They came to pay honor to a basketball coach, but they did not spend many words praising clever schemes or inspired seasons.
Sunday at Kennesaw State’s Convocation Center, they remembered Amir Abdur-Rahim the person in a celebration of his life.
Murray State coach Steve Prohm said that once, when he and Abdur-Rahim were fellow assistant coaches, he stepped in to help save Prohm’s relationship with his then-girlfriend. After the couple had found rocky ground, Abdur-Rahim sent her a lengthy Facebook message imploring the two of them to work things out. Prohm and wife Katie have now been married 11 years and have four children.
Georgia Tech assistant coach Pershin Williams, who was on Abdur-Rahim’s staff for four seasons at Kennesaw State, spoke of a man who changed his life by giving him a career break (“I’m one of many,” he said), treated everyone like his brother or sister and who was unafraid to tell other men that he loved them.
South Florida vice president for athletics Michael Kelly remembered how Abdur-Rahim attended other Bulls teams competitions and made such an impression on the athletic department’s other head coaches that all of them asked him to speak to their teams — requests he willingly filled — and how he enthusiastically engaged with the student body.
On and on it went in homage to Abdur-Rahim, who died Thursday at the age of 43 from complications stemming from a medical procedure following health issues. Abdur-Rahim was close to starting his second season at USF after four years at Kennesaw State, which he led in 2023 to its first Division I NCAA Tournament berth.
Unable to attend, a basketball colleague and close friend watched the service online. He found the outpouring most appropriate.
“He was so good at basketball because he wasn’t always focused on basketball,” Darryl LaBarrie, a former Georgia Tech assistant coach and a close friend of Abdur-Rahim’s, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The players and the coaching staff always felt that if you’ve got that kind of environment, that kind of atmosphere, only good things are going to happen if they know that you care about them. So it’s not just about you if you make a shot or not.”
We have lost a great leader, a person whom Atlanta and Georgia could take pride in. From Cobb County and a Wheeler High graduate, Abdur-Rahim lived a life of professional and personal success. He left behind family, friends, colleagues and former players who were graced by his presence and example. Sunday’s service testified.
“There will be a hole in this heart for a long time, I can promise you that,” said USF assistant coach Ben Fletcher, who also served on Abdur-Rahim’s staff at KSU. “But one thing I can promise you, that every time that I set foot on that floor it will be for him and only for him.”
Abdur-Rahim’s older brother Shareef, who played 12 years in the NBA, recalled how Amir chided him to call their mother, hardly typical little-brother duty. Prohm, the coaching colleague whose dating relationship was stabilized by Abdur-Rahim, said Abdur-Rahim was “one person I always knew I could count on to make me truly, truly believe in myself.”
Prohm, who recruited and coached Abdur-Rahim before they became peers and friends, said that his team will honor Abdur-Rahim and his family by using one of his maxims — “Love wins” — as its motto for the season.
Terrell Burden, the star point guard for the Owls in their ASUN championship season, joked that his coach “is up there laughing at me” because Burden didn’t like public speaking such as being interviewed by media, but he required him to do so anyway. It was a tribute in itself that, in front of a room full of hundreds of strangers, Burden delivered perhaps the most poignant message of the service.
“I know I could come up here and tell you a million basketball stories, but at the end of the day, basketball is what he used to teach us about how to become a man,” Burden said.
Burden then read from a letter that he wrote to Abdur-Rahim earlier this year, one that began “Dear my best friend.” In it, Burden recalled being shy and quiet before coming to KSU and getting cussed out at practice early on in his Owls career before developing into a leader who learned to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
Not inconsequentially, Burden will continue his playing career. Saturday, he was drafted by the Hawks’ G-League team, the College Park Skyhawks.
“I just want to say for that, I can never be thankful for you enough because not only did you help in my basketball career and help me get where I am today, you helped me change my approach to life and the way I see things,” Burden said, reading from the letter.
Abdur-Rahim’s basketball accomplishments are decidedly praiseworthy. He took KSU from one win in his first season (2019-20) to a share of the ASUN regular-season title and the conference tournament championship three seasons later. Prior to 2023, not only had KSU not only never won an ASUN title but had not even had a winning season since elevating to Division I in 2005.
In Abdur-Rahim’s first season at USF, the Bulls set a school record for wins and captured the first regular-season conference title in school history.
LaBarrie saw his friend’s gift for creating winning teams in the smallest of details. At KSU, when players warmed up before games, they repeated back in unison the commands of the strength and conditioning coach. When teams do this, normally at least a few players are too cool or distracted to participate. Not Abdur-Rahim’s team.
“All of them did it,” LaBarrie said. “Like, every single time. Nobody was forcing that. Nobody was trying not to do it. You could tell they were a group that really loved and believed in each other.”
It was the essence of how Abdur-Rahim won big with two programs historically unfamiliar with success.
“They just were so connected as a team and a staff that they just overwhelmed people,” LaBarrie said.
LaBarrie experienced Abdur-Rahim’s skill at connecting on a much more personal level. The two spoke often. LaBarrie is Christian and Abdur-Rahim was Muslim. Despite the difference, the two managed to have many conversations about faith that were open and safe.
“It’s rare to find people that are genuinely comfortable in who they are and not afraid to be that all the time,” LaBarrie said. “They don’t have different versions of themselves for different people. He was pretty authentic all the time.”
We’ll never know how high Abdur-Rahim’s star would have risen as a coach, how many players he would have developed and influenced. And his wife Arianne Buchanan and young children Laila, Lana and Aydin have been deprived of a husband and father far too soon.
“Sadly, my beautiful children will never experience him as an adult,” Buchanan said.
But we know this. In 43 years, love won in Abdur-Rahim’s life, over and over and over again.
Abdur-Rahim’s family requested that donations in his memory go to the Future Foundation, a program that supports underserved students in south Fulton County.
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