4B — Monday, December 10, 2018
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

How John Beilein helped Mike Gansey realize his NBA dreams

Thanksgiving, 
2006. 
Basketball 
buzzed 
in 
the 
background, but for the first 
time in his life, Mike Gansey 
wasn’t 
interested.
He was at 
his parents’ 
house 
in 
Olmsted 
Falls, Ohio. 
A perfectly 
pleasant 
place, 
but 
Gansey was 
supposed 
to be on the 
other side of that television 
set — playing basketball, not 
watching it.
That’s where he had been a 
year earlier, a star at shooting 
guard 
for 
John 
Beilein’s 
West 
Virginia 
Mountaineers. 
He 
finished 
sixth 
in 
the 
Big 
East 
in 
scoring 
that 
year 
and 
was 
named 
to 
the 
all-conference 
team.
He 
arrived 
at West Virginia two years 
before that, as a transfer from 
St. Bonaventure. Gansey knew 
it was the right fit from the 
first time he met Beilein, on 
his initial visit to Morgantown. 
Beilein told him he could live 
with his son, Patrick, a guard 
for the Mountaineers at the 
time.
Except 
when 
Gansey 
arrived on campus in the fall 
of 2003, there had been a 
miscommunication. He wasn’t 
living with Patrick. Within a 
week, they became best friends 
anyway, 
bonding 
over 
the 
misery of their NFL teams — 
Gansey, a native Clevelander, 
is a lifelong Browns fan, while 
Patrick follows in his father’s 
footsteps as a Buffalo Bills fan.
“We had a ton of similarities,” 
Gansey told The Daily. “You 
know how it is when you meet 
someone and it just clicks, and 
you’re like, ‘Man.’ We knew 
we were gonna be best friends 
from there.”
“He’s part of our family,” 
John Beilein said of Gansey 
now, 15 years later. “He’s 
probably as close as any kid 
that any of our children have 
met as part of our family.”
Gansey had to sit out his 
first season, redshirting and 
learning Beilein’s system. The 
next year — now living with 
Patrick for real — he became 
a star. That March, his place 
in Mountaineer history was 
immortalized when he scored 
29 points in a double-overtime 
win over Chris Paul and Wake 
Forest in the second round of 
the NCAA Tournament and 
helped West Virginia make its 
first Elite Eight in 46 years.
It 
was 
all 
supposed 
to 

culminate 
in 
the 
summer 
of 2006, when Gansey was 
projected 
as 
a 
first-round 
pick in the NBA draft. When 
the Indiana Pacers selected 
Shawne Williams 17th overall, 
Gansey became the top player 
available on ESPN analyst Jay 
Bilas’ big board.
But Gansey knew that wasn’t 
going to come to fruition. 
During 
pre-draft 
workouts, 
he 
hadn’t 
been 
the 
same 
player that he was during the 
previous two seasons, and he 
ended up going undrafted. The 
Miami Heat signed him to their 
Summer League roster, but his 
fatigue persisted.
“When I played Summer 
League in Miami, I was in a 
lot of pain,” Gansey said. “But 
I just thought 
I 
was 
worn 
down more than 
anything.”
He 
fought 
through 
the 
pain, went back 
to Morgantown 
and hoped for a 
second crack at 
the NBA.
One 
day 
with 
summer 
winding down, he and Patrick 
convinced the elder Beilein 
to 
take 
advantage 
of 
the 
fleeting warmth and play a 
rare nine holes of golf. But 
after persuading Beilein to join 
them, it was Gansey who had 
to quit midway through the 
round.
“I couldn’t even sit in the 
golf cart,” Gansey said. “And I 
was just like, ‘Something’s not 
right.’
“The next day, I was like, ‘I 
gotta go home, I gotta go to the 
Cleveland Clinic, I gotta figure 
this thing out.’ ”
Doctors quickly confirmed 
Gansey’s suspicion, diagnosing 
him with MRSA, a severe staph 
infection. Over the next two 
months, he lost 30 pounds 
and spiraled into depression, 
unable to play basketball for 
the first time in his life.
“He was very quiet,” said 
his brother Steve, who now 
coaches the Fort Wayne Mad 
Ants of the NBA G League. “It 
was a tough time for him and it 
was a tough time for our entire 
family, including me. Just to 
see my brother work his butt 
off and do everything that he 
absolutely strived for and it 
just being taken away from him 
because of a staph infection, it 
was very unfortunate.”
Then came the call.
Beilein was on the other 
end, inviting Gansey to return 
to Morgantown and live with 
him and his wife, Kathleen, 
as he continued to recover. 
Gansey 
had 
remained 
in 
communication with Patrick 
throughout 
his 
sickness. 
When Beilein got word of the 
situation, taking him in was 
the natural thing to do.

