Steve Fisher (basketball)

Stephen Louis Fisher (born March 24, 1945) is an American former basketball coach.

Fisher attended Illinois State University, where he helped lead the Redbirds to the Final Four of the 1967 NCAA College Division basketball tournament.

Fisher moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1982 and took an assistant coaching job at the University of Michigan after having served as an assistant coach at Western Michigan University since 1979.

Michigan credits the 1988–89 regular season to Frieder and the NCAA tournament to Fisher.

Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the timing of Fisher's hiring, he is the only person to win the NCAA Men's Division I national championship without having ever experienced a loss as the team's head coach.

The next two seasons of the Fisher era were struggles.

Fisher served as the head coach for the Michigan Wolverines, with whom he won the national championship in 1989, and was an assistant at Michigan, Western Michigan University, and the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association.

In 1989, during the final week of the regular season, Michigan head coach Bill Frieder agreed to take the coaching job at Arizona State University beginning the next season.

Frieder intended to coach Michigan through the end of the 1989 NCAA tournament.

However, when he told athletic director Bo Schembechler of his intentions, Schembechler ordered Frieder to leave immediately and named Fisher as interim head coach.

When announcing the promotion of Fisher, Schembechler famously said, "I don't want someone from Arizona State coaching the Michigan team. A Michigan man is going to coach Michigan."

Initially, Fisher was not expected to retain the position after the season.

However, Fisher led the Wolverines to an improbable NCAA championship that season, thanks to a strong performance by forward Glen Rice.

Schembechler hired him as the school's permanent head coach a week after the championship game.

Fisher hired Brian Dutcher as Assistant Head Coach.

However, in 1991, Fisher signed one of the most talented incoming freshman classes of all time.

High school stars Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King, and Juwan Howard all signed with Fisher and Michigan, forming what became known as the "Fab Five".

Together, they helped lead the Wolverines to the national title game in their freshman year, only to lose to Duke.

As sophomores, they again reached the title game, this time losing to North Carolina.

In that game, Webber was called for a technical foul with 11 seconds remaining in the game when he signaled for a timeout when the Wolverines had none left.

After the title-game loss to the Tar Heels, Webber went pro; Rose and Howard followed after an elite eight loss to the eventual National Champion Arkansas Razorbacks.

It also vacated the entire 1992–93 season, as well as every game from 1995–96 to 1998–99.

In October 1997, Michigan fired Fisher as a result of an off-court scandal (see section below).

Fisher was out of coaching for the 1997–98 season before taking a job as an assistant with the Sacramento Kings.

In 1997, after it was revealed that Maurice Taylor had visited Ed Martin, a retired Ford electrician, the school launched an investigation.

After the investigators questioned Fisher's role in arranging complimentary tickets for Martin, Fisher was fired a week before practice began for the 1997–98 season.

Later, additional facts surfaced that further damaged the program's reputation.

From 1999 to 2017, Fisher was head coach for the San Diego State Aztecs.

In 1999, Fisher took over as coach of a San Diego State program and brought Brian Dutcher with him.

The school had suffered losing records in 13 of the previous 14 years.

In the season before he arrived, the Aztecs had won just four games, but within two seasons Fisher had brought the team up to a .500 record, and led them to a 21–12 record and an NCAA Tournament appearance in year three of his regime.

He has since led them to seven other NCAA tourneys, and five appearances in the National Invitation Tournament.

In 2002, an indictment unsealed in a Detroit federal court charged Ed Martin with running an illegal gambling operation and money laundering.

Additionally, it claimed that Martin gave Webber $280,000 in illicit loans while Webber was in high school and college, with another $336,000 allegedly going to three other former Wolverine players – Taylor, Robert Traylor and Louis Bullock.

As a result of the revelations, Michigan imposed its own sanctions on the basketball program in 2002, vacating its two Final Four games from the 1992 NCAA Tournament and its standing as the tournament's runner-up.

Michigan also withdrew from postseason consideration for the 2002–03 season, and removed the banners hanging in Crisler Arena that commemorated their post-season appearances and removed references to the named players' records.

The move came because the payments may have compromised the four players' amateur status.

Martin ultimately pleaded guilty, but died in February 2003.

The NCAA accepted Michigan's sanctions, and additionally placed the school on probation until 2006.

The Wolverines would not reach the same heights until 2013, although they reached the postseason each of the next five seasons and won the 1997 National Invitation Tournament.