KAMAL ASSAF – FORMER LA JOLLA (CA) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 954

Website – https://www.bishops.com/

Email – assafk@bishops.com

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamal-assaf-570b456/

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Kamal Assaf was a 4 year varsity high school basketball player at The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, California who went on to play in two college basketball programs at UC San Diego and Whittier College. For the past 32 years, Coach Assaf has worked with basketball players at all levels including middle school, freshman, junior varsity and as a Varsity assistant coach.  As a high school Varsity Head coach between 2004-2012, Coach Assaf led the La Jolla High School Vikings Boys Varsity basketball team to San Diego CIF Division III Championships in 2008 and 2009.  He just completed his 25th year as a history teacher at The Bishop’s School where he currently teaches 8th grade American History.

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Kamal Assaf, former Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at La Jolla High School in the state of California.

What We Discuss with Kamal Assaf

• Being an fan of Dr. J while growing up in San Diego
• Competing with his brother
• The difference between kids growing up in the past vs today
• Advice for players – “You have to figure out what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. And you also have to figure out what translates to another level.”
• How watching college basketball on TV stoked his desire to play in college
• Understanding the level you are capable of playing at
• Starting his college career at UCSD and finishing at Whittier College
• Experiencing many different roles as a player
• His decision to enter the teaching/coaching profession
• “What you see on a team is what’s important to that coach.”
• “It’s not a style of play just that you like, but it’s one that you think can be successful.”
• “Once I started getting out there. I started realizing there are a lot of people to learn from, and I would go to clinics and I’d realize the way you get better is you learn from other people, and you add to what you’ve already been taught, so you have this foundation.”
• The lightbulb moment he had with Pete Newell – you can learn form anyone…
• “What makes these people super coaches, is they’re super learners.”
• “As an assistant code, you have to be hungry. You have to learn. You have to put yourself out there.”
• “Being an assistant, there’s very little glory, but the glory is in teaching kids and helping kids and learning and eventually helping a program.”
• “You have to really give yourself time as a new head coach. You’re not going to get instant gratification unless you inherit a team that’s truly gifted.”
• “Have a clear vision of what you want.”
• The importance of finding mentors along the way
• “Nobody does it alone. There’s no self-made men.”
• The joy is in sharing your success
• “Basketball is a brotherhood.”
• “You’re selling the greatest game ever. And so play has to be a part of that. So I think there’s nothing makes you fall in love with the game more than pick up ball.”
• “You develop a relationship with each of the players. It’s not a transactional thing, it’s a brotherhood, it’s a connection, there’s something deep.”
• “I’m a big open gym fan because there’s nothing better than playing. I mean, if you can’t fall in love with basketball playing, there’s something wrong with you.”
• “I would develop a real culture of playing because you can’t get good unless you play.”
• “You develop by playing, not by doing drills.”
• Holding kids to a standard that you expect
• Advice on communication and relationships for coaches that don’t work in their school building
• “The greatest coaches throw the most time at their job.”

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THANKS, KAMAL ASSAF

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TRANSCRIPT FOR KAMAL ASSAF – FORMER LA JOLLA (CA) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 954

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. And we are pleased to welcome Kamal Assaf, long time boys basketball coach in the San Diego area. Kamal, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:16] Kamal Assaf: Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it. It’s a pleasure for me to be here.

[00:00:20] Mike Klinzing: We are thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your career. Looking forward to giving you an opportunity to share your experiences in the game with some of our younger coaches out there. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball and kind of how you fell in love with it.

[00:00:45] Kamal Assaf: Well, I was lucky enough to, I’ve got a dog in the background here. I was lucky enough to love soccer and baseball. But when I started playing basketball, when I was probably about nine years old, I started playing basketball.

We had a team here, the San Diego Clippers, who were about to be moved to LA. Little did we know, but my brother and I grew up playing soccer, baseball, having a great time with, with really a lot of different outdoor sports in San Diego. But basketball was something we just absolutely loved. And so when we got playing, my dad would take us to Clipper games.

Now we were so bad to Clippers back in the late 70s that we’d go watch the other team play. So he would take us to watch Dr. J and the Sixers. You know, we’d see, we wouldn’t see the Lakers come down because that was always sold out, but we’d see you know, we’d see the Celtics coming with Larry Bird.

And that’s how I kind of stoked a love of the game. It just became something that I enjoyed playing. I had a little success when you’re a kid and you can dribble the ball, and I had the ability to dribble the ball. The game is easy for you at that age, at nine and 10 and 11. And so it was the combination of being in love with playing with my brother and playing locally at the little park and then starting to watch NBA before NBA was even on TV before it was on, it would be on Sundays, but they would tape delay it for playoffs. It would, there was no TNT, there was nothing.

[00:02:17] Mike Klinzing: Who was your favorite player back in that era?

[00:02:19] Kamal Assaf: You know, Dr. J was my favorite player, the Clippers were so transient. Dr. J of the Sixers was, and I saw him at the tail end of his career. You know, he was a great ABA player, but Dr. J was just such a remarkable talent, the way he could jump, the way he was graceful, the way he carried himself. And he was by far my favorite player.

I respected Magic and, and Kareem and the Lakers, but as a San Diego guy, I didn’t love the Lakers because they were the LA Lakers. So I was really, More of a, of a, of a Sixers guy. And then I became a bird fan, of course, later. You know, as, as I, his talent was undeniable and I, but I never liked the Lakers.

I was one of those guys who always stayed true to San Diego, didn’t like the Lakers.

[00:03:00] Mike Klinzing: Doc was my guy too. So I went from doc and then after doc, I guess I, I probably, I probably leaned, I probably leaned more magic than bird for sure. I’ve never been a Celtics guy. And then obviously, then obviously Jordan takes over.

But my first pair of real basketball shoes were the Dr. J leather Converse All Stars, man. When I put those things on for the first time, unbelievable. Yeah. Doc was just, that was a guy who not only in terms of his ability to play the game. But just when you think about the grace and just beauty of Doc’s game, that’s what I always think of when I think of Dr.

J. He just was, he played the game in such a way that it was just magnetic because of his ability to glide to the basket and just the way he just carried himself on the floor was incredible.

[00:03:50] Kamal Assaf: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, all those things, the way he carried himself. I got a chance to meet him when I was probably 20 and we, I met him at this fundraiser at Del Mar racetrack.

