In a tale of legacy, it's Foster Loyer's turn

EAST LANSING, Mich. — There’s a wonderful incongruity to his talent. He looks like he’s 15, plays like he’s 25 and sounds like he’s 35. He isn’t fast, but he isn’t slow. He isn’t strong, but he isn’t weak. He’s listed at 6 foot, but he’s not 6 foot. With short dark hair and a clean shave, he more closely resembles a team manager than a point guard. It’s not until you see Foster Loyer play —  shrewd, sharp, skilled — that you realize this guy has more natural instincts than anyone on the court and that it’s no accident.

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John Loyer is best able to explain the time invested by his son because he knows what it takes. Everyone in basketball considers himself or herself a gym rat. In reality, only some rats kill the house cat and truly live in the gym. That’s Foster. His father calls him “a seven-day-a-week guy.” John Loyer was the same way at Foster’s age. After playing at Northmor (Ohio) High School, he was recruited to the University of Akron and played for a young coach named Bob Huggins. He scored more than 1,000 career points and helped the Zips reach the 1986 NCAA Tournament. Huggins loved the way Loyer played — a point guard who knew where everyone needed to be. Huggins, speaking by phone this week, remembered: “He could really shoot the ball, but in terms of athleticism, he wasn’t the most talented guy, so he had to be smart, he had to really understand the game.” Huggins kept Loyer on board as a student assistant coach after graduation in 1987.

All these years later, John Loyer is the one assessing talent. He’s been around the NBA since 2003, at one point becoming one of the most respected assistant coaches in the league. He’s currently paid to watch basketball as director of pro personnel for the Los Angeles Clippers. It’s his job to know everyone, everywhere — studying players for potential trades or free agent signings. When he watches his son, meanwhile, he sees a similar mien, but a different man. “He a much better player than me,” John Loyer says. “A much better passer, better shooter, plays harder.”

On Tuesday night, John Loyer will settle into a seat at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, the NBA arena in downtown Indianapolis. He’s been there for his day job countless times, but this will be different. On this night, father will watch son play his first college game on the NCAA’s biggest regular-season stage — the opening-night Champions Classic. Foster Loyer will pull on a Michigan State jersey and take the floor against Kansas, the No. 1-ranked team in the land.

Asked what that moment will be like, John Loyer hedged, then parried: “Oh, I’ve seen him play a lot of big games.” The hesitation in his voice matched his discomfort with the conversation. Tuesday night is, in fact, an evening laced with poetic symmetry for the Loyer family. John, understandably, isn’t much interested in talking about that. “One, I don’t need it,” he says. “Two, I’m past it. There’s really no reason to even talk about it, for me. This is his turn.”

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It is indeed a significant debut for Foster Loyer. Tom Izzo is trying to determine whether his skill and IQ can overcome some physical shortcomings. As it stands, he’s ready to give Loyer some early run as Cassius Winston’s backup point guard, as long as he can hold his own defensively. The only thing that’s certain about the start of Loyer’s college career is fans’ desire to watch him play. The freshman is coming off one of the greatest careers in Michigan high school basketball history. He went 96-7 as starting point guard at Clarkston High School. He scored 2,222 career points and won two state titles. He was named Mr. Basketball as a senior in 2018. Now in East Lansing, he can’t avoid comparisons to Scott Skiles, an all-time Spartan whose number hangs in the Breslin Center rafters.

“Early this summer, he was a fish out of water, and then he figures things out,” Izzo says of Loyer. “He’s just a very smart kid. He’s going to figure all this out.”

That’s what a lifetime around the game will do for you. Foster Loyer was born in Cincinnati in 1999. He was raised in Indiana, and Portland, and Philadelphia, and Michigan, always starting over as his father traversed NBA life. John Loyer worked his way up from video coordinator to advance scout to assistant coach with the Trail Blazers (2003-05). Young Foster would bop around the locker room. When John worked as an assistant with the Sixers (2005-09) and the Nets (2009-11), Foster landed those coveted ballboy jobs, sitting on the baseline, hanging with the players. This is about when Foster got serious about playing.

“By the summer of his eighth grade year, it became clear that Foster was going to put in the work it takes to be really good,” John Loyer remembers. “He just had a competitive nature to him that I couldn’t coach into him. You either have that or you don’t.”

Pistons coach Lawrence Frank hired John in 2011, bringing the family back to the Midwest. They settled in Clarkston and found a home. John worked under Frank for two years and was kept on-staff after Frank was replaced by Maurice Cheeks. When Cheeks was let go after only 50 games, it was Loyer’s turn. He served a two-month stint as interim head coach in 2013–14, going 8-24. The Pistons then let him go and soon the Clippers called. He was offered a scouting job that allowed Loyer to stay in the Detroit area, instead of uprooting the family once again.

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“It was hard as a kid, knowing that right when you get situated into a town — you have your best friends there — then you’re moving,” Foster Loyer says. “And when I moved, it wasn’t like I was moving a couple of towns over. I was moving across the country. It was tough growing up. I never had anything solid until I got to Clarkston.”

