Relationships are a tricky business in the sports industry.

Coaches spend years talking to a recruit, meeting with parents, constantly texting and calling to get players to commit to their schools. Even some eighth graders are getting athletic scholarship offers from colleges. The process takes years of fielding calls and visiting schools.

Then, a coach vanishes at a moment’s notice once the player gets on campus. A relationship built on trust and respect crumbles into dust as if it never existed.

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That is, if the coach handles that exit poorly.

But the relationship between graduate guard McKenzie Forbes of USC women’s basketball and Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb is as strong as can be, even though Gottlieb left Forbes for a new job after one year together.

Forbes played her freshman season with UC Berkeley when Gottlieb was the head coach for the Golden Bears. She transferred to USC to reunite with Gottlieb and close out her collegiate career after four seasons apart.

“The player-coach relationship is really important to me,” Forbes said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “Most coaches would be like, ‘You’re the player, I’m the coach.’ But she’s very open to my input and we have that open dialogue, which I think has genuinely helped this team this year in a lot of ways.”

But, there’s a reason Forbes and Gottlieb had to reunite at USC rather than stick together at Cal. After Forbes’ freshman year, the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers hired Gottlieb away from Cal after she led the Golden Bears to the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season.

“When I left Cal for the NBA, that was not an easy decision,” Gottlieb said before this season’s Elite Eight during media availability. “And the most important things to me were having those young people that I had to leave understand why I made that decision, and hoping that it in some way inspired them to do whatever might be challenging for them in the future.”

Gottlieb had the chance of a lifetime to become one of the few women coaches in the NBA, earning her due after leading the Golden Bears to seven NCAA Tournaments in eight seasons at the helm.

“No one would have predicted I would come back to women’s basketball, least of all me,” Gottlieb said.

In situations like that, coaches are often criticized for the way they recruit players to their respective schools, mentoring them, but then leave when greener pastures emerge without any notice. That was not how Gottlieb handled her exit from Cal.

“I thought she handled it great,” Forbes said. “She obviously called me on the phone. We talked, she was very emotional. We talked about it. Obviously, she felt bad that I was the only freshman kind of … The ceilings on my aspirations might be a bit lower if it weren’t for her taking that leap. So, super grateful for her and we’ve always stayed in touch since then.”

Still, Forbes was left without a coach at a Cal program that had multiple veteran players who were on their way out, not just starting their career like Forbes. So, the Folsom, California native decided to enter the transfer portal to find a new program.

Back when Forbes was a freshman during the 2018-19 season, though, the transfer portal was not the same hectic system it is today. For Forbes to transfer, she would have to sit out an entire season due to the current NCAA transfer rules at the time.

She eventually decided to transfer to Harvard University, but then disaster struck again. The coronavirus pandemic swept the United States, forcing the Ivy League to cancel play for the 2020-2021 season.

McKenzie’s dad, Sterling Forbes, had to watch his daughter get torn away from playing the game she loved for two years.

“That was tough for her because she was seeing her former [Amateur Athletic Union basketball] teammates, and then into March Madness, one of her former teammates won the national championship with Stanford I think that year,” Sterling Forbes said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “It was really, really tough on her to just stay mentally focused and continue to train and continue to train and do all the things needed.”

That time away from college basketball gave McKenzie Forbes a new appreciation for the game as she started coaching seventh and eighth-grade girls, allowing her to see basketball through a coach’s eyes. This short transition to coaching was not surprising to Sterling Forbes, as McKenzie Forbes’ three older brothers pushed her when they were younger to be a leader.

“They want her to be successful, but they weren’t going to make it easy on her,” Sterling Forbes said. “It shows that she had to sit out a year, she had to do this, her coach left. All these different things happen. She’s been able to just step up and be ready regardless.”

When McKenzie Forbes finally made it back on the court, one would expect her to take a step back after not playing competitive basketball at the collegiate level for two seasons. That was hardly the case for the guard, who was named to the All-Ivy second team as a junior.

Just as it always seems to happen for McKenzie Forbes, she was named a captain of the Crimson ahead of her senior year.