It was the fair and I’m not sure a friend just said he’s going to be here. So we, we played three on three and I was 20, 21 playing basketball at UCSD. I was just a red shirt or I wasn’t a very good college player, division three player. And here he is probably 37, just retired. And he was unbelievably talented.

He was just going 30%. And then he says you want to have a slam dunk contest and I almost gagged. And of course I was barely putting the ball over the rim and he’s getting up there dunking from near the free throw line at 37 off of a concrete floor. So it was amazing how, how, yeah, I mean, when you get up close and personal you just see this guy is gifted.

And a gentleman. I mean, I was trying to body him. I was doing all I could and he was just, he was just having fun. Dr. J was just having fun with me. So that’s how I fell in love with the game. And then Jordan, as you said, how could you not be impressed with his grace, his ability, his skill, and just his competitive fire.

So the game really transported me into a world of loving it. And it took the baseball. I still love football. But it took the place of everything soccer and it just became my passion. And that just kind of directed my life and still does and still does.

[00:05:21] Mike Klinzing: And your brother, is your brother older or younger than you?

[00:05:26] Kamal Assaf: My brother’s two years younger, but he had a remarkable passion. I mean, the guy was really bright. He started reading the sports page at like seven. And so I started reading the sports page. And so we were always interested in sports.

He also liked playing. He was always shorter as, as a younger brother two years younger, he was five inches shorter. So we played one on one in the backyard. My dad put a hoop up there and he also became a coach. It was very important to us. We had a remarkable childhood where we played everything, baseball, soccer.

He didn’t play football, I played football. But it was a remarkable thing how we both developed a passion, a love for the game. And he’s also a terrific basketball coach. So it’s just it’s neat that we had this childhood that was so simple. No cell phones. No technology.

It was and barely any cable, right? The 70s, no cable, but the 80s ESPN came, came of age. And so that, that was our life. Our life was a very simple, and I would not trade it for anything.

[00:06:24] Mike Klinzing: I agree with you 100%. Come on. When it’s a kind of a theme on the pod of just kind of talking about how differently I grew up as a kid who was born in 1970 versus the way that kids grow up today, both in terms of just the overall experience, like you said, playing all kinds of different sports.

And I didn’t play any sports other than basketball when I, by the time I got to school, but growing up in the neighborhood, like I played, I mean, you can name just about anything and I’m sure, but I played it in a driveway, in the street, in a backyard, somewhere completely different from the way that kids grow up today.

It’s just that they don’t, they don’t experience those same. things that you and I got a chance to experience just in the neighborhood and doing all that kind of stuff. And to your point, I always say I would never, there are positives to the system today, but I would never trade the way I grew up for the way that kids grow up today.

[00:07:20] Kamal Assaf: Not a chance. Not a chance. Yeah. It’s just the fact that there was so much spontaneity. Get on your bikes. We’d ride to the rec center, which was a mile and a half away. It was an outdoor court that two courts that was in the middle of La Jolla, which is kind of a resort town these days. It’s beach town.

And so you have this little outdoor area where there were two courts and there’d be all kinds of guys down there all the time. And so our goal was to be 12 13 to play on the big guy’s court and then and to get picked and to win. And then and then eventually we were the big guys, but it was just a Saturday morning to get there and play.

And, and try to hold court. You know, there was no club basketball. I don’t know what club basketball was. It was just, you go to the rec center and you play. And you played against Jim Brogan who played a cup of coffee with the Clippers. And, and you played against Jeff Webb who played for the Bucks.

And you play sometimes against them. Some ex Chargers, there was one time I played against Flutie in season, which was fun, because he had played on Saturday and Sunday, I did not foul him, because he was my quarterback for the Chargers, but it just, it was fun, fun, so that, that’s where I grew up, loving the game, because when you play pickup, as you know, you have to win, but you also have to figure out how to win, what you need to be, are you a scorer, are you a shooter, are you a screener what’s your role, and then you have to assert yourself with adults.

Which is something kids don’t have to do now, right? You have to search yourself. You say, I’m playing. Yeah, I’m playing.

[00:08:42] Mike Klinzing: Yep. That is totally true. As you started to get more serious about basketball, as you got into high school, how did you How’d you go about trying to get better? Was it mostly playing pickup?

Is that kind of how you worked on your game? Did you go and get in the gym or get to a court by yourself and work on it? Or just again, the way that you and I grew up working on our game? Totally different from the way kids today grow up working on their game. Yeah. So just what did you do? What did you do as a high school player to keep improving?

[00:09:12] Kamal Assaf: Well, I mean that was probably the blessing and the curse, right? The blessing was, I played a lot. I mean, I played sometimes twice a day. You know, summers we’d play sometimes in the mornings. We’d go summer league at San Diego Municipal Gym, play our high school summer league and come back and play again.

So the good news was I was playing all the time, developing a feel, instinct, understanding. I was very physical. I was used to playing against men. There was no age group ball, so you were playing against older guys. So at 15, 16, 17, even though I was pretty slender, I was 6’2 about 150 as a junior.

And then, like, you know I was very physical and I was very used to using my body. Now the downside was I didn’t understand the value of the three point shot. It came in my senior year, so I didn’t shoot it well. So that really pigeonholed me and I was a small college player because I was a decent athlete.

I was dunking a ball occasionally. And I had some quickness, but I didn’t have the explosiveness and I didn’t shoot the ball. And so I was, I think in retrospect, one of the things I’ve learned and I would share with any young player is you have to figure out what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are.

And you also have to figure out what translates to another level. And as we know, shooting is even more important now than it was then. But even then if you, if you’re not a dynamic athlete, you can get to the rim like a Kyrie Irving or like a Chris Paul. You better shoot the ball, and I didn’t shoot it, so I didn’t spend the kind of hours.

Developing that shot. And my senior year, the line came in. I think I shot one of them. And in fact, nobody shot them. I mean, a number of people shot them in the County. Did, when did this three point line come in your, cause you graduated with me, right? 88, were you class of 88?

[00:10:46] Mike Klinzing: Same year, same year. So, I didn’t have it.

I mean, I mean, I did, but you, you look at like, I always think about it more, not necessarily. With my high school career, because it comes in for a year and everybody’s just trying to figure it out, whatever. But I think about myself as a college player, like I was probably. I think for my college career, I shot maybe right at 40%, maybe even a little bit slightly above.

