KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After several years of health issues left Bill Self gridlocked over whether to return for a 24th season coaching at Kansas, KU announced on social media Wednesday evening that Self isn’t “going anywhere.”

“Jayhawk Nation: With renewed clarity and the ongoing support from our administration, I remain focused and committed to Kansas basketball competing for a National Championship,” Self said in a statement. “I look forward to seeing and hearing the best fans in college basketball next season at Allen Fieldhouse.”

Much to the relief and even delight of any knowledgeable Jayhawk fan.

With a 648-167 record and two national titles at KU, Self is the winningest coach in the storied history of a school whose only losing coach was … James Naismith, the inventor of the game. Self, 855-272 overall, was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017.

Entering a key recruiting time, his return figures to have the impact of both stabilizing and energizing the program that has sagged in its last four NCAA Tournaments since winning the 2022 national title.

Much remained unclear from the statement, though, including what Self’s new timeline may be and how he arrived at the decision.

And while Self is not immediately expected to conduct a news conference or speak to the media soon, it’s still possible to have an understanding of what the last few weeks have been like for Self — who was up against something he seldom seems to have to face: a challenge within himself.

Maybe more than anyone I’ve ever known, Self is so comfortable in his own skin, so at ease with his sense of identity, that you can surmise he’d rarely have to grapple with uncertainty or doubt about his direction. But in this case, there’s no doubt he was absolutely torn for days in what became an agonizing decision-making process.

From long conversations over the years with Self, as well as more recently with people close to him, it seems evident he was left to reconcile several factors in particular:

Perhaps foremost, concerns of his immediate family loomed large after the sequence of health issues that persisted through the last few months. Surely, there were long talks among them.

Entwined with that but also in its own category: Whether and how his health could be further jeopardized by the stressful demands of the job, including endless travel, ever-odd hours, always being on call and surely insufficient sleep.

He certainly needed some clear and expert answers to that ... and evidently heard what he needed to know and heed.

Then there was the great unknown of … what next?

Especially for someone whose entire adult life has been immersed in the adrenaline-infusion of coaching — from its exhilarating highs and anguishing lows to simply always being in the middle of so much.

At some level, really, it might be wondered if Self would have been more stressed out by not doing this anymore .... even if he’d have numerous options connected to the game one way or another.

Self is much more than a coach, of course. But it’s just as true that his identity and daily purpose have been forever engulfed in the work through which he’s so distinguished himself.

No doubt Self, a mere 63 years old, had to work through what life after coaching would, could, should or might look like.

While it feels long ago now, there was something instructive about all that in the news conference he conducted a few weeks after he first fell ill in 2023.

That was his first public appearance after suddenly requiring a heart catheterization procedure that included two stents being implanted to treat blocked arteries, forcing him to sit out the Big 12 Tournament and NCAA Tournament.

Self spoke about why what began as an “out of body-type experience” led to clarity and conviction about how much longer he wanted to coach.

“The last several weeks, I’ve been able to reflect on a lot of things,” Self, who essentially has a lifetime contract, said then. “One thing I can tell you without question: I missed my job. I love my job and I want to do my job for a long time.”

In fact, the circumstances actually triggered a reboot for Self, who told me in 2016 that he would be “ecstatic” to make it through the contract that then went through 2022 — when, as it happened, he guided KU to the second national title of his tenure.

A crucial part of that feeling of renewal stemmed from something almost anyone can relate to: Sometimes you just don’t know what you want, or have, until it’s at risk or gone.

In that case, anyway, the feeling was amplified by the fact that Self already felt much better (and that he had no sense of lurking further health issues ahead).

“I think sometimes we don’t realize we don’t feel well,” he said then, “until we actually feel well and know the difference.”

He also experienced a jarring difference in something else entirely fundamental to his existence:

While he never feared for his life, he said, he was reminded vividly of a part of it that he wasn’t at all ready to surrender.

Whether he was watching his team from the hospital in Kansas City or in a Des Moines hotel room during NCAA tourney play, that sensation surged through Self — who typically is consumed with every … single … play. So much so that he joked about his “zen-type” coaching persona.

As the games went on, he was struck by the disorienting feeling of having “no control.” He felt the hollowness of not being in the locker room with his coaches and team.

Maybe most of all, he ached over the void in not being among them in the sensory overload of the trials and triumphs of a tight game late.

“I love that moment,” he said.

The feeling was compounded by having faced the other end of the spectrum, something he summed up by describing an internal monologue during his time away:

“OK, what are you going to do today? Well, you know, I tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to have breakfast. And then I’m going to sit around and go for a walk, maybe, and then come back and watch TV. Or read. Or something like that.”

Just then, well, it occurred to him that that was not at all what he wanted to be doing. So he’d get on the phone and get back to recruiting, including by “living in the (transfer) portal.”

It’s logical to believe his decision now also hinged on further reconciling life with the confounding portal as well as another contemporary matter: further funding for the still-bewildering implications and reach of the NIL era of legally paying collegiate athletes.

It’s hard to imagine that those fluid dynamics, which have at least in part driven some veteran coaches out of the game, weren’t on Self’s mind through this. It could well be that there’s an entire story in itself to be done on that element of this.

Perhaps all the more so since KU hasn’t advanced out of the first weekend of NCAA play since winning the championship in 2022.

But more than anything else, Self likely arrived at this decision by working through exactly what he said he would be considering after KU’s 67-65 loss to St. John’s in the Round of 32 last month.

“I’ll get back and visit with family,” Self that day told reporters in San Diego. “I’ve had, obviously, some issues off the court health-wise. And that will be discussed.

“But I love what I do. I want to feel good while I’m doing it, though.”

How much longer, of course, remains its own matter.

For the better part of a year or more, Self has found himself no longer thinking in five-year increments about his future but in terms of two-year spans.

However long he might go, Self never had seen himself as coaching up until he’s around 70.

Now, his perspective on that in certain ways figure to be the opposite of what it was in 2023.

Even as he acknowledged then that the situation had compelled him to ponder the end, he said he didn’t even see an “oncoming train” yet.

“When (you) think of the end, you think of it getting closer,” he said. “When I think of the end now, after sitting out and not doing this for a while, I think of it being further away.”

Now, of course, he’ll see it as closer than ever ... no matter how much longer he goes.

First, though, he’ll see it as something that’s still too much a part of him to let it go, even if it will be hard for those either questioning or embracing his return not to still worry about his health.

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