Basketball coaching

I had a brief career as a basketball coach. Back in 1964, when I drove to New Hampshire to teach algebra II in the New Hampton School, I had no idea I’d be assigned coaching duties.

But it turned out that New Hampton (a private, college preparatory school) had no coach for its reserve team, because the previous year’s coach had been kicked upstairs, to coach the varsity. At New Hampton, the reserve team was the lowest level on the basketball totem pole, after the varsity squad and then the junior varsity squad. I’d never coached a basketball team before, but had played quite a bit of basketball and thus had some knowledge of the sport.

So, off I ventured in the footsteps of Red Auerbach and John Wooden. I have a photograph from the 1965 annual, showing “Coach Davis” and his basketball squad. At 21, I looked younger than a good number of my players. Being young and naïve did have its advantages, though: I had no idea how challenging coaching would be and thus was not as intimidated as I should have been.

The former coach was very helpful and from him I learned a basic offense and defense. They were not very complicated, the offense being what a real coach would call a 2-1-2, meaning two guards in the front of the formation (facing the basket), a center standing at the free throw line with his back to the basket, and two forwards on each side of the base line. The defense was a simple switching man to man defense.

Of course, the reserve team didn’t get the top players; they all went to the varsity teams. But I did have some kids with a bit of talent. My starting center wasn’t quite as tall as the reigning center from the Celtics down south in Boston (a guy named Bill Russell), only about 5-8, but he was broad and strong. I had a couple of serviceable forwards (one was 6-1, although he only weighed about 140 pounds. The real weakness of the team was at guard. I had one decent player whom I could trust to guide the team, but he was asthmatic, and could never play very long.

My team played either the reserve squads from adjacent prep schools or from adjacent junior highs. By and large, we were not as large nor as talented as our opponents, and the coaching was a definite deficiency. But as the season proceeded, and as I learned more about how to coach, it was satisfying to watch my team get better and better.

New Hampton’s chief rival was Tilton Academy, and we played four games against them. We lost the first couple games badly, but then did better in the third (still lost), and in the fourth, almost beat them. I recall that we were ahead in the fourth quarter, but my asthmatic guard had played for as long as he could, and had to give way to his substitute, a really sweet but tiny little Greek boy who at the end just couldn’t hold off Tilton.

I don’t remember exactly, but I think we won three games, and lost eight. I certainly couldn’t claim notable coaching success, but I enjoyed that assignment more than anything else I did at New Hampton. I became very attached to my kids, and coaching was the one experience that might have induced me to keep teaching in New Hampshire.

I was reminded of all this recently when I watched a filmed session by Utah Jazz coaches in which they were instructing a pleasant young rookie named Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell is an exceptional talent, with a good chance of winning the National Basketball Association Rookie of the Year award for this season. He is 6-3, 215 pounds, an extraordinary athlete, and quite an extraordinary basketball student. The instructions given him were subtle and highly demanding, but he picked up on them immediately and performed flawlessly.

You wouldn’t think that such an undertaking would bear much resemblance to what I had to teach my reserve basketball players back in New Hampshire over 50 years ago. But in both cases, the players and coaches earnestly committed themselves to the task at hand, and they formed a real bond over a shared endeavor. Still, though I loved all my kids, I would have given almost anything for just one player with a tenth the talent of Donovan Mitchell.

John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is retired. He is the author of several books.