Wow. I look at, and I mean, I shot a decent amount for the era that I was playing in, but I think about how many I would have shot. And how differently I would have played had I gone to college in 2018 and instead of 1988 I mean the game would, it’s, it’s in so many ways, I’m sure Kamal you understand this too, but I feel like the game in so many ways is almost unrecognizable in terms of a, the number of threes that we shoot, B, I don’t know about you, but when I was playing college basketball, like the number of ball screens that I was involved in offensively and defensively was next to nothing. I could probably count them on one hand. And then I always tell people, the other thing that you see in the game today that I never, ever, ever, ever did was drive under the basket, be right at the rim, and then throw the ball out to somebody.

On the three point line. I mean, I don’t think I threw a pass like that once in my entire career. And now you watch games and that’s just what everybody does. So the evolution of the game is quite interesting.

[00:12:20] Kamal Assaf: It’s changed. Where did you go to college?

[00:12:23] Mike Klinzing: Kent State, Kent State.

[00:12:25] Kamal Assaf: Oh boy. You would have been D one.  You and Lambert and coach Saban, you guys were all there together, but there you go. There you go.

[00:12:34] Mike Klinzing: They were there before. They were there a little bit before me, a couple of years before me, but you know, again, talking Kent football, I always laugh because Kent football basically, I mean, since the time I was there has been from a team record standpoint, they had one or two decent years sprinkled in.

Kent State football has produced an incredible amount of NFL players for how bad from a team standpoint that program has been. And then the basketball program has been outstanding and really hasn’t produced anything in the way of a meaningful NBA player, which I find to be just interesting sort of juxtaposition between the two programs.  So it’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:20] Kamal Assaf: That’s big time. That’s great.

[00:13:21] Mike Klinzing: When did college basketball get an opportunity get on your radar? Was that something that you were thinking about growing up or when did, when did you start to think about, Hey, I’d like to give college basketball a shot?

[00:13:33] Kamal Assaf: Yeah. I think I wanted to play college basketball from eighth grade on.  I was watching the ACC. If you remember, ESPN was really new and they were just soaking up the ACC. And if you remember, it was Johnny Dawkins, there’s Tommy Amaker, Duke was ascending. Jordan was, Jordan Worthy, Perkins, North Carolina, I mean, Ralph Sampson, I mean, Big East, so many great examples of remarkable programs and it was, I mean, prime time.

I just wanted to go home and watch games, Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, big Mondays. And so, I, I think I decided I wanted to play probably in 8th or 9th grade, but of course I was delusional, like most kids are, and I thought I could play at that level. I thought I could play at a Division I school, and my coach would say, yeah, you can, I school coach who come, came in my sophomore year, and he said, you can play Division I, and I couldn’t but I had these dreams of grandeur and so that it became really important to me. Probably in eighth grade, ninth grade, for sure. I started varsity as a freshman at a small school. It was very academic. So again, it gave me this unrealistic understanding of how good I was.

I was in San Diego, not Detroit or Chicago or New York. So I was starting at a little private school and so, but I wanted to play college to answer your question.

[00:14:52] Mike Klinzing: But here’s the thing, Kamal, that’s interesting. And I think it speaks to my experience. It sounds like your experience too. is back in the era when you and I were in high school, there was no way to get the information about where, where you stood.

Like you kind of knew like, Hey, I know my school. I know maybe my conference. I know maybe a little bit about people from other, maybe nearby regions in the state, but I had no idea how good I was or how good I thought again, how good I thought I was and the level that I could play. You know, I mean, I thought when I, when Kent asked me, I’ve told this story a million times, so I’ll just give you the abbreviated version, but basically Kent asked me to come down for an official visit and I was like, yeah, I don’t think I’m going to do that because I got to save my visits for Duke and North Carolina and Ohio state.

And you know, I had no idea and I had no idea. And so I turned down an official visit. I went down and visited with my mom and I remember the two of us. eating lunch at Wendy’s because we had to pay for it because they didn’t pay for it because it wasn’t an official visit. And then after that, after I went on that visit, they completely just stopped recruiting me, which again, totally understandable why I was probably a borderline kid as it was.

And here’s this borderline kid telling them, Hey, I don’t want to take an official visit with your school. And I didn’t tell them the reason why, but still just the fact that I didn’t take that official visit. And then I had to kind of re recruit myself after my senior year to even get out. So just, but my point is there just was no information.

If it was today, there would have been a million people knowing, telling me I could have compared myself to this person or that person and known, Hey, I’m not, Six foot eight could jump out of the gym. I’m probably not getting that scholarship to Ohio State. Maybe I need to start looking at places that are more realistic, but.

That information just wasn’t available at a time when you and I were going to school.

[00:16:51] Kamal Assaf: It’s true. It’s true. And then then, but I think the thing, nobody’s recruiting you or nobody was recruiting me. USD had me come over and walk in, take a look, and they said, I went to their camp and was their best player in their camp.

But the camp wasn’t a developmental camp. It was for kids. It had prospects there. So they said, you can come walk on, and I realized, okay, so I’m a Division III player because USD was really what I wanted to play for Hank Egan, and they had good teams at USD University of San Diego, but I realized, okay, I’m better off at UCSD, but yeah, I think that’s a really good point.

The other thing is, I think you have got to go seek it out. I mean, I think that that’s, if I could go back, I would say I would have to go seek out. I wish I’d gone to Snow Valley Basketball School in Santa Barbara that was run by Herb Livsey that had great players and great teachers. And I had a chance to go.

My coach said, it’s 300 bucks. I said, ooh, it’s a lot. Don’t ask my parents for that. So I just pooh poohed it, you know? So I think in retrospect, if I could go back, you’ve got to get out of the bubble. But even then I was on an all star team in San Diego and I was probably one of the top 15 on one team, but there were another 15 on the other team.

So then I was in the top. Maybe I was in the top 20 of the seniors, but there were juniors and Tony Clark was one of them. He was a sophomore. I mean, you don’t really understand until maybe it’s too late and it’s never too late, but you’re just naive. I was naive. And I say, that’s the biggest thing I learned is I was naive about the whole process.

And if I could go back, I’d tell my 15 year old self, train, go compete against the best and really figure out how you have to, what you need to play at the collegiate level and that shooting and skill, right? Footwork. Shooting and footwork, and explosiveness and all that stuff.

But so yeah, there’s things you learn, but I was naive. Let’s put it this way. Ignorance is a nice word to say too.

[00:18:43] Mike Klinzing: So talk about the decision and ultimately when you make the decision and how you what was the, what was the transition like for you to college, both athletically and academically?

[00:18:55] Kamal Assaf: Well, I was at a great school.

