Overview:
Oliver Wheeler’s protégés include NBA coach Ross McMains as well as record-setting basketball players Roberto Nelson and Amber Melgoza
A seat will go empty at several of Santa Barbara’s Thanksgiving tables this fall.
Oliver Wheeler, the spiritual and physical mentor to countless boys and girls basketball players, died of cardiac arrest on Feb. 3. He was 73.
The former Santa Barbara High School star and longtime coach would share the holidays with as many friends as possible.
“He was someone who had a million relationships with people who all felt like they were the biggest person in Oliver’s life,” said Daniel Marshall, one of his former pupils.
“Every Thanksgiving, he would spend the entire day traversing Santa Barbara on his bike, traveling from family gathering to family gathering.”
And now the community will gather to give him thanks.
A celebration of Wheeler’s life will be held July 27, beginning with an 8:30 a.m. bike ride from Wheeler’s home at 709 W. Figueroa St.
A church service at the Greater Hope Missionary Baptist Church, at 430 E. Figueroa St., will follow at 1 p.m.
“We’re also meeting at the Eastside Boys & Girls Club (the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Barbara at 632 E. Canon Perdido) at around 4:30 p.m. to make some toasts, share memories, enjoy food and play some pickup ball,” Marshall told Noozhawk.
“Oliver somehow had all these friends from many different walks of life. I’m looking forward to learning all these new stories and anecdotes about him.”
A GoFundMe account has been established to help pay for Wheeler’s memorial, with any additional funds going to nonprofit organizations he supported. Click here to make an online donation.
Wheeler was an avid tennis player, golfer, cyclist and master mechanic as well as basketball guru.
He also was a spiritualist and student of homeopathic medicine — passions that he used to full effect in his coaching.
“He treated sprained ankles with comfrey root extract and insisted on treating my colds with garlic water,” Marshall said.
Wheeler trained some of the South Coast’s best basketball players the last half-century. They included the record-setting scorers for both Santa Barbara High’s boys’ (Roberto Nelson) and girls’ (Amber Melgoza) teams.
He was in attendance last year when Nelson, now an assistant coach at his alma mater of Oregon State, had his Don’s record broken by UC Santa Barbara recruit Luke Zuffelato. Nelson also ranks sixth on the Beavers’ all-time scoring list.
Melgoza, the University of Washington’s No. 8 all-time scorer, is now following in Wheeler’s footsteps as a youth coach. She will be inducted into the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table Hall of Fame on Sept. 15.
“He was more than just a coach … More like a father or an uncle to those he mentored,” said Marshall, an all-league basketball player for Santa Barbara High’s Class of 2011. “There were dozens of people like me that he worked with for years and years at an individual level, and then others he coached in different places.
“Oliver was an extremely reflective, deep thinker who was obsessed with the philosophy as well as the mechanics of basketball.
“He had a way of communicating things to people that was both unlike anything you’d ever hear from a coach … Ways that would cut through and help you understand it.”
NBA Champion
Ross McMains, another Wheeler protégé and Dons’ alum, won an NBA championship ring in 2024 as a player development coach on the Boston Celtics.
He also has coached for the Sacramento Kings, in the NBA’s G League and overseas in such countries as Australia and New Zealand.
After learning of Wheeler’s death, McMains posted a touching tribute on Instagram that said, “I wouldn’t be where I am without you … I wouldn’t be who I am without you.”
He described Wheeler as a “second father for a whole community.”
“You taught me confidence, you taught me humility, you taught me how to listen, you taught me how to do hard things,” he said. “You taught me how to speak up for what I know is true and right.”
When McMains graduated from Santa Barbara High in 2007, he told Wheeler that he wanted to model his life after him.
“You will live in all of us,” he said upon his mentor’s death. “I still hope I can grow up one day and be just like you.”
Wheeler wasn’t motivated by fame or fortune, or even by school ties.
“He was an assistant coach at every single high school at one point or another, from Bishop Diego to Santa Barbara to San Marcos and Dos Pueblos,” Marshall pointed out. “He coached at Cate at the end.
“He was coaching at San Marcos when I was playing at Santa Barbara High.
“The rivalry? He didn’t care about that kind of thing. He was all about helping kids.”
He coached hundreds of them in the 805 Basketball Club, the youth program that George Albanez started several decades ago.
Albanez reacted to Wheeler’s death on X by writing, “You were my everything and I miss you so much already. Thank you for helping me become a man!”
“Oliver never wanted to be a head coach,” Marshall pointed out. “He felt most himself as a close assistant.
“He had to step in a few times for George, so I did experience Oliver as a head coach … and he was a lot of fun.”
He met Wheeler a quarter-century ago while playing basketball at the Eastside Boys & Girls Club.
“I was 11 or 12 at the time,” he said. “Oliver stopped by and was watching me play, and my mom ended up asking if he’d train me.
“He’s been my mentor, my coach, my tutor — whatever you want to call it — ever since.”
Marshall was also at The Downtown Club in December the last time he saw Wheeler. His old coach was busy training Buena High girls basketball star Karisma Lewis.
Lewis, No. 52 in ESPN’s latest national ranking of top players in the high school Class of 2026, plays for Albanez’s 805 Basketball Club.
“I was told she wrote his name on her shoe when she played in the league championship game against Ventura,” Marshall pointed out.
Albanez’s own daughter, Keani, benefited greatly from Wheeler’s instruction. She played collegiately at Gonzaga and professionally overseas before joining the fraternity of coaches.
She even assisted the men’s team at Santa Barbara City College before taking over as the head girls’ coach at Oaks Christian High School in Westlake Village three years ago.
Don of an Era
Oliver was born in Elgin, Illinois, but moved to Santa Barbara with his family at an early age.
When he asked his mother why they chose the area, she replied simply that, “It seemed like a nice place.”
Wheeler developed into an All-Channel League guard on coach Jack Trigueiro’s feisty, Santa Barbara High teams of the late 1960s.
He graduated in 1969 before attending SBCC and UC Santa Barbara. A major knee injury, however, kept him from playing college basketball.
“The cartilage was completely gone, from what I understand,” Marshall said. “It’d become unbearably painful for him to play on it.”
Wheeler handled the setback with the same philosophic aplomb that he practiced throughout his life. He preached the theory of “individual predestination.”
“He believed that each spirit, before being born, plans out its own hardship and trials, its only aim being to learn from each life as much as was possible,” Marshall said.
“He counseled that whenever one faced a difficulty or trauma, the only question to ask oneself was, ‘What was I trying to learn?’”
His practice drills often evolved into what Marshall described as “mind games.”
“Sometimes he’d lie to you to show you your true potential,” he said. “I remember once when I was 13 when he made me do a two-minute ‘wall sit.’
“It was so difficult that I collapsed — my legs just gave out and I couldn’t get up — and I was crushed to think that I’d failed to hit the time.
“And then he showed me the clock … I’d actually been doing it for like eight minutes.”
Wheeler could turn even the simplest shooting drill into a psychological challenge.
“Every single drill was a competition with an extreme penalty and where the tables could turn on you in an instant,” Marshall said. “Oliver had all kinds of special rules he would add in the middle of games to mess with you and make things difficult.
“Oliver could turn a game of around-the-world into what felt like a fight for your life. You learned to expect difficulty and face it with dignity and pride.”
Wheeler’s “most fervent belief,” according to Marshall, was that the aim of life was to give with no expectation of return.
“The gift itself was the great reward — that spiritual enlightenment and loving kindness were self-justifying,” he said.
Even his death, Marshall added, was a self-fulfilling prophecy:
“He said he would go dancing off the stage.”
Those he taught and touched plan to keep that music playing.
