Former Illinois point guard Chester Frazier, who had spent time has a video coordinator in Bruce Weber’s program after he graduated, has restarted his coaching career.
Frazier was hired this week as an assistant coach with Weber’s new program, Kansas State. Clearly excited about the job opportunity, Frazier hopped on the first plane to Manhattan, KS.
The only problem?
He hadn’t finished his previous job when he left. Frazier had been playing for S. Oliver Baskets in the German Bundesliga this season, and when he made the decision to leave the team, it was the night before the second game of their semifinal matchup in the playoffs.
Loyalty, huh?
“We are disappointed that Chester Frazier has decided to leave the s.Oliver Baskets at this crucial stage of the season,” Jochen Bähr, the team’s managing director said in a statement later translated into English. “At the time of his commitment, it was not clear that we would get this far in the playoffs. We had agreed with Chester that he will remain at least until the end of the semifinal series against Ulm. Why he has decided to go back now already to the U.S., he has not informed us.”
Now, it would be one thing if Weber had hired Frazier a couple of days prior to April’s live period. At that point in the year, each and every program needs their recruiters to be on the road evaluating prospects. But this is late May, the time when college coaches are taking vacations and college hoops writers are looking for things to fill up the empty space in their blogs. I can’t imagine this is the way that Frazier wanted news of the start of his collegiate coaching career to spread around the internet. Weber even told him to finish out the season.
I guess Frazier didn’t like it in Germany.
I hope he already cashed all the checks they gave him.
Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @robdauster.