Mike was at his best with the basketball program and with the Pearl hire, he actually solicited input from successful people in the basketball business and with people who were connected to Tennessee and wanted to see Tennessee rise above the mess Doug Dickey had created with a series of poor hires to fit his "indoor football" mantra. Mike enlisted the help of the Pump Brothers in Los Angeles and Ernie Grunfeld and others, which happened on an energetic coach at UW-Milwaukee named Bruce Pearl, signed him to a $900,000 a year contract, gave him a chance at big conference basketball and the story was started.
But more importantly, Mike worked hard to incorporate Tennessee's basketball history into its "rebirth" in the modern game and in an arena that had curtains installed in the upper decks to hide unsold empty seats. Mike was instrumental in returning Ernie Grunfeld, Bernard King, John Ward and Ray Mears to the arena from time to time, eventually hanging banners recognizing their individual contributions and providing younger fans a quick look and short reminders of people from the program's history.
On the day they hung Bernard King's banner in the arena, a game against Kentucky, with Grunfeld and Hamilton standing in the background, a frail Ray Mears attended the ceremony, wheelchair bound, but sporting his trademark orange blazer, parked in front of King's 53 jersey, watching the honors for his second New York City basketball marvel, the second half of Double Trouble from Tennessee, which had graced the cover of Sports Illustrated nearly three decades earlier. Towering over his former head coach, King reached out to shake the hand and embrace the weakened man who brought him and his amazing basketball ability to Knoxville and unleashed a different style of basketball, perhaps slightly ahead of its time, but geared for success in the modern game. As Ray reached up to shake the hand which had launched hundreds of thousands of jump shots over the years, for a few short moments, the familiar roar and thunder from Stokely Athletic Center reverberated through a sold out Thompson Boling, and Hamilton's efforts to unite the past with the present were in place, hopefully pushing Tennessee basketball to expectations for an even brighter future.