“He needed to be around 
the type of environment of 
happiness and fun that we have 
in our family,” Beilein told The 
Daily.
Gansey views it differently.
“Coach doesn’t have to do 
that,” Gansey said. “It just 
shows who Coach is, that when 
I was in a really bad place and 
depressed and had nothing to 
do, nowhere to go, that he and 
Mrs. Beilein and Pat were just 
like, ‘Hey, why don’t you come 
live with us?’
“It’s just who he is. It’s not 
just for me. He would do that 
for anyone.”
***
Now 35 years old, married 
with three kids, Gansey has an 
NBA championship ring locked 
away 
in 
his 
house — almost 
as he dreamt it 
in the summer 
of ’06.
The 
only 
difference 
is 
that it came not 
as a player, but 
as a front office 
executive 
for 
the 
Cleveland 
Cavaliers’ 2016 
championship team. Both Mike 
and Steve Gansey use the same 
word to describe that night — 
unforgettable. Mike because he 
had realized a lifelong dream, 
Steve because his brother face-
timed 
him 
mid-celebration 
from the locker room with 
Jamie Foxx.

“Me being a Clevelander … it 
was a surreal moment,” Gansey 
said.
Gansey’s journey to that 
locker 
room 
in 
Oakland 
began in earnest nine years 
earlier, 
when 
he 
returned 
to Morgantown to live with 
the Beileins. After spending 
that winter working out with 
Patrick and running youth 
camps around the state, he 
regained enough strength to 
take another crack at Summer 
League, this time with the Los 
Angeles Clippers.
Again, Gansey was unable to 
secure an NBA roster spot, but 
his performances were enough 
to earn a contract in the Italian 
league. The next season, he 
moved 700 miles north to 
Bremerhaven, a 
drab port town 
in the north of 
Germany.
John 
and 
Patrick 
Beilein 
came over for a 
game that year, 
in 
the 
winter 
of 2009, as part 
of a European 
tour that took 
them 
to 
see 
three former players. Despite 
having spent the past decade 
in Ann Arbor, John still shivers 
at the memory of March in 
Bremerhaven. Unfazed, Gansey 
persevered in pursuit of his 
NBA dream, jumping from 
Germany to D League stints in 
Boise, Idaho and Erie, Penn., 

before returning to Europe for 
a season in Spain.
Each 
summer, 
he 
would 
come back to the U.S., visit the 
Beileins in Ann Arbor, and then 
go back to Cleveland. He turned 
some connections with the 
Cavaliers into an opportunity 
to workout with players who 
stayed in town for the summer, 
playing 5-on-5 and joining in 
lifting sessions.
“Mike was such a nice guy 
and did whatever they wanted 
him to do,” Steve said. “It was 
a free workout, that’s really 
tough to get.”
At the end of 2011, when 
Cleveland had an internship 
open up in its front office, those 
summers with the team — as 
well as the year in Erie with 
their G League 
affiliate — paid 
dividends.
But it wasn’t 
just 
Gansey’s 
connections. 
Steve 
recalls 
his 
brother’s 
encyclopedic 
knowledge 
of 
the 
league 
long before his 
first 
job 
with 
the Cavaliers. One year when 
Mike was overseas, he decided 
he 
was 
unsatisfied 
with 
traditional NCAA tournament 
brackets and conjured a fantasy 
league for a couple friends. 
Steve was originally skeptical, 
but that quickly changed once 
the tournament got underway.

“It was actually really fun,” 
Steve said. “And I was just like, 
‘Mike, you could definitely get 
into scouting and get into some 
basketball operations here.’ ”
Not long after his first job 
as an intern, Cleveland’s front 
office handed him the reins to 
Canton. Since then, it has been 
a rapid ascension to assistant 
GM, with his former coach by 
him every step of the way.
“I learned so much from 
(Beilein),” Gansey said. “Just 
how he approaches every single 
day, how he approaches his 
staff. ‘Cause he’s the leader, the 
head coach, I’m always asking 
his advice. And he always 
calls me. When LeBron left, he 
called me and said, ‘Hey, keep 
your head up.’ Just giving me 
some motivation 
and 
saying 
everything’s 
gonna be okay.
“He 
just 
cared. 
Little 
things like that 
that go a long 
way. And that’s 
just who he is.”
Now, 
when 
Gansey’s phone 
rings 
and 
the 
screen reads, ‘John Beilein,’ 
there’s nothing abnormal about 
it. Just two friends talking 
about basketball and family.
“He cares about you more 
as a person than a basketball 
player,” Gansey said. “He’s a 
basketball coach, but he’s more 
of a role model to me.”