I was at a school that was a very academic powerhouse. So at UCSD, I was, I was prepared to do the work and, but the challenge was I had never. Seeing players is good. You know, I was playing small school ball, and I think I played against the kid Mitchell Butler in the state playoffs, and we held him to 31, we beat him, but he went to UCLA, was an All American, played in the NBA for about 8 years.

He was kind of a defensive guard. He was kind of like KCP the Denver Nuggets. Yep, yep. Mitchell Butler played UCLA. Maybe a second round pick, but had a great career, but a defensive stopper. But that was my first exposure. Whoa, this guy’s going to UCLA. He’s a parade All American. This is a different player.

Right. And but at UCSD, the guards were more skilled, there’s better shooting. I was kind of a tweener. I was kind of built like a two guard. I was 6’2 and pretty strong, but I couldn’t shoot it. And so that the, I redshirted my first year. I injured my knee my first year. I had knee surgery, scope. Second year I redshirted, which was surprising, but I wasn’t good enough.

And I think my third year I got cut. So it was kind of an eye opener. And I think it really helped me develop a little bit of an edge in, in later on in doing something with basketball because I felt like I wanted to continue. So, getting cut was heartbreaking in many ways. It was like the death of a dream when you get cut, you’re 20.

You’re in your third year. The kid who was better than I was just made this move on me. He grew up in Inglewood. He played with Harold Minor. If you remember him from USC with the Miami Heat. And this kid made a move in the gym and I was smart enough to say, Whoa, guy’s better than I am. And he was. And so they kept him, he ended up being a three year starter for them, and, and UCSD was the top ten program when I was there.

So, I was a good Division III player at an average Division III school, but not at a top ten school. I would have been just a bench player, never played, because I never learned how to shoot it, and I didn’t have a shooter’s ego. And so, UCSD was great because I’d had so much success in high school being a player of the year and an all league and four year varsity starter.

But it gave me the experience of not only redshirting, but it also getting cut. And in my life, that was a really good experience, not only because it was humbling, but because it was motivating because I said to myself, I was 20, I said, is that it? And so I talked to my parents and I was going to UCSD and it was a great school academically living at home and no social life, no campus life.

UCSD, as you know, is one of the academic powerhouses, and I said, Hey, I want to transfer Whittier. The coach at Whittier College was friends with my high school coach. And so he said come on over and let’s see if you want to come in. And so I transferred, they allowed me to do it had to kind of convince my dad.

And I started now when I started, I went from getting cut to starting at Whittier. I wasn’t very good. I was just average. But I got to play, and it’s so important for me, because that was my dream. My dream was to play college basketball. And so college ended up, and then the next year, my senior year, because I went five years they brought a kid in, and I backed up.

So I look back, college, and I, it’s like I got every experience. I look back at it, and I said to myself I got to be a star in high school, and I got to be which has its value. I redshirted, and then I also started, and I also came off the bench, and so. I wasn’t a star in college by any stretch, but I got to experience it all.

And so that was really good for my development, my maturity, my humility. Because you need to have that if you want to be a basketball player you need a leader. Absolutely. So that was an interesting journey. But I give my parents credit for letting me transfer.  I just loved playing. So that was a good experience.

[00:22:42] Mike Klinzing: What was the thought process academically throughout the time that you were in school? What were you, what were you going to, what would you think your career was going to be? Was coaching on your radar at this point or what were you thinking?

[00:22:52] Kamal Assaf: That’s a good point. You know, initially I wanted to be on ESPN. I thought I could be a talking head on ESPN. A friend of mine was doing that on, on KTLA. He was at Oxfield College. He has actually, he does NFL Network now. He is the executive producer of NFL Network and he’s got Tom Brady. Who’s going to come on in, so he’s going to be bossing Tommy around, but this guy was doing it.

I said, I can do it. I talk sports. I like sports. But my parents were saying, Hey we want you to get a master’s degree and go to graduate school. And then I started, here’s what I wanted to share, and out of my failure, you could say, I got cut, I went back to my high school to coach. And when I went back to my high school to coach, my, I was 20, in my third year of college, and academically I was a history major, I really loved coaching.

But I also wanted to play, so I transferred and played, but in the back of my mind, I realized that’s it. I want to coach and teach because I love history and I loved coaching. I loved inspiring kids. I love being in the game. I love competing. And so that experience taught me getting cut, taught me there’s something in it for me here.

And that gave me the opening to go that direction. And so when I went to Whittier, I quickly started to finish my masters, finish my degree in history and start to angle towards education. And I graduated and I went to University of San Diego, this time as a grad student in teacher credential program.

I really feel like that experience of getting cut was so hard, but also so great, you know?

[00:24:23] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s interesting those fork in the road moments, right? Where something happens that you can look at it and say, Hey, this is. And clearly there was some negative aspects to it, but I think that the people who go on to be successful, the ones that you, you have something happen or you have something that take your life, that steers you maybe in a direction that you weren’t thinking or puts you in a place where you’re supposed to be.

And it’s, I think a lot of coaches, when you have, it’s amazing, the number of guys come all that we’ve talked to on the podcast that a lot of times it’s an injury. Not necessarily getting cut, but a guy will go and play college basketball and gets injured. And then all of a sudden they can’t play for six months or eight months or they miss a season and boom, they’re gone.

Spending a lot more time with the coaching staff and they’re, they’re talking to this and that, and then all of a sudden it’s like, Hey, maybe, maybe coaching is, maybe coaching is what I want to do. And so it’s, it’s kind of interesting if you can think back to that first experience, going back to your high school, what’s something that was hard for you initially with coaching?

Was there any part of it that. You were like, man, this is like, I love this, but I got to get better at this particular aspect of it if this is going to become something that I do for my career.

[00:25:34] Kamal Assaf: You know, teaching is hard. Teaching is hard. Teaching kids how you want to play. You know, thinking about how you want to play, having a philosophy you grow up in your coach’s philosophy.

So you see the game through your coach’s eyes. So he was a matchup zone guy, defense, defense. And so trying to figure out both how to teach what you want, but also what do you want? Like, what, how are you going to play? I always say every team is, is come from their code, comes from a vision, comes from a philosophy.

What you see on a team is what’s important to that coach. Jerry Tarkanian used to practice for three hours and two hours was defensive stance and slides. Everybody thinks the Running Rebs. For passing and running offense. They weren’t, they were defending and running off their defense. And so I had to decide what, what I liked about what my coach did, who was great, my high school basketball coach, and then what I wanted to do.

