Following a successful basketball career at Purdue University, Brian Cardinal spent 12 years playing in the NBA.

He won an NBA title in his next-to-last season. Once he decided to step away from the game, he wound up returning to his roots.

In December 2012, he joined the John Purdue Club as an assistant director, working in fundraising, bringing awareness to the club and motivating people to get involved.

Cardinal said it feels good to be able to promote the university that gave so much to him.

“It was a great transition from playing to now. The greatest thing about it is I’m still around athletics. I just don’t have to go out and work out, which is the best,” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd gathered Thursday night at Celebrations in Seymour for the Purdue Club of Jackson County’s annual meeting.

Cardinal had some ups and downs in his NBA career, so he said it’s nice to be back at Purdue.

“I tell people all of the time, ‘It’s an incredible business, incredible environment to be in. It’s a great job to have, great to be involved in, but it’s also great to be away from,’” he said of the NBA. “The NBA is fun and unique, but I tell people all of the time, ‘I’ve kind of transitioned to normalcy now that I’m back at Purdue, now that I’m back with my family.’”

Cardinal grew up in Tolono, Illinois, a small town of about 3,400 people just outside of Champaign. His father was the athletics trainer for the University of Illinois, so he grew up around basketball.

He later played in high school and drew interest from several colleges. Purdue head coach Gene Keady and assistant coach Bruce Weber visited his home and said they wanted him to be a Boilermaker.

Cardinal chose Purdue and redshirted his first season before earning a spot in the starting lineup the next four seasons.

One of his highlights was going 9-0 against Illinois, a Big Ten Conference foe. That led to some interesting conversations with his father.

“He would always tell me before the game, ‘I hope you score 35 points, but I hope we beat you by 35,’” Cardinal said. “Early on, he would kind of throw me some zingers and say a few things to me, but he quieted down after the third or fourth beating and never really brought it back up until I would bring it up and remind him.”

Another highlight for Cardinal was playing against Bobby Knight, who was the head coach of Purdue’s in-state rival, Indiana University.

After each meeting, no matter which team won, Cardinal said he always made it a point to rush over to Knight and shake his hand.

“Fortunately, we won more times than we got beat, and so it was always easier to go over there and shake his hand whenever you were a winner,” Cardinal said, smiling.

Cardinal said he was proud to be a part of teams that made it to the Sweet Sixteen two years in a row and then the Elite Eight in 2000.

“Everybody’s goal is to win a championship, everybody’s goal is to make it to the Final Four, and I wanted it probably worse than anybody, not necessarily for myself, but for coach Keady,” Cardinal said. “Unfortunately, we ran into a Wisconsin team that we just couldn’t figure out.”

Cardinal was a four-time recipient of the Courage Award and Ray Eddy Mr. Hustle Award, given annually to the Purdue player who displays the greatest amount of determination, drive and leadership.

After graduating from Purdue, he was drafted by the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. He was there for a couple of years until being traded to the Washington Wizards, which had Michael Jordan on the roster at the time.

The Wizards wound up cutting Cardinal, and he played for six weeks in Spain before coming back to the United States and receiving a call from the Golden State Warriors to attend tryouts.

Following a season in California, he was with the Memphis Grizzlies for four seasons and the Minnesota Timberwolves for two years.

During the summer of 2010, following his 10th NBA season, Cardinal contemplated ending his career.

“The average career is three or four years tops, and having a chance to play 10 years is pretty special, so I figured that my career was finished,” he said.

But a month before the 2010-11 season started, Dallas Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle called him about attending a tryout.

Cardinal made the team and helped the Mavericks win their only NBA title in franchise history.

“Having a chance to win a championship is great,” he said. “Having some sweat equity and being able to play and make some plays was even more incredible.”

He came back the following year and finished his NBA career.

“I tell people all of the time, ‘Just as long as you’re in an NBA city, you’re living right,’” Cardinal said. “Along the way, as long as I was playing in an NBA city, I felt pretty good about every city that I was in.”

Chuck Gordon, president of the Purdue Club of Jackson County, said it was great to have someone of Cardinal’s caliber speak during the annual meeting.

“He’s got a great following in the county, and they’ve been on me for years to get a hold of him, so I’m really glad he was able to come down and visit us,” Gordon said. “The caliber that he was playing at Purdue, that’s how he earned the respect of everyone in this room.”

Gordon said it was good for the local Purdue alumni to hear about Cardinal’s success and now see him back around the West Lafayette campus.

“That’s one of those great things — when they start there, they come back there,” Gordon said. “He’s a Midwest kid that made it out there in the big world, so it’s just really exciting. It’s just great that he had those wonderful experiences.”

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The Purdue Club of Jackson County has been around since 1989. It was inactive for a few years in the late 1990s until being rejuvenated in 2006.

The club conducts an annual meeting each year, and all money raised from that event goes into the club’s scholarship fund. Every spring, the club awards $500 scholarships to county high school graduates who will be freshmen at Purdue in the fall.

This year, scholarship applications are due March 15. They are available at all county high schools. For information, contact Mary Alice Sharp at 812-497-3044.

In the past eight years, the club has awarded more than $40,000 in scholarship money.

For information about the club, contact Chuck Gordon at 812-525-9346.

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