Mark Lieberman, former Louisville basketball assistant, back on sidelines leading The Ville

Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the person Mark Lieberman was with when he moved back to Louisville following his son's death in 2013. The two were not married.

At some point during his decades-long coaching career, Mark Lieberman learned a saying he's since repeated countless times to countless players.

"Don't let basketball use you," he said. "Use basketball for everything that you want to get."

Lieberman is currently using the sport he loves to bring a version of Louisville men's basketball back to Freedom Hall — and to finally plant some roots in this hoops-crazed city. At 7 p.m. on July 25, the former Rick Pitino staffer from 2010-12 will lead a group of mostly ex-Cardinals on a team called The Ville into The Basketball Tournament, a 64-team competition with a $1-million grand prize, and the chance to uplift U of L fans' spirits just four months removed from the worst season in modern program history, at stake.

Lieberman's 9-year-old daughter, Emery, will no doubt be watching from the stands.

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She's the reason Lieberman decided to move back to Louisville in June 2022 and take the head-coaching job at Collegiate for the 2022-23 boys basketball season. She's the reason he wants to stick around and make TBT a staple of the city's summer sports scene.

After losing a son, Maxwell, suddenly and unexpectedly at 4 months old in January 2013, Lieberman said he would at times let the game use him as an all-consuming distraction from the hole in his life. He’s since grown to instead prioritize relationships like his and Emery's and those he's cultivated on the court, including the players suiting up for The Ville who were by his side at his lowest.

"The maturity and the empathy that they had for me, and the fact that we had a relationship where they were a part of my extended family, meant so much," Lieberman said.

One of those players is Peyton Siva, whom Lieberman first met in 2009 when, as the head coach at Miami's Monsignor Edward Pace High School, he got to work with the promising young point guard from Seattle during the McDonald's All-American Game. He praised Siva’s selflessness after watching the Louisville signee create more opportunities for his teammates than for himself during an event centered around self-promotion, telling Pitino over the phone after the game he landed a floor general who was going to "help him win the championship."

Lieberman went along for part of the ride, accepting a position on Pitino's staff ahead of the 2010 season. With Siva running the show, Lieberman got to live out dreams of coaching at Madison Square Garden during the Big East tournament and reaching the Final Four in 2012 before following Pitino's son Richard to Florida International. A year later, Siva and the Cardinals were working toward the championship run Lieberman envisioned when, during a road trip to Arkansas with FIU, the news of Maxwell's death turned his world upside down.

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"I live the unimaginable every day," Lieberman said. "There's not a lot to come back from after that."

Lieberman said he saw the values he tried to impart to his former U of L players on display when they attended his son's funeral.

When Lieberman turned down an offer to join Richard Pitino at Minnesota at the conclusion of the 2012-13 season, instead moving back to Louisville for a break from basketball, he said those U of L players supported his efforts to raise money for March of Dimes, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing maternal health risks and infant deaths. To this day, one of his most prized possessions is an autographed Siva jersey from the 2012-13 season that features a patch honoring Maxwell the team wore during games after his passing and a message from the guard thanking the coach for helping him improve on the court.

"He has done a good job of getting his life back together — moving forward, not moving on," Siva said. "I have two kids now, and I couldn't imagine (losing them). I give him a pat on the back for what he’s doing."

Added Siva's backcourt running mate, Russ Smith, "Basketball really keeps him going, and it's important for us to always be positive around him. Basketball's become a really therapeutic game for him now."

That wasn't always the case.

Lieberman said he "didn't have enough time to grieve" before jumping back into the profession with a one-year stint at Floyd Central High School that began months after his son’s death. He briefly pursued a career outside of sports, then decided he needed a change of scenery and left Louisville again to become the athletic director and head boys basketball coach at The Heritage School in Georgia. Despite finding a renewed purpose on the sidelines while leading the Hawks to state runner-up finishes in two of his three seasons at the helm, Lieberman still couldn’t shake "that itch" of missing his daughter's formative years.

So it was back to Louisville in 2018, then another round of goodbyes when he accepted a job as an associate head coach at Southeastern Louisiana ahead of the 2019-20 campaign. Three years later, the itch struck again, and it might be for good.

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Lieberman now has more photos from Emery’s soccer games to show off, and she's getting to rebound for Smith during The Ville's practices. The coach also shares his attentive basketball IQ and his love of movies with the masses as a guest and substitute host on the local sports talk radio circuit. And using his connections with U of L and TBT — he served as an assistant on a team that reached the Round of 16 in 2018 — Lieberman helped bring competitive basketball to Louisville this summer.

In his grand vision, it'll be like this for the foreseeable future.

"For the first time, I truly feel like I’ve developed, I've reengaged, a lot of relationships here," Lieberman said. "I do feel like now this is the place that I want to be for years to come."

Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @brooksHolton.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Former Louisville basketball assistant Mark Lieberman leading ex-Cards