HARTFORD, Conn. — Jim Calhoun was watching an AAU game one quiet Sunday morning with Mike Krzyzewski when they began talking about a player they were watching. He had talent, but didn’t look to fit the usual mold of a position.

Where would he play? “Somewhere on the court,” Calhoun said, when he returned to the UConn campus to discuss Ben Gordon with his assistants. There wasn’t a doubt Gordon could be right at home at UConn.

“Everybody was looking at him and trying to figure out how he’d fit in your program,” Calhoun said. “And the big thing a lot of coaches ask is, ‘Can he get his own?’ That’s important to a lot of coaches, near the end of the shot clock. Ben could get his own. I have no idea how he took that elevator up to the second floor and shoot the jump shot. But he could do that.”

A coach whose instincts were usually spot on, Calhoun landed Gordon, from Mount Vernon, N.Y., and it was some run. Across three seasons and 106 games, Gordon averaged 16.9 points, 4.1 assists, shot 44% from the floor and 42.3% on 3s, never shooting below 40% on 3s in a season. His career culminated with the Huskies’ second national championship in 2004, then he was the No. 3 pick in the NBA draft, just behind his roommate, Emeka Okafor.

“And they were quite a pair,” Calhoun said.

There was never a doubt, either, that Gordon’s name would eventually join UConn’s elite in the Huskies of Honor, the plaque has been waiting for him for years. It was just a question of when. Through his long pro career he wasn’t able to get back during the season for a ceremony, and he has been dealing with mental health issues the last couple of years.

But when he returned in January 2024 to be honored at the XL Center with his ’04 teammates, he said he was “in a good place,” and the time was just about right. On Friday night, Gordon will be back in comfortable surroundings to take his place as the current Huskies face St. John’s in a high-stakes Big East game, the kind in which Gordon, 6 feet 3, was often at his best. The plan is for Calhoun and Okafor to walk out to center court with him.

“Ben was always the quiet guy, I’d call him ‘the quiet assassin,' ” Calhoun said. “You know what I loved about Ben? He knew what he was. He didn’t try to be something he wasn’t. He had a lot of natural instincts of how to play the game, and how to score.”

Like Okafor, Gordon was a good student. A business major, he never had to be prodded to get to class, Calhoun remembers. Low maintenance, high output.

But one day at Vanderbilt in 2002, UConn was in danger of being upset with about six minutes to go, and Gordon hadn’t scored. Calhoun called a timeout and, ignoring the others in the huddle, spent the time reaming out Gordon, reminding him there was a zero next to his name, exhorted him to take over. Gordon went out and scored eight of the next nine points and UConn won, 76-70.

“You just had to remind him how good he was,” Calhoun said.

Gordon hit a dramatic game-tying shot against Villanova in the Big East tournament as a freshman. He was the tournament’s most outstanding player in 2004, and was also Most Outstanding Player at the NCAA Regional in Phoenix. He led all of March Madness that year with 127 points in six games.

“He was never going to be the loudest guy in the room,” Calhoun said. “He was a quiet star. I don’t think people realized until they looked at the box score that he had 21 in the second half. I could probably remember on one hand the number of bad shots he took. He didn’t take bad shots. He knew the game, he fit into it. Very natural.”

Okafor went to Charlotte No. 2, Gordon to Chicago in the NBA draft. In his rookie year, the Bulls had their best season since Michael Jordan retired six years earlier and Gordon was the league’s sixth man of the year. He went on to play 12 years in the league.

Life after his playing days has been a difficult adjustment. In an essay for The Players’ Tribune called “Where Is My Mind” in 2020, Gordon described his dealing with mental illness — specifically a bipolar disorder — and suicidal thoughts. There have also been a number of very public episodes which led to him being arrested. Gordon, 41, is now getting the treatment he needs, and looking for his second chapter. He is currently in a probation program that could lead to charges being erased in September 2025 if he follows its terms.

When he came for the 2004 team’s reunion, he spoke movingly to the current players, destined to repeat as national champs, after the game.

Calhoun has a book, for which I am a co-author, coming out later this year that explores his relationships with many of his former players, including Ben Gordon. They’ve stayed in contact; Calhoun urging him to reconnect and stay connected with his UConn family.

“One of the great things a player can have is the confidence of teammates,” Calhoun said. “You feel bigger, stronger, better when your guys are there. Ben didn’t talk loud, he just played loud. He did great things in more silence than most great players.”

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