So that means how fast do you play? Where do you pick up? Do you press? Is it man? Is it zone? Offense? Do you open the post? Do you close the post? How do you, how do you teach kids to get better? So there’s a teaching component you have to understand and then you have to figure out, okay, what’s our style of play?

And it’s not a style of play just that you like, but it’s one that you think can be successful. You know, I’d like to play like Tom Izzo, but it can’t be successful. I’d like to play like the speed of a team that flies down the floor, but it can’t be successful with who I coach. So. Those would be some of the things, what do you believe?

What are your tenants? What are your values? And, and those high school coaches certainly start that and then who you meet along the way is going to really influence you and how you, how you pursue the game, how you envision the game and then how you teach it. And teaching it is hard because you have to do it, fail.

So that would be something that was hard to figure out, okay, what, what do we want to be? You want to be a pressing team? You know, what, what type of player do I like? You know, do I like a shooter? Do I like a finesse player? And I realized quickly, I liked physical kind of junkyard dog player.

And so, so my players weren’t as skilled necessarily. I valued guys that were multi athletes multi sport athletes. And that became kind of a theme throughout, because I was, I guess that’s what I like.

[00:28:09] Mike Klinzing: Do you immediately start looking at the game differently and looking at it from a coaching perspective, or did you always feel like you looked at it kind of from a coaching perspective?

Because I know I always say that when I was playing, I really, in all honesty, never thought once about, coaching, never thought about the game from a coach’s perspective. I was always just kind of introspective of myself, of who am I as a player? What am I doing as a player? And so then there are other guys who they’re playing and they’re already thinking the game like a coach.

So I guess my question for you is, When did you start looking at the game from that coaching perspective and developing the kind of philosophy and thoughts that you’re talking about? Because to your point, when you’re playing your system that your coach runs. So like I had the same coach in high school for four years.

I had the same coach in college for four years. So when I started coaching, like those were the two guys. Yeah. That I modeled everything I did after and I say this all the time. Like I was not someone that I guess I back in that time, I had an ego where I thought I’m a good player. So that’s going to make me a good coach.

And so I didn’t go out and learn other team systems or look at it from a coaching perspective. So when did you start to do that?

[00:29:32] Kamal Assaf: It’s a great question. It really is. Never thought about that question. I mean, I think I was always watching. My dad would videotape my games, particularly my senior year when the technology was there.

You get that big camera with this video tape, VHS, remember that? And and I’d get it home and I’d watch it. And I’d watch it to study myself and what I was doing. It wasn’t to reinforce or to look at my stats. It was really what did I do? And so sometimes I would watch how I’d attack or how the game would flow.

So I think I always had an interest in just watching tape and watching games. But I was like you. I came from a great high school coach. We were undefeated my senior year. We lost in the championship game by one. Missed a free throw to win it. I missed a free throw to win it. And then we went into overtime and we lost by one.

Bu we had a great run. And so I was thinking I was coached by a really good coach. I know a lot about basketball, but then once I started getting out there. I started realizing there are a lot of people to learn from, and I would go to clinics and I’d realize the way you get better is you learn from other people, and you add to what you’ve already been taught, so you have this foundation.

Which is about defense and, and, and transition. That was really my coach’s two favorite things, defense and transition. And it was going to clinics and watching. And I had a light bulb moment. So I think coaching philosophy wise, I had a light bulb moment. I was 29 years old, big man camp. So here’s Pete Newell out there and I, and he calls me up and he says, well, you take Pete Newell to the airport.

I said, absolutely. So I’m talking to Pete Newell. He’s the nicest man ever. And he’s showing me a movie Touch Jack and in the lobby of the airport. And we hit it off and then I, I go there and there’s a guy named Mike Dunlap. Have you heard of Mike? Mike Dunlap?

[00:31:18] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. We’ve had Mike on, great guy. Imet him at the Jay Bilas camp. Yeah. Great, great guy

[00:31:24] Kamal Assaf: Mike Dunlap’s there. So Mike’s there. Pete Newell. I’m in the gym with Mike Dunlap, who’s one of the greatest teachers I’ve been around. Pete Newell, who’s one of the greatest teachers. And then Paul Mokeski‘s there.

So, I mean, it’s an all star cast. And Paul Mokeski played for the Bucs, played for about 17 years, for Don Nelson a lot, played for the Sonics. So he’s, he’s working with some guys, and they’re all 6’3 to 6’9 none of them Division I players, but he’s teaching the big guys, the post. And I’m, I’m, I’m coaching a game, my game ends, and I look over, and Pete Newell is there, so I walk next to him, and I said, what are you doing, coach?

And he goes, I’m watching Coach Mokeski. And I said, well, why are you watching him? Now, there was no disrespect to Coach Mokeski, but we’re talking about the father of the, the big man camp, right? The man who maybe taught, he didn’t teach Walton and Jabbar, for whatever reason, they didn’t go, but, So many people went, maybe because he was a Cal guy and they were UCLA guys, so many people went to, to, to the, the big man camp in Hawaii and I went there.

That summer I went to watch him and to, it’s amazing, Kiki Vandewey, I mean, it was, it was Carlisle there. There were just tons of NBA people there. He really, Pete Newell is one of the great, if you’re ranking people, coaches and contributions in basketball, he might be in the top ten all time, he might be in the top five.

Bobby Knight loved him. So I said, well, why are you watching Coach Mokeski? And again, no disrespect to Paul Mokeski, but, and he goes, well, I’m learning from him. I said, what do you mean you’re learning from him? And he said, well, I learned from everyone. And it was a lightning bolt that came out of the sky at that moment, 29, 30 years old, maybe 31.

And I said, that’s it right there. That’s what makes him great. He’s 80 years old. He’s coaching at a camp where his grandson is just to be close to his grandson. He loves the game. He has forgotten more basketball than I’ll ever know. He’s been around it and he’s sitting watching somebody who worked with big guys, even though that’s his strength.

And that’s when the game really took off in my mind because I realized that 29 30, I wanted to be a coach, number one, and two, how would I get better? That was going to be the key. And I was going to surround myself with people, but I could learn from everyone. And I was sitting watching Paul Mokeski catch it, check middle.

