The story has been told often, sometimes embellished. As Rip Hamilton tells it, after leading UConn to the Elite Eight he had made up his mind to go into the NBA Draft as a sophomore. He walked through the men’s basketball headquarters at Gampel Pavilion, from one office to another, saying his goodbyes to each assistant coach.
Then came the last door and the conversation he dreaded, telling Jim Calhoun he was done with college.
Calhoun, true to form, was ready for it, his case sketched out on an easel pad in his spacious office. Hamilton was projected to go to the Knicks, who had the 16th pick in the 1998 draft, and they already had Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell, so Hamilton wouldn’t get much playing time. The guaranteed money would be relatively low and, as Calhoun flipped the sheets of paper, one layer of assumptions after another, he concluded Hamilton would soon be out of the league.
Rip certainly made the most of his three years in Storrs- what was your favorite Rip Hamilton moment? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/MQ9RZ8vmkK
— UConn Men's Basketball (@UConnMBB) January 30, 2024
But if he returned to UConn, as more sheets were flipped, Hamilton would be an All-American, whoosh, Big East player of the year a second time, whoosh, “The Michael Jordan of UConn” … and, whoosh, a national champion.
That was enough for Hamilton to retrace his steps, telling all the assistants he was coming back, a decision that has stood the test of time.
A year later, Hamilton and the Huskies won it all, rode in the triumphant motorcade from Bradley to Storrs and suddenly, Rip Hamilton was in a moment he wanted to last forever.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Hamilton said. “Getting on that bus, holding that trophy up, being there with my guys, Kevin Freeman, Jake Voskuhl. I looked at Kev, he was my best friend, my counselor, my therapist, and I was his, and I said, ‘Kev, man, last year the whole thing was to leave school, this year, I don’t want to go. Let’s run this back. This is the best time I’ve had in my life, sharing with great a group of guys that support each other, a great leader at the helm, and we know what it takes now to win a championship.'”
Assistant coach Karl Hobbs eventually convinced Hamilton that now was his time, though Calhoun had the easel pad ready with new possibilities like a third Big East award .. all-time leading scorer … whoosh, a championship repeat. Hamilton always had great timing, and now he’d surely be a lottery pick, he’d done everything he could at UConn.
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It was time to move on. But when you leave the kind of mark Richard Clay “Rip” Hamilton, left at UConn, you never really leave. He went on to do great things in the NBA, and may one day be enshrined in Springfield, but he will forever belong to UConn. That will become official Saturday when Hamilton’s No. 32 jersey will be retired, his number hoisted up with Ray Allen’s, Rebecca Lobo’s and Swin Cash’s at Gampel.
“It’s going to mean everything to me,” Hamilton said. “For me, it’s the trust factor I had with Coach Calhoun. My mom and dad had to trust him, everyone had to trust him. Everything Coach has ever said to me came true, especially when you live in this world of basketball and everybody is just selling you dreams.”
Hamilton, from Coatesville, Pa, was a McDonald’s All-American. There were great men’s basketball players here before Hamilton, such as Allen, now in the Naismith Hall of Fame. There have been great players since Hamilton, who won one, in some cases two national championships.
But there is only one Rip here, the one who led UConn to that dream destination that had seemed unreachable for so long, then beckoned through the 1990s, an exhilarating, yet annually frustrating decade of knocking, banging on the door to the Final Four. When Hamilton took Calhoun’s and his parents’ advice, and came back for his third year, the Huskies finally kicked that darn door in. And he did it in his matter-of-fact manner.
“Rip never took a ‘big’ shot,” Calhoun said. “To him, they were all just another shot. When we needed a basket, they’d ask, ‘Who are you going to put the ball in the hands of? Rip. Why? I’ll tell you one thing, whether he makes it, or misses it, it wasn’t going to be because of the pressure.”
Hamilton’s most memorable “just another shot” came in the Sweet 16 in 1998, a game-winner as time ran out against Washington. In the 1999 NCAA Tournament, Hamilton scored 21 against Gonzaga in the program’s over-the-hump-at-last win over Gonzaga in the Regional Final. He then scored 27 in the victory over Duke in the national title game. He was most outstanding player of that Final Four, a consensus All-American, repeat Big East player of the year.
He was the seventh pick in the draft, and in his 14-year career he was three times an All-Star and an NBA champion in 2004 with the Pistons, who have also retired his No. 32.
Rip Hamilton & UConn’s 1999 NCAA Title Run Was Legendary🔥😤 #finalfour #m… https://t.co/Vn2WTIhxnS via @YouTube One of my favorite college basketball teams. Rip can get you a basket anytime he wanted to!
— Andrew Pinto (@AndrewPinto39) March 24, 2023
Since his playing career ended in 2013, Hamilton, 46, has devoted time to his family, resisting any urge or offer to take a full-time coaching or front-office job. He coaches his son, Richard Clay Hamilton II’s team, does his analysis for CBS, keeps his hand in the game as an ambassador for the NBA and a consultant with the Pistons and he owns a piece of a soccer club in Mexico and a pickleball club in D.C.
“The most important thing is raising my kids, man,” he said.
Several of Hamilton’s UConn teammates will be at Gampel for the ceremony during the UConn-Villanova game. He called and asked them, because he wouldn’t be there without them.
“This is not just a Rip Hamilton thing,” he said. “That’s not just my name going up, that’s the whole ’99 team. No egos, no money was in play, just kids who came to the University of Connecticut believing what Coach sold us. We came there to try to win a national championship, because we knew in the past it had never been done, even though we had a rich history.”
Rich history is still being made at UConn, the door he kicked in has opened for four subsequent titles. Donovan Clingan, who is wearing No. 32 now, wil keep the number until he leaves. After that, no one will wear it again at UConn, and it will hang forever, frozen in time at UConn, the way Hamilton wished the moments of 1999 could have been frozen, for in UConn history there is only one Rip Hamilton.
