No Limit: can rap mogul Master P really become an elite basketball coach | College basketball

You are Arizona State athletics director Graham Rossini, more of a forward-thinking sports executive than a classic campus administrator. The Sun Devils basketball team have just staggered through another middling season, missing the NCAA tournament for a third straight year. You’ve just fired coach Bobby Hurley, but the vacancy isn’t what anyone in the sport would call coveted – not compared to a blue-blood program like Duke or Kentucky, or even the cross-state rival Arizona Wildcats men’s basketball, standard-bearer of the old Pac-10.

You could hire another hardwood hero like Hurley, a Duke Blue Devils men’s basketball supervillain whose winning pedigree as a player surfaced only in flashes over 11 uneven years on the sideline. You could turn to a television retread, someone angling for a return to the bench and a larger stage. You could give some young striver a big break. Or you could do something else entirely – something big and bold: You could give Percy Robert Miller a shot.

Miller is no kin to Sean, the longtime Arizona coach now patrolling the sideline at the University of Texas, or Reggie, the legendary long-distance shooter turned long-winded broadcaster. He is Master P – the camo-clad, Southern drawling, Grammy-winning emcee who put the New Orleans rap scene on the map at the turn of the century. The gambler who parlayed a $10,000 medical malpractice settlement from his grandfather’s death into No Limit Records, one of the most consequential independent labels in hip-hop. The hustler who pressed his own CDs, sold them from his car and went platinum many times over. The entrepreneur who used the commercial success of smash hits like Bout It, Bout It, Make ‘Em Say Uhh! and I Got the Hook-Up! as the foundation for a sprawling business empire that at one point included a film-making division, a travel agency and No Limit Communications – a cellphone subsidiary inspired by I Got the Hook-Up! that spawned two more discs for Miller to pitch from the trunk.

Now, before scoffing at the idea of turning your sputtering basketball program over to a guy who famously drove a tank on to a packed courtyou may wonder: is he even available? In what will surely come as a newsflash to many, the 55-year-old announced last year that he was retiring from music to become an assistant coach and the president of basketball operations at the University of New Orleans, a bottom-tier Division I program. After helping the Privateers notch 15 wins – a marked turnaround for a team barely a year removed from a points-shaving scandal – Miller is ready to level up.

Miller began stirring the pot in February, telling TMZ that he was drawing interest from several programs for head coaching and general manager positions. With Hurley’s coaching seat barely cooled, Miller told the Sporting News this week that he was most interested in the Arizona State vacancy – which, to be clear, hasn’t been reciprocated so far. “Times are changing,” Miller told TMZ. “People don’t want the traditional coaches any more. They want coaches who are going to think outside the box.” Don’t let his overconfidence put you off. Miller’s hoops resume is actually a lot longer than it looks.

In between building his rap empire, Miller pursued an NBA career, his seven-year odyssey through various minor leagues culminating in preseason tryouts with Charlotte, Toronto, Denver and Sacramento. (Miller was slated to play college basketball at Houston until a serious knee injury forced a pivot into entertainment.) His talent compared to most rapper turned hoopers was cemented in the 2008 NBA All-Star celebrity game, where he scored 17 points against the likes of Common (better at acting like a hooper, see Just Wright) and Deion Sanders. His jumper is still wet. Miller helped his son Romeo – AKA Lil Romeoa 5ft 11in rapper turned point guard whose only real scouting buzz came from his celebrity dad – land a coveted scholarship at USC, where he logged just 19 minutes across two seasons.

If any part of that last sentence seems like it should immediately disqualify Miller from coaching Arizona State, consider: he only finagled that spot at conference-rival USC for Romeo after helping the Trojans land DeMar DeRozan, the top-rated high school prospect Miller coached in AAU. Lance Stephenson and Brandon Jennings came through the same program, and all three went on to NBA stardom. Miller’s younger son Mercy – a 6ft 4in guard – is a highly regarded sophomore contributor on a University of Houston team looking to avenge last year’s national final loss. In December, Mercy scored a career-high 15 points in a blowout win over New Orleans with Coach Percy watching from the Privateers bench, pride and frustration knotting his face. Another son, Hercy, transferred to play for dad again after injury-riddled stops at Tennessee State, Louisville and Utah State. In between managing the P Miller Ballers, his AAU squad’s actual nameMiller launched a sports agency that represented the star NFL running back Ricky Williams and NBA mainstay Jason Terry.

With Miller, you’re not just getting a coach. You’re getting someone who knows from experience what it’s like to start out poor and Black, suddenly be overwhelmed by life-changing wealth as a young man and then thrust into an awkward role as head of household. (Miller had his whole family on the No Limit payroll at one point.) You’re getting a hype man, ready to jolt a fanbase too numbed by recent results to revel in its bygone reputation as the nation’s No 1 party school. And you’re getting a master marketer who sees the vision, one who won’t roll his eyes at pitch decks reimagining Arizona State as a “lifestyle brand” but instead dives straight into building out the brainstorm. (Imagine the camo gear!) The Xs and Os? That’s what a staff is for, and Miller would probably have his pick of eager deputies, not least a cadre of talented Black assistants who may otherwise be passed over at this level.

In the era of name, image and likeness, coaching has become a fundraising game, and Miller has already been lauded for making the most of the Privateers’ relatively meager slush fund. Put his fiscal prudence together with his entrepreneurial spirit and global celebrity, and you have a potential second coming of Coach Prime, the University of Colorado rainmaker whose seismic impact Arizona State has already felt within its own conference. “What I like about it is he brought more students to [Colorado],” Miller told TMZ. “If I use the basketball team to help get more students into the school, then that’s when I feel like we’d have made it. It’s not just about wins and losses.”

That’s not to say Miller would necessarily be a slam-dunk hire. Many thought former NBA All-Star Penny Hardaway could restore the University of Memphis to the heights it reached when he was a standout player, but the results have been maddeningly inconsistent at best. And Coach Prime, of course, was a star in college and the pros and spent three seasons cutting his teeth at Jackson State before jumping to Colorado. But in some ways, Miller’s lack of top-level experience could make him less of a gamble – and potentially easier to fit under the Sun Devils’ budget cap. Like Sanders, you could sign him to a modest contract to start and let his results determine whether he’s worth more. And if it doesn’t work out? Hey, you’re no worse for wear – the football team is pointed in the right direction, and the women’s basketball and tennis teams have been revitalized under intrepid new leadership.

So why not take a flyer on Miller? He’s got game, swag and the kind of energy to make Arizona State a national phenomenon. You could spend the rest of your career wishing you’d taken the chance, or you could just be bout it bout it.