I still remember how he’d catch it, whip his, his chin to his inside shoulder and to hold the ball. He was such a great teacher. But that message from Coach Newell resonated with me for the rest of my life, and it just helped me immeasurably, because you learn from everyone. You learn from the sixth grade teacher, you learn from the first grade teacher who’s, you learn from the guy who’s delivering, there’s so many people you can learn from if you put your ego aside and you realize, hey, I need to be open.

I want to understand how to do things well, whatever it is, so that was the lighting bulb moment.

[00:34:12] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, and as a teacher, and as a coach, I mean, not only do you learn from your colleagues, but you also learn from your players and your kids. And the lessons that they can teach you sometimes are equally as valuable.

[00:34:24] Kamal Assaf: Absolutely. No doubt about it. But that humility gave me an understanding. And then I saw it in Mike Dunlap too, in going to his clinics and going to his practices at Metro State. And going to watch him teach. It’s what makes these people super coaches, is they’re super learners, and they’re lifelong, and there’s a humility about them, a curiosity, an interest in how to do it better, and who’s doing what, you know.  So that was fascinating.

[00:34:55] Mike Klinzing: What did you learn in your time as an assistant coach, or is there a lesson or two that you learned as an assistant coach that eventually when you became a head coach helped you to, to be even better in that position? What did you learn as an assistant?

[00:35:11] Kamal Assaf: Yeah, I think what I learned as an assistant is everyone does it differently.

And so I would work for my high school coach, he did it differently from another guy I worked with who was excellent. And then I learned from one of my other friends who was excellent at teaching skill development and how he taught was different than my high school coach and his emphasis was different.

And I think I also learned, another thing I learned was that you have to go sharpen with a saw. Like you’re an assistant coach, however, going to a Nike. All star clinic in Indiana to watch my friend Herb Livsey, who is this he’s a scout. He’s an 87 year old scout with a Denver Nuggets. Have you heard of Herb?

Have you heard of Herb Livesey? Oh yeah, for sure. Yep. Snow Valley guy. Yep. Snow Valley. So I went with him and I’m on the court with Cory Brewer and a bunch of future NBA guys and they’re saying where do you coach? I’m thinking I coach TV ball. In La Jolla at this tiny school. But, but it was the fact that Herb allowed me to get on the court with him, and I was soaking it up, talking to Steve Smith who had been at and talking to Don Meyer son and talking to, I mean, I was talking to Dave Severns and Tate Locke.

Rest is in peace who just passed away Ohio. Great. Coach Tates lock. So I’m, I’m watching these people work. I’m talking to them. I’m seeing NBAs LeBron, I’m seeing these. And, and, and I think that as an assistant code, you have to be hungry. You have to learn. You have to put yourself out there.

So that was my quest. I went to go to the final four. I’d go watch, and I was an assistant for a long time. I was an assistant from probably 1993 all the way until 2005. So I think I was 12 years an assistant. I missed on a couple jobs and I was fine because it allowed me to go learn. So to me, being an assistant just means.

You have a mentor right there and hopefully you have a really good one. But it allowed me to just sit back and learn and understand. And I also learned from that mentor, not only how they did it well, but how I would do it. I would look and say, okay, how would I do it? I’d come back from Pete Newell and tell one of my coaching Mentors.

Hey, let’s put the post guy. And he goes, no, no post, we got to keep the post open and I was okay, okay, okay. But then I would say to myself, but I just spent a week with Pete Newell watching two sessions a day. I’m going to, when I become head coach, I’m going to teach kids how to play in the post.

And that’s what I did. So it’s neat. You get to continue to learn and then also to respect that coach, to find coaches as a head coach. I wanted coaches. who were hungry, that were who cared about the game, who loved it. I was lucky enough to find a guy at La Jolla High when I started in 2005, who eventually got to the Orlando Magic.

He went from my freshman coach to JV to a varsity program and took Kawhi Leonard’s camp in San Diego to the Orlando Magic for two years. It’s crazy. And now he went to JC and now he’s back in high school in Arizona. But Luke Stuckey was a great friend of mine, and I hope to think I helped. But he was just driven, talented, and he ascended.

And so part of what I think being an assistant is, is valuing assistants. teaching assistants, nurturing assistants, helping assistants to move in the game. You know, one of my assistants just won a CIF Championship at La Jolla Country Day two years ago. And he was my freshman coach. And we stayed in touch, Mike Ricciuti, and he won a CIF Championship.

And to go to that game and to watch it, to feel the pride for him and his success. So being, being an assistant to me is a big deal because it’s such a commitment. There’s no pay. And I also use that rocky phrase don’t trade your passion for glory. Being an assistant, there’s very little glory, but the glory is in teaching kids and helping kids and learning and eventually helping a program.

And you may or may not get a head job, but you want to value, I think, value those assistants and. and grow them so that they can. So some of my assistants have done really well. And then I am one of the assistants who, who had some success from my coach. So I feel like I’m on a family tree and I have a tree. If you can believe that.

[00:39:26] Mike Klinzing: No, that’s very cool. Yeah. So tell me about the transition from assistant to head coach. What do you remember about the first few months on the job as the head coach and then your first time sitting that 18 inches over in the head coach’s chair as opposed to being an assistant?

[00:39:44] Kamal Assaf: Well, it’s funny you ask because I was still at my school. So I’m at a school in La Jolla called the Bishop School. It’s a great academic school and my head coach was there. And one of my mentors, Tom Tarantino, just a brilliant coach, East Coast from Long Island, great coach. He was kind of like a Rick Pitino disciple and won championships on the East Coast, won championships at Carlsbad, won championships at Bishop’s.

So I get the job at La Jolla, but I’m still teaching at Bishop’s. And so it’s kind of funny, and I remember coaching against him was funny because I had gotten the job just a couple weeks, just a couple weeks before the season started. So one month after I got the job, I’m playing at the Bishop’s Gym against all my players, all the guys that played JV for me.

And they whoop us by 19. In fact, it’s 16, and one of the kids hits a three in the corner. I still remember it. And I realized how hard it is. It’s hard because to be a coach means more than just X’s and O’s, it means developing a culture, a style play, trust. And so I got this job at the public high school, they’re separated by about half a mile less, maybe a quarter of a mile.

And so here I’m basically moonlighting. I’m going between my job as a teacher at Bishops and then the coaching job at La Jolla High School. But I realized in getting the job, I realized, wow there’s a lot to this. Number one is there’s, there’s style of playing strategy, but there’s culture.

And I had gotten the job and had it for just a couple of weeks when I go back to bishops where I’m teaching and we get smoked and it wasn’t even, wasn’t even close. I mean and, and I think. That one of the things you learn is there’s so many different aspects to coaching. That’s what makes it interesting.