THEO
MACKIE

Michigan begins preparation to face Florida in the Peach Bowl

Chase Winovich would have 
had every right to skip out on 
the Peach Bowl.
The 
fifth-year 
senior 
defensive 
end 
will 
enter 

the NFL Draft this spring, 
and 
many 
players 
with 
similar 
prospects 
choose 
to sit out bowls due to the 
risk of injury. It wouldn’t 
have been a surprise, and it 
would have been completely 
understandable, had Winovich 

done the same.
But when asked if he would 
play in the No. 7 Michigan 
football team’s game against 
No. 10 Florida on Dec. 29, 
Winovich cracked a smile.
“Totally.”
He elaborated: “(The Peach 

Bowl) is a great bowl game and 
it’s a huge opportunity. I think 
because it’s not as historic as 
the Rose and the Orange and 
so forth, I think it often … gets 
overlooked, but this is … a huge 
opportunity for the team. It’s a 
must-win game against Florida 
and it really will set the tone 
for next year, good or bad.”
Bowl 
games 
can 
often 
feel meaningless, a hollow 
consolation 
for 
not 
being 
good enough to make the 
College Football Playoff. In 
the Wolverines’ case, after 
falling 
short 
in 
the 
last 
game of the season against 
their biggest rival with a Big 
Ten 
Championship 
Game 
appearance 
on 
the 
line, 
it’s even more so. But with 
the way the season ended, 
there’s a sense of unfinished 
business. The only thing left 
to do is move forward, and a 
win against the Gators would 
allow Winovich to go out on a 
high note.
“I’ve had the most fun of 
my football career suiting up 
here at Michigan,” said junior 
quarterback Shea Patterson — 

who also confirmed he would 
play in the game and said he 
would be back to 100 percent 
after suffering minor injuries 
against 
Indiana 
and 
Ohio 
State. “It’s been such an honor 
to do it and I think there’s a 
lot more to be done, but like 
I said, I’m just so excited to 
get one more win and possibly 
finish top five in the country. I 
think that would be pretty big 
for us.”
Michigan 
coach 
Jim 
Harbaugh 
said 
very 
little 
about the loss in Columbus on 
Sunday following the team’s 
awards banquet. Instead, he 
praised his team for how it 
overcame adversity after a 
loss to Notre Dame to rattle 
off 10 straight wins and how 
it fought through an early 17-0 
deficit at Northwestern for a 
comeback victory.
But how the Wolverines 
respond to the loss to the 
Buckeyes is their biggest trial 
yet, and a win in Atlanta could 
do a lot to wash out some of the 
bad taste in Michigan’s mouth 
and set the tone for next year.
“(We) started our practices 

(Saturday) 
and 
continue 
(Monday),” Harbaugh said. “It 
… was better than any I can 
remember where there was a 
break, two weeks where the 
team came back sharp and 
good.”
And despite the crushing 
end to the regular season, 
there are still things to look 
forward to at the Peach Bowl. 
The pre-bowl festivities will 
include trips to the College 
Football Hall of Fame and the 
Martin Luther King Jr. Center, 
a competition for a WWE-
style belt in the Battle for 
Bowl Week and service with 
kids from a local children’s 
hospital. And the Wolverines 
still have a goal to focus on: 
getting to 11 wins for just the 
10th time in program history.
“Getting our team prepared 
to play a really good, uber-
talented 
and 
twitched-up 
team like Florida, I’d say that’s 
a great challenge,” Harbaugh 
said. 
“The 
competition’s 
always the best part and the 
objective’s 
always 
to 
win. 
(We’re) hungry for that 11th 
win.”

John Beilein took his former player in when he was at his lowest point and helped turn his life around.

ALEC COHEN/Daily
Michigan coach John Beilein has a unique relationship with Mike Gansey, the assistant general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who played under Beilein.

“It’s not just 
for me. He’d 
do that for 
anyone.”

“He’s a 
basketball 
coach, but he’s a 
role model...” 

“...I just thought 
I was worn 
down more 
than anything.”

FOOTBALL

ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer

EVAN AARON/Daily
Fifth-year senior defensive end Chase Winovich has confirmed he will play with Michigan in the Peach Bowl on Dec. 29.

