I didn’t know Skip Prosser well.

Ours was a casual relationship. He’d come to Las Vegas every summer to evaluate the high school talent on display and we’d bump into each other in a gym or in a parking lot, say hi and go our separate ways. Or he’d have Xavier or Wake Forest in the NCAA Tournament, and I’d be one of 200 people trying to get a quote about one of his players or the team he’d be facing.

Our semi-annual by-chance meeting in Vegas came on July 23. I was heading into the gym at Green Valley High School to watch the Reebok Summer Championships and he was on his way out the door to drive to another gym to watch some kid he hoped might help Wake Forest in a couple of years.

I asked him how he was. He said, “Fine.” I told him he was looking good. He said, “Thanks.” I wished him good luck, and he said, “I appreciate that. Take care.”

That was the last time I saw Prosser. Three days later, he was dead, having collapsed after jogging.

Moments after I left Prosser, I ran into Lon Kruger, a guy I’ve gotten to know very well from having covered his first three years at UNLV. Usually, after we greet each other, he always asks me about my health. Having spent nearly six years trying to beat thyroid cancer, it’s an easy icebreaker.

I told him I was doing OK, and he said all was well with him, too. Except, all really wasn’t well. Ten days later, he was in the hospital undergoing open-heart surgery to clear six blockages in his arteries.

It’s not often I get to turn the tables on someone, so after I learned of the procedure, I got to ask Kruger how he was doing when he showed up at his Thomas & Mack Center office two days after being released from the hospital. For a guy who had gone through a sextuple bypass, he looked amazingly good, save for a nasty couple of scars on his chest and inside his left arm.

It’s bad enough the college basketball community had lost one good guy when Prosser died. Imagine if Kruger had not bothered to take a stress test and didn‘t know of all the blockages around his heart and he happened to drop dead?

Fortunately, at age 54, he’s smart enough to make sure that he undergoes a complete annual physical. His condition, it turns out, wasn’t caused by the stress that is part-and-parcel with coaching a Division I basketball team. It was heredity. His father Don had a history of heart problems. Same for a couple of his uncles.

He had submitted to the stress test nearly six weeks before Prosser’s death. Kruger knew he had some health issues of his own and if he didn’t address then, there was a good chance he could have joined Prosser at some point, perhaps sooner than later.

Health care for one’s self is something every coach believes in. But sometimes, it’s hard to take care of yourself. You’re putting in late hours in the office breaking down film on how to stop the opposing team’s star opponent. You’re driving a couple hundred miles to watch a kid play, fueled by Starbucks or bags of fast food. You don’t get to bed on game nights until 3 or 4 in the morning, and that’s usually on a night you win. How the hell are you supposed to be a modicum of health?

We know all the Rick Majerus stories and his never-ending battle to get healthy. The guy who once ran the St. George, Utah, Marathon just to prove he could do it is the same guy who stopped for ice cream and snacks while driving on the way to a juco gym in the dead of winter to watch a kid play for the College of Southern Idaho.

It seems like every year Jim Calhoun is dealing with some sort of ailment. Bob Huggins has had his share of medical issues. Even a guy like Mike Krzyzewski, who always looks fit, had to take a medical time out a dozen years ago when his back gave out.

If you tell these guys to slow down, which I’m sure their wives have tried to do, they look at you as if you’re nuts. No way are they going to change. They can’t. Not if they want to keep their jobs. Simply put, the pressure to win is too great for them to change their routine.

There isn’t a single coach in America who doesn’t work hard, put in long hours and is willing to go the extra mile, legally, of course, to succeed. But at what cost?

Skip Prosser went from the three tournaments in Las Vegas to one in Orlando, Fla. The next day, he was back in Winston-Salem, N.C. He wasn’t alone when it came to criss-crossing the country. The NCAA gives you only so many days to evaluate and there are limits to that. So every coach pushes the envelope, trying to see one more kid at one more game so they can live with themselves with the knowledge they were doing everything they could to make their program successful.

Perhaps it’s time for the NABC to work with the NCAA on developing a more sensible time frame for summer evaluation and alleviate some of the stress on its coaches as they fly here and there, jump into rental cars and make their way to high school gyms. And while they’re at it, maybe the NABC can continue to impress upon its members the need to be proactive when it comes to their health. Given that universities are investing millions in their programs and coaches are such valued resources, doesn’t it make sense that these resources remain healthy and viable?

Ironically, Kruger’s UNLV contract doesn’t stipulate that he has to submit to an annual physical in order to perform his job. But Kruger is old enough and smart enough to know that a complete annual physical is mandatory for his own well-being, let alone to put his employer’s mind at ease.
Smart indeed. Had Kruger not undergone that stress test in June, who knows what would have happened to him? Fortunately, we won’t have to speculate.