VISIONS Winter 07

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WINTER 2007
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A GRATEFUL HEART
ISU BASKETBALL LEGEND FRED HOIBERG STARTS A NEW LIFE OFF THE COURT

A year after a heart ailment turned Fred Hoiberg's world upside down, there's still a comfortable familiarity about The Mayor. His quiet demeanor, long limbs, and closely cropped blond hair all seem the same as they ever were as he glides through the Minnesota Timberwolves’ head office. A regulation basketball still looks small in his hands. He’ll still exchange barbs with Hawkeye fans. And he’s still got a smile and a pat on the back for his admirers. Because, oh yeah: Everyone still loves him.

But a lot has changed in the life of Fred Hoiberg. It’s a sunny September morning in Minneapolis, and he’s inside the Target Center trying to manage a thousand different tasks as he weaves his way past T-Wolves’ veep Kevin McHale’s office, grabs a bottle of water, and falls into his office chair, making sure to keep his ever-jingling cell phone within reach. This is the “working world,” he realizes, that he prepared for more than 10 years ago, when he earned a finance degree from ISU.

“This is the first time I’ve really had to work a full day,” Hoiberg says. “When I was playing I would come in and work out for three hours and then I’d be home. I’d play with my kids or play golf. I haven’t played much golf lately; especially around draft time you’re here pretty much 9 to 9.”

The next day, the Timberwolves would officially release Hoiberg’s new job title: assistant general manager, working mainly on player personnel issues, the annual draft, and scouting. It’s the job he’d always planned to do; he’s just starting it a few years earlier than he’d hoped.

A broken heart
“You need open heart surgery, and you need it quickly.” Hoiberg still vividly remembers the words of the cardiologist who delivered that life-changing news to him more than a year ago.

“It was a shock to me,” he says. “I was 32 years old and had just had arguably the best two years of my NBA career. It’s not something you think about. When you hear ‘open heart surgery,’ you think of your grandpa.”

But it was Hoiberg, not any other family member, who was the first to experience what doctors say is a hereditary and life-threatening heart ailment. When his life insurance application was denied due to questions about his cardiovascular health last year, he suspected it was just related to the abnormal aortic valve he already knew about. He played out the season with the T-Wolves, his 10th in the NBA and second in Minnesota, before he went to the doctor for a more thorough exam. They scheduled the highly invasive surgery right away.

But things soon got even scarier for the Hoibergs. There were complications during the surgery, and doctors had to insert a pacemaker. A week later Hoiberg’s wife, Carol (marketing ’94), found him lying unresponsive on the floor of their home, a stream of blood running down his chin. The blood wasn’t getting to his brain, which caused him to lose consciousness. Hoiberg was lucky that she found him relatively quickly. He was even luckier that he fell on his right shoulder when he collapsed.

“If I had taken one more step I would have fallen on my left shoulder and landed where the pacemaker was,” Hoiberg explains. “It could have dislodged, and
my heart may never have restarted again. That was the scariest day.”

His heart’s desire
“It took about two months for me to feel myself again,” he says. “I lost about half my blood during surgery, so I lost about 25 pounds. Just walking down the street was an adventure for me.”

But as soon as he was feeling like Fred again, Hoiberg got himself back in playing shape. He had a new career goal: to become the first NBA player with a pacemaker. He came close to signing with a couple of teams, but some of them had medical staffers who were concerned about his health. And with a little piece of titanium in his shoulder keeping his heart beating and an unreliable aorta that could rupture if dealt the right type of blow, Hoiberg couldn’t help but be a little concerned, too.

“If I was a rookie and 22 years old and didn’t have a family, I’d probably be playing right now,” he admits. “But I just remember the look on (Carol’s) face at the doctor’s.

As tough as it was to walk away from the game I love, I can’t be selfish. The risk was just too much for me with the family that I have.”

Hoiberg’s family includes his wife of 10 years and their four young children – Paige, Jack, and twin boys Sam and Charlie. It’s a close-knit, sports-loving suburban Minneapolis family; you can even find the Hoiberg clan in the caravan of Twin Cities Cyclones weaving its way down I-35 on football Saturdays. Hoiberg likes his job and enjoys getting the opportunity to work for an organization that he says gave him a chance to play when other teams wouldn’t. He moonlights as co-owner of the Pritchard Auto Centers in Iowa. His life is good; he’s blessed, he says.

Where the heart is
Ames still means something very special to Hoiberg. Both his and Carol’s family still live there, and Hoiberg says his biggest support has always come from the people of Ames and Iowa State. When he was recovering, he received more than 3,000 letters and cards from Iowa Staters, some from as far away as Iceland. The state championship he won at Ames High is the only basketball title on his resume, and last winter Hoiberg was inducted into the Iowa High School Athletics Hall of Fame.

Each summer for the last nine years, Hoiberg has returned to Ames to direct his own youth basketball camp. “It’s a good opportunity for me to give back and work with kids who basically grew up the same way I did,” he says. “It’s great.”

And a longer term return to Ames isn’t out of the realm of possibility, either.

“I talked to [ISU athletics director] Jamie Pollard a little when the [men’s basketball] coaching job opened up,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure that Iowa State got the right person in there, and I think [Greg] McDermott is going to be a great coach for a long time. Right now I’m in a position where I’m very happy, but if that were to ever change, moving back to Ames is definitely a possibility.”

And if that ever happens, Ames would gladly welcome back its Mayor.

SIDEBAR: THIS PROFESSIONAL LIFE
After open heart surgery, Fred Hoiberg chose to retire in April 2005 from a 10-year NBA playing career. Here’s a look back at life in the NBA for
The Mayor:

The NBA family
Just like he’s been embraced by the Ames community, Hoiberg has found the NBA to be like a family, too. “In the 10 years I played, I got along with every teammate I ever played with,” Hoiberg says. Superstar Kevin Garnett even spent hours at the Hoiberg home following Fred’s surgery, playing video games with the kids while Dad recovered.

Here and there
During his career, Hoiberg played for Indiana, Chicago, and Minnesota. “Everywhere I played, there was always someone in the crowd in an ISU sweatshirt holding a sign that said ‘The Mayor,’” he says.

Memories
The first time Hoiberg played, he had no reason
to be nervous: He was only guarding all-time great Michael Jordan. The surreal feeling of standing on the court as a rookie with Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman is something Hoiberg still
carries with him. But he lists his most memorable NBA moment as hitting a game-winning three pointer against the Hornets during his rookie season.

Staying power
“I was the 52nd pick in the draft, selected by the Pacers, in 1995,” Hoiberg says. “Ten years is a
long time. In fact, when I retired there were only
two other second-round picks from my draft
year who were still playing. I had a great career.
I exceeded a lot of people’s expectations. I always knew that my work ethic and the fact that I could shoot would help me stay around.”

About the Writer | Kate Bruns is the associate editor of VISIONS magazine.