Nine's contributions were 'transgenerational' for Boilermaker hoops
When you meet someone truly special, you never forget your first and last conversations.
Alex Borst certainly won’t.
Borst was a freshman basketball manager when he first met John Nine. His relationship started while Borst was executing his manager duties setting up the Gatorade cooler just off to the side of Keady Court.
“He just came up and we started talking,” recalled Borst. “And for the next 15 years, we never stopped talking to one another.”
Borst’s last conversation with Nine was just a few weeks ago, on April 30 to be precise, the day Nine passed away after a lengthy illness at the age of 84. Borst spoke with Nine on that day, albeit via cell phone.
“I am honored to be one of the last to talk to him,” said Borst who has worked and spent much time around Purdue athletics after his college days, as well. “It meant the world to me.
“He meant the world to me.”
What made Nine unique was while he was as close to the men’s basketball program as just about any individual over the last 30 years, he didn’t limit his relationships just to players. He had lots of those close ties to players and coaches to be sure, but it was the managers that Nine initially gravitated toward.
“He was interested in helping, and always focused on the people that made things work,” said Borst. “That is why he developed a strong relationship with basketball managers.
“It spoke volumes to who John was. For John, it wasn’t who you were on the basketball court. It was all about who you were as a person. He was interested in you and what you were interested in.”
So, who was John Nine?
Nine grew up in northern Indiana, the only member of his nine person graduating class at North Webster High School to attend college.
When he ventured to Purdue, he studied pharmacy, graduating in 1963. As a student, he had a leadership position in the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band. He liked the band, but he loved Purdue sports.
After school, he enjoyed a 26-year career with Schering-Plough in the pharmaceutical industry that took him all over the world. But he kept his ties close to his alma mater, serving as an adjunct pharmacy professor. Despite living on the East Coast, he became a basketball season ticket holder in the early 1990s, attending games and being around the program whenever he could.
Nine developed a relationship with guard Matt Waddell, who was a standout in the days of Glenn Robinson and Cuonzo Martin. Waddell was also a pharmacy major, a rare degree choice among student-athletes.
Nine relished his role as mentor and connector and kept his ties to the program on an upward trajectory. There are many examples, too many to count. Like the time Nine connected Waddell to Rapheal Davis, who served as team captain in 2015-16. Waddell, who worked at Eli Lilly at the time, helped get Davis an opportunity in pharmaceutical sales with Lilly.
Davis, who now lives and works in Atlanta, said the job assistance was great and appreciated. But it was Nine’s encouragement during Davis' playing days that the foundation of their relationship was built.
“Early in my undergrad days, he took me to the pharmacy school to look around,” Davis said. “I wasn’t even in the pharmacy school as an undergrad, but I was interested in it. He knew that and saw potential in me for having a career in the field after basketball.”
Yet, it was Nine’s encouraging words that also resonate with Davis and fill the former Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year with emotion when thinking of his friend.
“He would tell me I was great, when I needed to hear something like that,” said Davis, who was part of a team that struggled during his first two seasons under coach Matt Painter. “It was a simple as him saying ‘you’re great’ and that was his way of communicating with you and giving you confidence.
“And his positive approach lives on through me. I use it with the people I work with today. His messages to me always had a great sense of timing and relevance, and I will miss that very much.”
For former guard Ryne Smith, whose playing career concluded at Purdue in 2012, it was Nine’s love of all things social that serves as Smith’s lasting memory. Smith is now an assistant men’s basketball coach under Carson Cunningham at Incarnate Word, but he credits Nine for helping him launch his post-playing career. And networking has been a key part of Smith’s ascension in the coaching world.
For many years at the Final Four, Nine would host a dinner with members of the Purdue basketball coaching tree.
“When I was still coaching in high school, I didn't know anything about anything,” Smith said. “I'm like, ‘Oh, my God.’ In walks Cuonzo Martin and then Coach (Gene) Keady walks in and then Bruce Weber. And then Coach Painter.
“John was the quiet ringleader and he made it easy for us to start chopping up and having a great time being together. He was inclusive by making sure guys at my level were included. It wasn't even a big deal to him, but it was a huge deal to me, just to connect with guys who I looked up to and wanted to be like.”
Nine’s association with the Final Four was part of his daughters' Jenna and Janelle vocation. They worked with the NABC (National Association of Basketball Coaches) and because of that, it will likely keep the Final Four tradition going. Smith says everyone will miss John, and his signature Bombay Sapphire at that event.
Matt Kiefer, who was a senior starter at forward on Painter’s first team back in 2005-06, made the most of Nine's fatherly advice that Nine provided after Kiefer quit playing pro basketball overseas about 10 years ago.
“He was instrumental over the years in helping me navigate and think through things,” said Kiefer, a chemical engineering grad who also spent time in the pharmaceutical industry. “I decided to go down the path of being a consultant versus going into industry, and he helped me through that process. He was always open to talk through things.”
Nine also took time to be there to be present. He attended Kiefer’s first professional game … in Germany.
“Think about the concept of servant leader and he epitomized that in so many ways,” said Kiefer, who now lives in Milwaukee serving as managing partner at Luigs Kiefer Group, the commercial real estate investment company he co-founded. “I learned through him how you gain followers and how you make a large impact in life because John always put the needs of other people ahead of his own at all times.”
Kiefer and Nine shared the same birthday, April 22. And as part of their bond through birthdate, the two spoke one last time a few weeks ago.
“John lived a full life and his impact will live on for years to come,” Kiefer said. “I think that's a tribute to him as a person and his impact is transgenerational.
"I feel immense sadness for his family: his wife, his daughters, his son-in-laws and his grandchildren, because there will never be another one quite like him.”
Smith put it simply when summing up Nine.
“John was just the nicest, most generous man probably I've ever met,” Smith said. There’s no question about that. And there’s no close second.”
Boilermaker basketball fans that attend games in Mackey Arena will be reminded of him at the J. Nine Club in Mackey, a concession, restaurant area open on the west side of the building that is opened to all fans. And how it is named reveals much about what Nine deemed important.
“It is called the J. Nine Club, because he didn’t want attention drawn to him by using his first name, but he wanted it to celebrate the entire Nine family,” Borst said about the clan that has his wife Janet and daughters' names starting with the letter J.
“John loved Purdue like few others, but his legacy in Mackey is a reminder to all of us that it was always about family."
Nine was a man of tremendous professional accomplishment and influence. But to all associated with Purdue basketball, he was just a guy who figured out how to direct others in ways that mattered.
And man, he mattered.
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