Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 17, 2025
Story by Joe Walljasper, BJ ’92
In January 2024, David “Dickey” Nutt walked into basketball Coach Dennis Gates’ office and told his boss the news he could hardly believe himself. The painless bump on his leg — no bigger than a mosquito bite — was cancer. The aggressive chemotherapy he needed to beat Ewing sarcoma wouldn’t allow him to continue as a Mizzou assistant coach.
“With tears in my eyes, I said, ‘Coach, now’s your time. You can send me on down the road. I’ll go live in Florida and play golf,’” Nutt recalls. “He looked at me and said, ‘No way, man.’”
Nutt and Gates met in 2015 as assistants at Florida State. Nutt was a folksy basketball lifer with two decades of head-coaching experience and a million stories to tell. Gates was a rising star with a serious demeanor and a knack for inspiring confidence in his players. They hit it off. Nutt followed Gates when he was named head coach at Cleveland State. He joined Gates again when he got the Mizzou job in 2022. They kept winning, and life was good — until two years later.
Suddenly, Nutt was fighting for his life. Some days, he wasn’t sure he wanted to win.
“I just lay in bed and pulled the covers up and prayed for one of two things: either I get well or be done,” Nutt says. “It was that brutal.”
Meanwhile, Gates had his own problems. The injury-ravaged Tigers went 0-18 in the Southeastern Conference in the 2023–24 season. But even at his lowest moments, Gates didn’t forget about his friend. In the wee hours after a 27-point loss to Auburn in March, Nutt awoke in a dark hospital room and saw someone at the foot of the bed. It was Gates.
The support Nutt received from colleagues, family, friends and even strangers sustained him through six rounds of chemo and 25 radiation treatments. In October 2024, he was declared cancer-free.
Now he’s back on the bench as a full assistant, doing what he loves alongside the friend who wouldn’t let him walk away.
“I don’t think I would have been happy golfing in Florida,” Nutt says. “I’m in the right place, and I’m very appreciative of what Coach Gates has allowed me to do.”
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