Oliver Wheeler, a son of Santa Barbara and the godfather of its basketball scene, died from cardiac arrest at Cottage Hospital on February 3. He was 74 years old.
Wheeler, who had lived in Santa Barbara since childhood, was more commonly known as “Ollie,” “Coach O,” or just “Oliver.” He was one of the most prolific and influential coaches in Santa Barbara sports history. Known for his astuteness, wisdom, and intellectualism as much as his emotional depth and intensity, Oliver was more than his lengthy résumé of coaching stints.
Oliver was, at various points, a master mechanic, a student of homeopathic medicine, a spiritualist and philosopher, a basketball star and coach, a golf and tennis player, a restorer of antique furniture, a janitor, a big rig trucker, an MTD bus driver, a bicycle enthusiast, a collector, a tinkerer, and a beloved mentor to dozens.
Oliver was born into a large family of Jehovah’s Witnesses just outside of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois, in the 1950s. As a child, Oliver’s family moved to Santa Barbara. When, later in life, Oliver asked his mother why they had chosen the area, he was amused that she shared only that “it seemed like a nice place.”
In fact, the Wheelers were members of the cohort that would form the golden age of Black Santa Barbara, an era when, moving from the South and the Midwest, many Black families migrated to the area. The children born of these families included famous Santa Barbarans, such as the Cunninghams, the Lamberts, and the Browns, as well as many others who went on to become beloved community leaders.
Oliver was a rising basketball star at Santa Barbara High School before his career was sabotaged by a devastating knee injury. Oliver went on to Santa Barbara City College but did not play in formal athletics. Instead, Oliver dove into cycling, tennis, and golf, which all became loves of his life. He was a fixture of Santa Barbara tennis courts throughout the 1970s and ’80s, but his real obsession during this time was honing the perfect golf swing.
Oliver considered golf the most difficult and elegant sport of all. For two years, Oliver perfected his swing and began to take on students. Once, a friend asked him where he played. Oliver revealed that he had not yet been on a golf course — he had just been working on his swing. This mirrored a similar approach in basketball, where even as a shooting coach he would have players undergo weeks of rigorous training before ever touching a ball.
In addition to coaching, Oliver wore many hats during this time, working as a long-haul trucker and a janitor for commercial buildings downtown, or, as he’d say, “I gotta go toss some cans.”
In 2007, Oliver joined forces with George Albanez, founder of the 805 Basketball program. They built 805 into a powerhouse, coaching both boys’ and girls’ teams into statewide and national acclaim, receiving sponsorships from brands like Nike and sending many of their players to the college and professional level. From the ’90s through the 2010s Oliver also coached at nearly every high school in the Santa Barbara area, leaving his mark on the basketball programs at Dos Pueblos, Bishop Diego, Santa Barbara, San Marcos, and Cate and coaching in total hundreds of local players.
Oliver’s accolades as a coach are best measured through the achievements of his “pupils,” who include not only Division I and professional athletes but highly accomplished local leaders and members of civil society.
Oliver mentored Roberto Nelson, the legendary SBHS basketball star who set the all-time scoring record and played at Oregon State University, where he now coaches. (Roberto’s father, Bruce Nelson, was Oliver’s close friend and coaching partner at Dos Pueblos and Bishop Diego high schools.) Roberto’s teammate and another pupil of Oliver’s, Ross McMains, went on to coach in the NBA and internationally. Last year, McMains won the NBA championship as an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics.
Keani Albanez, daughter of George Albanez and another acolyte of Oliver’s, played at Gonzaga and overseas and was the first female coach of a men’s junior college team at SBCC. She now runs the girls’ program at Oaks Christian High School.
Amber Melgoza, who broke the Dons’ all-time girls’ scoring record as a sophomore, was another pupil; she’s now playing professionally with the Washington Huskies. Most recently, Oliver was mentoring Karisma Lewis, a star at Buena High School who was written up in the L.A. Times. She wrote his name on her shoe for the league championship game against Ventura High.
Up until the record was broken this year by senior Luke Zuffelato, Oliver had mentored the all-time scoring leader for both male (Nelson) and female (Melgoza) basketball players at SBHS. (Not long before he died, Oliver was there when Zuffelato hit his game winner against national powerhouse Sierra Canyon this year.)
Oliver mentored his pupils intensely and invested in them as people more than as players. It was common for him to forge strong relationships with their families and stay in touch for life. Oliver pushed students incessantly to become exceptional people in all aspects of their lives, and would become an inescapable presence, even outside of sports. When his players were injured, Oliver would transform into an expert advisor in homeopathic medicine, treating sprained ankles with comfrey root extract and common colds with garlic water. (This was often worse than the illness itself but did sometimes work.)
Oliver was often found at family dinners and in TV rooms of his students, discussing spirituality, politics, love, and other big ideas with the fervor of an evangelist who remained infinitely curious. As a result, Oliver became a beloved member of many families of the players he coached. Every Thanksgiving, Oliver would spend the entire day traversing Santa Barbara on his bike, traveling from family gathering to family gathering, offering emphatic and adoring reviews of the dish he loved most.