There’s the teaching, there’s the culture, there’s the administrative part, there’s the parents. And so it gave me an appreciation, but I also knew there was a learning curve. And so a month later, in January, we were better. And then two months later, We were much better. So, so I think there’s to answer your question.

I think there’s a lot to learn and you have to really, what I would tell a young coach is you have to really give yourself time. You’re not going to get instant gratification unless you inherit a team that’s truly gifted. You know, like the coach at the Celtics, he got a kid he got that team when, when they fired their coach that was gifted.

But most coaches don’t inherit a team. You have to build it. So I learned that, that it’s harder on so many different levels to be the head guy because everybody’s going to look at you and they’re going to second guess you as a coach. And you just have to be patient and you have to be determined.

You’ve got to have thick skin cause we’ve got families that they expect They expect to be competitive.

[00:42:41] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. The best advice that I’ve ever heard in that vein, Kamal, is from a guy here in the Cleveland area. He’s now the athletic director at Gilmore Academy, but he was a long time head basketball coach here in the Cleveland area.

And he talked about how trying to build a program and As you said, there’s a lot of people that have expectations and want things and this and that, trying to put together a culture. And he just said, the way I always approached it is I tried to do what I thought was best for Program and I tried to do what I thought was right so that when I put my head down on the pillow at night, yeah.

I could go to sleep knowing that I did what I thought was right, not what somebody else tried to tell me. Right? I was right. And I think that that sounds super easy to do, right? But anybody who’s been a head basketball coach or been really honestly in any position, position of leadership, you know that at times.

It seems like, Hey, I should do this, but there are sometimes outside pressures, forces, situations that maybe cause us to deviate from what we truly think is the right decision. And I think oftentimes when we allow those outside influences to have an effect on what we do. We don’t end up with the the best results.

So I always kind of think back to him saying that to me, that, hey, I make the decision based on what I think is right so that when I go to sleep at night, I know that I’ve done, I’ve done right by what I believe, not what somebody else believes. I think it’s a really, a really good way for coaches to look at things.

[00:44:27] Kamal Assaf: I mean at the end of the day, you have invested more than they have. I mean, their parents of the school, the kids have invested to a degree, but you’ve got a tremendous commitment to it and it’s kind of your baby. And so you have to really communicate. And I think. The key is to be really determined and to have a clear vision of what you want.

How are you going to treat kids? How are you going to win? How are you going to lose? How do you, how do you treat parents? How are you going to deal with controversy, you know? Discouragement is a big part of it because you’ll lose, your league rivals probably better than you are and they might be more talented.

And how do you get kids better? What’s your plan over the course of the year? We had to spend a lot of time in summer, which I enjoyed. We’d basically run open gym spring, we’d practice summer and do team camps, and we’d train in fall. And then I’d have the football guys, then the water polo guys would come after that.

So it was a real commitment, but I had so much love for it and so much energy for it. I was single at the time that I willingly, I mean, I would gladly made it. And, but all those things are. Things that you get confronted with that maybe you’re not ready for, right? So you have to find an answer and then you have to find mentors.

I think that was one of the things I wanted to communicate to you and to the audience, is you have to find mentors along the way. I mean, they’re all there. Everyone is available for you. I had a guy that was the former coach of La Jolla High from 1971 1997, and I would talk to him about different things. I had Herb Livsey.

I would call Herb and say, here’s something and he’d seen it all.

[00:46:11] Mike Klinzing: That’s great advice. It really is. I think when you start talking about mentors, I think what sometimes we forget, both as teachers and as coaches, is sometimes we are in situations where we get frustrated, where something comes up that makes us confused, something that is difficult that we haven’t faced before.

And yet, because as coaches and teachers we feel like we’re just on an island and sometimes you feel really alone by yourself and that nobody is ever experiencing These same things that you’re experiencing. But the reality is, is that there are lots of people out there who have gone through most likely.

the same exact situation that you’re going through, both either as a teacher or as a coach. And I think it’s important to be able to have people, mentors, to reach out to who can bounce things off of. And who knows, maybe they themselves haven’t experienced it, but then they have a whole network of people that they’ve bounced ideas off of.

And I just think that too often in the teaching profession, and I think sometimes in the coaching profession, I think it’s less now because The coaching profession is so opened up compared to where it was. Again, when you and I were players, I think coaching was much more secretive because it was easier to keep things hidden.

Nowadays, everything is everywhere. So like trying to keep secrets from people is really doesn’t help. But I guess my greater point is that too often I think we feel like we’re on an island. And we kind of just get inside of ourselves and inside our own head, where if we just had somebody that we could talk to, the solutions would present themselves much more easily, if that makes any sense to kind of what you were talking about.

[00:48:05] Kamal Assaf: Yeah, and they don’t have to be basketball coaches. One of my great teachers was my friend who’s the athletic director at Bishops when I started, he was the volleyball coach. And I would sit here and say, I can’t believe I have this situation here with this kid or this parent or this. And he had gone through some of the same things.

Or he had just the wisdom. He was 10 years older than I was, he had coached longer, and so he had this sense of, yeah here’s something you can think about. So being open to learning from other people is so important. Bobby Knight had Pete Newell. You know, John Wooden, and I don’t know who John Wooden had, but he must have had people, but everyone, Denny Crum had John Wooden.

There are so many examples. Coach K had Knight. There are so many examples that nobody is doing this by themselves. You’re really on, you’re on people’s shoulders and I love when Jay Wright wins. And of course, you know Massimino’s in the audience when Villanueva wins and there’s Massimino crying.

I don’t know if it was the first championship or the second championship, Jay Wright was there with Mass just for a couple years. So there are so many examples. So I think finding young coaches, if they can build a team of older, friends and learn from them, but also talk to them because so much of this is just the human condition.

You get competitive kids together with competitive parents, you put a ball and you put a score and, and you’ve got teams that recruit and teams that have more talent and you’re going to have challenges especially in basketball. It’s not like football. You know, you have five that play, maybe seven play, maybe eight play, but you’re going to have all kinds of challenges.

So it’s just knowing that I talk a lot to the coach at my school now, he’s younger than I, but a terrific coach. And I’m always lending him an ear.  I always like to talk to him about it. And it’s either a player situation, could be a parent situation, or a scheme, or something.

