national champions with a victory over Ohio State.
Accepting, then turning down the head coaching job of the NBA’s Orlando Magic after the second title, Donovan remained at Florida for another eight seasons.
The Gators returned to the NCAA tournament during the 2009-10 season, but lost in the first round to BYU. Nonetheless, Donovan would go on to receive the highly-coveted John R. Wooden “Legends of Coaching Award” at season’s end for his team’s accomplishments.
In addition to his back-to-back national championships, Donovan was a three-time SEC Coach of the Year (2011, 2013, 2014) and led the Gators to 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, six SEC regular season titles and four SEC Tournament titles.
In April 2015, after 19 years at Florida, Donovan made his return to the NBA as head coach the Oklahoma City Thunder, immediately leading the team to a Northwest Division title while reaching the Western Conference Finals.
In five seasons under Donovan, the Thunder finished with winning records and never missed the playoffs, and after the 2020 season he was named the NBA Coach’s Association Coach of the Year. Despite that he left OKC and accepted the head coaching job of the Chicago Bulls, which he still holds today.
“The NBA game is a different game,” he would say of the transition from college to the pros, “and that’s one of the things that intrigued me is it’s learning and growing in a different way, in a different area and a different game.”
For his overall body of work he was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as part of its 2025 class.
“I’ve always spent time talking to a lot of NBA coaches, and I’ve always said this,” he once explained. “There’s certain things that work in the NBA that don’t work in college. And there’s certain things in college that don’t work in the NBA.”
Coaching at the collegiate, professional and international levels, if anyone would know, it would be Donovan.