Lett Back at Home in Pittsburgh
12/18/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
PITTSBURGH -- The day Ontario Lett first arrived at Pitt, none of his teammates knew his name.
It was mid-July in 2001. Lett, a late signee in Pitt's recruiting class that year, wasn't given time for campus tours or orientation. He unpacked his bags, signed his scholarship and headed to the Fitzgerald Field House to play pick-up with his new team.
Lett shook some hands, strapped on his high-tops and jumped in a game of five-on-five.
The warm-up game ended, and eventual All-American Pitt point guard and current Pitt assistant coach Brandin Knight had spent the last 20 minutes feeding Lett in the post and running past Lett's screens he set outside the arc.
Knight licked his chops. I don't know where they got this guy from, Knight thought. But I already love playing with him. I've been looking for someone like this for a while.
Lett, a 6-6, 280-pound wrecking-ball transfer from Pensacola State Junior College, would go on to earn Big East All-Tournament team honors in 2002 and All-Big East honorable mention in 2003. He helped the Panthers reach consecutive Big East Tournament Championship games and Sweet Sixteen appearances.
Twelve years removed from the last game he played at Pitt, Lett, 34, now shows a slight wrinkle in his skin as he is back on the Petersen Events Center's sidelines. With the help of a good word from Knight, Lett was hired in June by head coach Jamie Dixon to be one of Pitt's new graduate managers.
"I still have to remind myself that I'm not a player," Lett says. "I sometimes still think I'm not a staff member, because I tend to gravitate to the guys. I still want to get out there and do some things as a player."
All of this is understandable, because Lett is relatively new to coaching.
After graduating from Pitt with a Bachelor's Degree in Social Sciences in 2003, he entered what became a 10-year professional basketball career, playing for a slew of teams from Turkey, Australia, Japan, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain, Venezuela, Korea (twice) and Spain, where he met his would-be wife Vanesa. When the curtain finally closed on Lett's playing career in 2013, he immediately went to work in India as a youth basketball instructor for NBA Jr.
"The traveling started taking a toll on me and my wife," Lett, the Pensacola, Fla., native, says. "I was not only away from my wife but I was away from everybody over here."
Desiring a move back to his hometown, Lett accepted an assistant coaching position at Pensacola State Junior College, the same school he attended before coming to Pitt, in 2013.
"At that point, I was just trying to get into the coaching game. I just wanted to get a job and to get my foot in the door," Lett says.
According to Knight, Lett has fully embraced the short amount of time he's spent as a coach.
When Lett's playing career ended, he informed Knight that his ultimate goal was to become a head coach at the Division I level. Knight thus took him under his wing, suggesting Lett pursue every avenue that might introduce him to coaches at all levels of basketball.
Lett joined Knight and the rest of Pitt's coaching staff at last year's Final Four, which is one of the main networking events for basketball minds both young and old.
"You've got to be willing to take some chances and put yourself out there and meet some people," Knight says. "At the Final Four he got the chance to introduce himself to coaches and meet the basketball world outside being a player, and he did just that.
"Ontario was willing to do all the necessary things just to get his foot in the business, and that contributed to him getting back here," Knight adds.
When Lett isn't at practice or in meetings with the coaching staff, he is chasing his Master's Degree in Health and Physical Activity.
In one class, Lett and his fellow students were taught that people in the professional workplace are more productive when they stand and walk multiple times throughout the duration of the work day rather than sit in desk chairs from sunrise to sunset. Lett and his classmates are now collaborating with Highmark Inc., in an effort to piece together a plan to get Highmark employees unintended exercise a couple times a day.
So, in essence, Lett is still a student at Pitt. But, he says, so much about the university has changed since the days he manned the low block.
"The place where my old locker was is now where our players shower," Lett says. "We have the remodeled locker rooms, and there's a big scoreboard now. Brandin's jersey is retired. We've got new apartments next to the Fitzgerald Field House, Nordenberg Hall was built, and just, overall, there are many more kids enrolled here now."
While the facilities and campus might have seen some change, Lett says it's the same old Pitt. Some teammates from his era - Knight, Carl Krauser, Chevy Troutman, Yuri Demetris, Julius Page, Ricardo Greer, Carlo Dorazio and Gino Federico to name a few - even frequently visit the Petersen Events Center to run pick-up games.
"I see the banners up there," Lett says. "We improved upon what we started in my years here, and now I'm seeing more and more banners up in the rafters and they're adding more banners each year. It feels… Not different, but, because of the accomplishments we've continued to build on, it's more like home."