Oliver’s philosophy of basketball and of coaching are of note. He understood self-actualization and athletic performance as inseparable, echoing a common truism that captured his philosophy: “It’s so simple, it’s elusive.”
As a coach, Oliver was known for his unwavering expectations, his inventiveness, and his diction. Oliver spoke with the oratorical presence of a Southern Baptist preacher, the calm questioning of a Buddhist monk, and the enunciation and vocabulary of a man of letters.
Whereas some coaches might encourage players to have good body language, Oliver would wax eloquent, urging his players to become “cognizant” of their bodies, to make peace with them, to let go of their “moping,” which was the phony and pathetic need for perfection. “You’re trying to make the shot,” Oliver would admonish his pupils.
Other Oliverisms included “ominous,” which he used counterintuitively to describe any act becoming of greatness, “evolved,” “the cosmos,” “expound,” and “accolades,” among countless others. He also had his catchphrases; when a player did something remarkable in a game, he’d let off a loud “Now that’s why we don’t do two shows a night!” while chuckling to himself and walking back and forth.
Oliver lived alone in a modest but ornately decorated house on the Westside. He was an avid collector of memorabilia and antiques. He was a lover of classic cars, which he worked on, and famously drove a 1980s-era maroon Mercedes 300-D. An audiophile, he had retrofitted the car with a top-of-the-line stereo system that he used to play Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and Sly and the Family Stone.
A love of elegance, style, and beauty was integral to Oliver’s way of being. Walking into his home was like walking into a carefully maintained museum, with every square foot of wall and floor given to tastefully curated pieces of art and history, many dedicated to his heroes, most notably Muhammad Ali, whose prowess, craft, audacity, showmanship, and work ethic Oliver revered.
Oliver’s wardrobe was dazzling and extravagant; he cherished any opportunity to dress to the nines. He was an aficionado of fine dress shoes and colorful, button-up shirts. He sometimes took his basketball pupils shopping if he felt that they needed help with their look.
Oliver had a space in his home, at the edge of his kitchen near the back door, that was dedicated to the old electronics, furniture, or bicycle parts he was tinkering with and restoring. As with his human pupils, Oliver would sit with broken or deteriorated furniture and meditate on their potential, working with and on them for days and months until he was satisfied.
To his last days, Oliver loved cycling up and around the hills of Santa Barbara. When he was younger, he would bike to see his friends in Los Angeles for the weekend. Even into his sixties, players on the way to practice at St. Mary’s seminary at the peak of a long climb up Las Canoas Road would pass Oliver on his bicycle, face clenched with determination, barreling up the hill with impossible speed.
Even beyond his cycling feats, until his last days, Oliver was a voracious athlete, training and regularly lifting weights, which he kept on his back porch. At one point, he could do pull-ups with only the tips of his fingers. His unrelenting competitive spirit fills permanently the gyms, stadiums, and fairways of Santa Barbara — places like the YMCA, the Page Center, and La Playa stadium, where, into his sixties and with weights around his ankles, he would run up the bleachers for hours and then challenge college students to race.
Oliver was a late and reluctant adapter, to put it generously, of recent technology. He lived with only a radio, an old TV, and a VCR, and he was fond of watching recordings of the Masters golf tournament on VHS. However, this did not stop him from frequently traveling to friends’ houses to watch big games or old movies on cable TV or the internet, especially to see his former pupils play, or becoming overcome with excitement at Spotify’s ability to conjure up the O’Jays, Funkadelic, and other beloved acts from his childhood and adolescence.
Toward the end of his life, Oliver became fascinated with the ideas of manifestation and reincarnation. He believed that our spirits were evolved such that they need only walk decisively toward their greatest ambition and “the universe would conspire” with them to realize it.
Paradoxically, Oliver’s most fervent belief was that a central aim of life was to give with no expectation of return. His thesis was that the gift itself was the great reward, that spiritual enlightenment and loving kindness were self-justifying. Still, for all of his convictions, he was at his essence a light of curiosity. He adored learning, and, into his final months, he was kept up at night with questions and ideas and the excitement of discovery.
In his last years, he articulated a theory of individual predestination, believing that each spirit, before being born, plans out its own hardship and trials, the only aim being to learn from each life as much as possible. He would counsel, at times of difficulty or trauma, that the only question to ask was: “What was I trying to learn?”
Despite his near-mythical vita and his mystical presentation, Oliver Wheeler was more human being than not. The greatest testament to his character was his willingness to be challenged, to let his students teach him. In the end, Oliver’s most admirable and remarkable trait was how he loved rapturously every last day of his life. He once confided that, when he died, he was going to go “dancing off the stage.”
Oliver’s loved ones are planning a celebration on Memorial Day weekend, May 23-26. For more information or to donate toward memorial costs, go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-of-oliver-wheeler. Send any photos to contribute to Daniel Marshall at dwm255@gmail.com.
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