“It’s so funny to me because every team she’s ever played on, even going back to junior high, for some reason, she ends up being the team captain or the leader of the team, and everybody just follows,” Sterling Forbes said. “It’s just funny to me, but it just happens and it works.”

But it would always come back to that one relationship. The Ivy League does not allow graduate students to compete in Division I athletics, forcing Forbes to find a new school if she wished to continue her collegiate career for one last season.

Luckily, Gottlieb was looking for transfer portal pieces to help revamp a Trojan roster that had lost three of its top four scorers from the previous year. If Gottlieb had handled her Cal exit differently and disgruntled the Harvard captain, Forbes may never have ended up at USC.

“Women’s college basketball is so much about relationships,” Gottlieb said. “Things aren’t always linear.”

The two ended up together again with the Trojans, and it helped revive a USC program that hasn’t had much national success this century.

Few players who transfer twice in their collegiate career find much success, leaving a question on how Forbes would perform at USC.

Often, those athletes change programs for a third time because they did not perform well at their second school — think former USC football wide receiver Dorian Singer — or have off-the-field issues. Former Ole Miss wide receiver Chris Marshall was dismissed by the Rebels after he transferred there from Texas A&M following a suspension-riddled tenure with the Aggies.

Forbes became one of the rare exceptions, leading the Trojans to their first Elite Eight since 1994. She played in one of the stiffest conferences in the country, as the Pac-12 had four programs in the top 12 of the final Associated Press Top 25 poll, more than any other league.

Yet, it was not Stanford’s senior forward Cameron Brink or junior forward Kiki Iriafen who was named the Pac-12 Tournament Most Outstanding Player, nor UCLA’s sophomore center Lauren Betts or graduate guard Charisma Osborne. It was not even USC’s star freshman guard JuJu Watkins, an AP All-American first teamer, who was the tournament’s MOP. Forbes earned that title, as she finished the season on an absolute heater.

“I’ve always known that I had that in me and I think to see it recognized on that stage meant a lot to myself and my family,” Forbes said. “Your purpose is never outside accolades but … to get that recognition amongst a league of really talented players, and on a team of really talented players on my own team, it definitely meant a lot.”

Across her final six games of the campaign — all Pac-12 or NCAA Tournament games — Forbes averaged 20.7 points per game, up from her season average of 14.3. 

Legends are made in March and, although USC’s journey ended in the Elite Eight, Forbes etched herself in Trojan lore forever.

“She’s just determined to be able to play the game at a high level,” Sterling said.

USC had not made it to the Elite Eight or Sweet 16 since 1994 and had not even made it past the first round in the Big Dance since 2006.

UConn’s program has had the opposite track — winning 10 championships this century alone — but Husky Head Coach Geno Auriemma still had compliments for what the Trojans have done this year.

“One player, one coach can make a difference and here they are,” Auriemma said before this season’s Elite Eight during media availability.

While Auriemma was likely referring to USC’s Watkins, Forbes should not be excluded from that conversation either. She was one of the best 3-point shooters on the team, led the Trojans in assists and led the team in minutes played as it was hard to keep the graduate guard off the court.

But more than just her on-the-court performance, she helped mentor one of the best freshman players in women’s basketball history.

“She’s like Yoda,” Watkins said in the postgame press conference after USC’s Sweet 16 win over Baylor. “We have a special relationship, that rookie-vet vibe. But she’s always just encouraging me and really speaking to me in times when I need it during the game. So, she’s just a great leader.”

Forbes may not look like the small green Jedi from Dagobah, but her wisdom and experience helped the Trojans reach heights unheard of this century.

And while her collegiate career may be over — which Forbes confirmed at the end of the season — that does not mean her basketball career is over.

“I definitely plan to have a professional career,” Forbes said. “Everyone tells me, ‘Play as long as you can.’”

The WNBA Draft takes place April 15, where Forbes has the chance to be one of the 36 names selected and achieve her basketball dreams.

Gottlieb is not likely to leave USC anytime soon and will continue to build strong relationships with recruits to bring the Trojans even further into March Madness.

Forbes and Gottlieb may be heading separate ways again, but the player-bond coach they have will live on, along with the history they co-wrote this season.