That long chase for something solid? It actually leads all the way back to Cincinnati.

It leads all the way back to the college basketball court.

The Loyers’ basketball journey could’ve been a very different one, see. That’s why Tuesday night in Indianapolis will mark not a debut in college basketball, but a return to it.

John Loyer was fired as an assistant coach at Cincinnati in November 1998, ending a nine-year tenure alongside Huggins that produced six NCAA Tournament appearances, four conference championships and a trip to the Final Four. He was fired after spending almost two years in limbo, ensnared in an NCAA investigation, one that left him on administrative leave for 14 months.

The ordeal began in 1996-97 when the NCAA questioned a three-credit course that UC guard Charles Williams took at Compton Community College. Concerns about that course unspooled into questions of whether Williams received possible financial assistance and improper academic support. From a January 1997 letter of inquiry by the NCAA, the university decided to launch an internal investigation headed by attorney Michael Glazier, the same investigator who later dealt with headline incidents involving Kelvin Sampson (Indiana), Nevin Shapiro (Miami) and Maurice Clarett (Ohio State). At Cincinnati, Glazier’s firm claimed to find 22 possible NCAA violations connected to Bearcats basketball, allegations that led to Loyer being placed on leave. He was 33 years old and his career was on the line.

Over the next year, Loyer hired an attorney to defend himself against the claims, while Cincinnati self-imposed some penalties. In August 1998, the school came before the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions. Nineteen of the 22 possible violations were either disproven or didn’t constitute rule violations in the first place, and in the end, most charges were reduced or dropped. Loyer, who was facing charges of unethical conduct for knowingly violating NCAA rules and providing “false and misleading” testimony to investigators, had most allegations dropped. The NCAA did rule, though, that Loyer violated the organization’s standards of ethical conduct and concluded that Cincinnati was operating with a lack of institutional control. Loyer was cleared to return to work, but dealt a few recruiting restrictions.

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Then, though, UC president Joseph Steger interceded, saying that Loyer would not immediately rejoin the coaching staff. Steger wanted to consult university lawyers to determine if Loyer violated the university’s code of ethics. What had looked like the end of the tribulations was, in fact, a stay of execution. After the infractions hearing, Loyer’s attorney, Steve Owens, told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “I’ve always been led to believe by the university that if John comes out of this OK, he’s going to be reinstated.” Two weeks later, Steger fired Loyer.

In the fallout of the lengthy NCAA investigation, Loyer was the only person terminated at Cincinnati. He landed at Wabash Valley College in Mount Carmel, Illinois, the next season, earning $32,200.

Over this long drag of time, Loyer went from being considered one of the top up-and-coming college coaches in the country — one who was well-positioned for a head-coaching job — to an outcast.

“He would’ve been a college head coach at some point,” says Michael DeCourcy, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s UC basketball beat writer at the time. “He was too appealing. He had everything you’d want in hiring a head coach. This certainly altered his future.”

Loyer never worked in Division I college basketball again. In 2003, five years later, he told the Enquirer: “You’re always going to be bitter. I didn’t get to reap the benefits you should reap when you’re successful.” Loyer told the paper the firing did irreparable damage to his college coaching credentials. He found an outlet in the NBA, but clear resentment lingered. In his mind, he was the scapegoat.

Now it’s 2018 and, asked about his exit from college basketball all these years later in light of his son’s first NCAA game, John Loyer is cordial, but declines to expand or revisit his 2003 comments. “I’ve got no comment on that,” he says. “I look forward. I enjoy the NBA game. I’m perfectly fine with where I am right now.”

It just so happens to have been a bizarre, troublesome road to get there. Other than stints at Wabash Valley and an interim role with the Pistons, Loyer has never been a head coach, despite a reputation as an innovative mind with a relentless work ethic. While he’s had a successful NBA career for years, the lack of a head-coaching opportunity can, in part, be tied back to that two-year investigation — one that did indeed find that he violated an NCAA rule, but that, given the intensity of the investigation, seemed to have created a cloud larger than the actual storm. Though John Loyer doesn’t want to ponder the lasting impact of that time publicly, Huggins, still a close friend of the Loyer family, remains bothered by the collateral damage.

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“It’s hard when you’re falsely accused, it’s hard when the only thing you’ve known in your adult life is taken away from you,” Huggins says. “It’s hard when you’re one of the premier assistant coaches in the country with a great future, to have that future taken away from you. How’d you feel?”

So, yes, as far as full-circle moments go, Foster Loyer’s first college game is a moment of entwined legacy. He says his dad doesn’t much bring up his end at Cincinnati, but he’s heard stories. Foster has heard about people rooting through the family’s trash cans during John’s stint on administrative leave. He knows it’s a dark time in the past. He’s been told it was a hard time.

That hard time didn’t last, though. John Loyer’s time in Division I college basketball ended in November 1998. Seven months later, on June 24, 1999, he and his wife, Katie, gave birth to their first child.

Now it’s young Foster’s turn.

(Top photo: Allison Farrand / For The Athletic)

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