In the dead of night at a hospital where miracles are performed with no guarantee against tears, a basketball coach discovered a new way to keep score.
Jeff Bzdelik walked into The Children’s Hospital of Denver to save his daughter.
He walked out a better coach, a better father, a better man.
“It’s a life-changing experience for any parent who has spent a night in that hospital and watched the sun come up,” said Bzdelik, whose own child was treated in 2005 for a brain tumor that proved to be benign.
“There are faces of children who will always be on my mind. My family was fortunate to walk out of there. A lot of kids don’t. Those kids are some of the toughest people I’ve ever seen. I would watch a kid fall down with every step, then get right back up and try again.”
A new calendar is hung on the wall. The first of January knocks at the door. If only for one day, we stop to take an accounting of our lives, resolve to be better, entertain dreams.
On New Year’s Eve of 2004, Bzdelik was unemployed, fired from a dream job in the NBA, run off the Nuggets’ bench.
On Jan. 1, 2006, there’s a healthy daughter for Bzdelik to hug and the best little college basketball team in Colorado to call his own.
Any way you score it, Bzdelik has won.
Get me rewrite. Success needs a new definition.
Courtney Bzdelik, a teenage girl who underwent brain surgery last year and lived to tell, taught her father how to embrace the endless possibilities of the next big dream, rather than obsess over what could have been.
“It makes you stop and think every day,” said Bzdelik, grinning at the memory of waiting in line for the hospital shower at 4:30 a.m., when the mother of a sick child remarked the scene reminded her of summer camp.
“Winning a basketball game? I remember the surgeon telling me, ‘I can’t afford to have a bad day.’ A professional athlete might say, ‘Aw, we had an off night.’ For the folks at Children’s Hospital, that’s not an option. I can picture the nurses who came into my daughter’s room at 3 o’clock in the morning, full of passion. Our surgeon worked harder, put in longer hours, than I ever did in my coaching career. And his job is life or death.”
Friends call him Coach Buzz. It’s more than a nickname. It’s the energy Bzdelik produces 24/7.
His intensity is so high voltage, being close to Bzdelik is akin to standing under a power line. You can hear the passion that buzzes through his veins.
Red lights. Roses. It made little difference. Coach Buzz was not built to stop for anything.
Down 20 points in the fourth quarter, he would demand timeout and furiously scribble a play for the Nuggets. He argued with refs like a $400 per hour lawyer. It wore people out.
“Basketball has always been just a part of my life. But it has become a smaller part of my life. Is that good? I don’t think it’s good; I know it’s good. It makes you a better coach,” said Bzdelik, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m revealing things that aren’t easy. But now there’s a human side of me maybe players can see. Instead of the team panicking under stress, we can have a little levity. I told my players the other day, in my 30 years of coaching, I’ve never had so much fun.”
How many times have we seen a millionaire wave goodbye to pro sports, pledging to spend more quality time with the family? It might be the biggest white lie in sports.
Coming from Bzdelik, it was nothing but the truth.
After being dumped by the Nuggets 28 games into last season, Coach Buzz put down roots deeper in Colorado soil, instead of planting a “For Sale” sign in front of his suburban Denver home.
Down the road from his house, Bzdelik took a job far from the klieg lights of the NBA, filling a distinctly unglamorous position vacant for the second time in two years.
For decades, AFA basketball has offered two career paths for a coach. There’s a hoops protection program, allowing the man who bears witness on the bench to disappear slowly into anonymity. Or a shrewd winner can trade a rare postseason bid for a quick, one-way ticket out of town.
So the shocker is the Falcons have fashioned the best start in school history, winning 12 of 13 games, and Bzdelik doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. At least not without his wallet and car keys.
On a recent winter night, he celebrated a hard-earned victory by cooling his heels in the basketball office, while a building maintenance crew worked to rescue Bzdelik’s valuables, held hostage behind a jammed door to the coach’s private bathroom. How on earth did that happen?
“I got a little upset,” Bzdelik sheepishly admitted, “and slammed the door.”
While perspective might have softened the coach’s heart, it didn’t turn his competitive streak to applesauce. Somehow, that’s reassuring.
Can Coach Buzz find a happily-ever-after in a tiny gym where undersized cadets sweat to attract any attention from Dick Vitale and the NCAA Tournament committee?
“We’re like Seabiscuit,” Bzdelik said. “We’re probably not fast enough, probably not big enough, probably not strong enough, probably not good enough. But the heart of this team? It just goes and goes.”
There is fame. There is fortune. There is family. What counts most?
For Bzdelik, it’s no contest.
The Falcons won again Saturday. They beat Indiana-
Purdue of Fort Wayne. The score?
Try to measure Bzdelik’s smile by numbers on a scoreboard, and you’re missing the point.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
