Jeff Ruland makes a home in D.C.

In house promotion always makes me uneasy, but this is such a terrific column from Yahoo!'s Dan Wetzel, tangentially NBA-related, that I just had to pass it along.

It details the coaching career of Jeff Ruland, the former NBA big man who has jumped around from minor NCAA programs to the NBA as an assistant to a gig with Division II University District of Columbia. I feel like quoting the whole piece, but here's an initial taste:

When the Sixers let him go, Ruland had options. He was going to get paid for another year regardless, so he could've just gone and played golf. He could've tried to hook on somewhere else in the NBA or returned to the D-League, where he'd been a head coach. He could've searched for a high-level D-I assistant job.

He's a big guy with a big personality, a natural recruiter and at 6-foot-10, a rare teacher of big men. There's never been a lack of respect in basketball circles for Ruland.

Instead he heard about the opening for a head coach at UDC, a historically black, 5,500-student school located three-and-a-half miles up Connecticut Avenue from the White House. The program had been drilled by the NCAA for rampant rule violations and was, quite possibly, the worst team in all of college basketball.

Ruland saw a dream amidst the disaster. Here was this second chance program struggling to its feet. And here was this second chance coach looking to do the same. It was perfect, he figured. He had left Iona in a test of wills with the administration and, at the time, figured he was done with the college game.

It turned out he missed it.

Great read, well worth your time.

Charles Barkley Rick Barry Elgin Baylor Dave Bing Larry Bird