And I’m always interested in how I can help support him. Because right now I’m coaching middle school basketbal. I stopped high school back in 2012, but it’s just being an ear, knowing that I have been given so much. I’ve had so many wonderful teachers that I want to help too.

So I think that that’s, that’s something young coaches, if they can find good mentors, if they can find teaching mentors, that are going to give them a philosophy. Mike Dunlap, Newell, Herb Livsey, Tom Tarantino. I mean, I’ve had just a bunch of guys I’ve learned from. Tom Izzo, I went to his practices.

Lute Olsen. But also some of the coaches that maybe Are in your community and they could be badminton coaches, they could be, they could be the chemistry teacher, but having, having, being open to other people’s ideas, being open and aware that we’re not, we don’t have to have all the answers, I think to some of those things, some of those, those, those qualities.

Are going to make you less lonely, help you deal with stress and pressure and also just help you grow and help you have joy because nobody does it alone. There’s no self-made man nobody can tell me this person made themselves, not Abraham Lincoln, not Gandhi, not Martin Luther King. So we’re all products of others.

The joy is sharing it. The joy is in calling one of your mentors up and say, Hey, we won. We beat this team or we won the championship or thank you for, for helping me out here. That’s the joy because we all go together so it’s neat.

[00:51:51] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.  It’s a really good point in terms of. talking about having a mentor that doesn’t necessarily have to be the most famous person around. It can be anybody. It could be the coach down the street. It can be the middle school coach. It can be the coach of a different sport. It can be somebody who maybe isn’t even in coaching that can have life advice that can impact you.

And as it goes back to sort of your thing you talked about before, right? You can learn from anybody. And when you do that, when you open yourself up to learning, that’s really when you have a huge opportunity to, to grow. If you were to talk to a brand new high school coach, somebody who’s taken over from, for the first time, obviously there’s tons of basketball X’s and O’s stuff that you might want to know about, but if you just think about building a high school program from a culture standpoint and getting in place, the type of environment that you want to create, what are one or two things that you would recommend to a high school coach to do to create the kind of culture and environment that leads to success and success, meaning not just wins and losses on the scoreboard, but success in terms of the impact that you’re having on, on young people.

[00:53:14] Kamal Assaf: Well, that’s a great question. I mean, I think first thing is basketball is a brotherhood. Tim Gallagher, our friend, who recommended me to this podcast texted me last night says can you make it with the guys at 6 a. m and I’m thinking 6 a. m so these guys play 30 minutes away from me at 6 a.m I have two more days of school of course And they’re in their 60s. I’m 54. They’re 65. They got arthritic hips. They got artificial hips. They got cataracts. And, and, and so if you want to create a community that loves the game. So number one is if you’re going to, if I’m going to tell any coach, I’m going to, it’s got to be a positive environment.

You’re selling the greatest game ever. And so play has to be a part of that. So I think there’s nothing makes you fall in love with the game more than pick up ball. Then play it. So I would say, first thing I would do is I would have open gyms. I’d have three open gyms a week. I’d identify as many kids that wanted to play as possible.

I’d go to the football coach and say, who are the guys? I’d sit down with the football coach and say, okay, when are you going to have them? Because I want the guys this summer because we’re going to build a community. And we’re going to teach them how to play. We’re going to get in the gym. There’s a quarterback we have at Bishops right now, Ohio State just came to look at him, Chip Kelly.

You got San Diego State who just offered. This guy is 6’3 6’4 He’s a sophomore. He’s going to be an animal in a year and so can you get him in the gym? Can you develop him? Can you get him? Now, he’s going to do a passing camps, and he’s going to have his own football quarterback, because he’s going to have offers from everywhere, K State, Iowa.

We’ve had a lot of people at at our school, which is rare for a small school. But it’s the fact that you’re, you’re trying to get your people together. You’re trying to say this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to play and we’re going to train and we’re going to get them all on the same page.

So I would say you sell the game by playing. You joyful, just pick up play and play and plan. You get them in and you have a summer program. You got to have a summer program that includes weight training. And then you develop a style of play, and you develop a relationship with each of the players.

You take them out to eat, it’s a group, you do team camps, but you have to develop a relationship. It’s not a transactional thing, it’s a brotherhood, it’s a connection, there’s something deep. When I’m doing a podcast, talking about the game, I could talk, I could do podcasts every night talking to you guys, but you develop that love by spending time together, by playing. I would tell a coach you’ve have to play, number one.

You have to get in and shoot in the summer and then skill build. But you got to play and then you develop an enthusiasm. You want to be in the gym. And then sometimes we’d have NBA guys, Kawhi Leonard would come over sometimes when they needed a gym and Tim Gallagher had a connection there.

And so there’s Kawhi and so kids are looking at that. We had Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George at our gym. in August because they needed a gym. So you got kids going, Oh my gosh, there they are, but it’s got to be a buzz. You know, the game sells itself, but it should be about playing and competing.

I’m a big open gym fan because there’s nothing better than playing. I mean, if you can’t fall in love with basketball playing, there’s something wrong with you.

[00:56:43] Mike Klinzing: There’s no doubt about that.

[00:56:44] Kamal Assaf: So that’s what I would tell it. I say it’s have to be. a plan and, but you’re communicating, you’re Johnny Appleseed, you’re throwing let’s get seventh, eighth graders, ninth graders, tenth graders, you get two courts rolling.

I used to have at La Jolla High, I was there for eight years, and I would have my buddies come in. Now my buddies, I was 34 when I got the job, but there were 20s, 30s, and 40s, these guys were good athletes. And I would have them come in and we would play open gym in spring right after volleyball. And one of my parents, man, what are all these men doing here?

I’m going, brother, who do you think we’re playing? We’re playing Norman Powell plays with the Clippers. I mean, we got to play against, we’re not playing against high school guys. And that’s how my guys got good. And they got comfortable playing against these guys who were all ex college players and big, strong dudes.

That’s one time Eric Mussleman is a friend of mine he’s the coach at USC now so it’s Arkansas and he walks in to a practice and I had an ex NFL tied in and an ex major league baseball guy practicing with us. ’cause I got their names and I don’t know if it was the and they were 6 8, 6 3.

And they’re practicing against my two big guys. And he goes, who the hell are those guys? I said we’re just trying to get in the gym and get some people in here. So I just feel like you want to be a Pied Piper. You want to develop a culture. And then we would bring the rival guys in.

My buddy was at Army Navy. He had a seven foot African kid. He went to Oregon State and he had Devin Watson who went to USF and San Diego State and I’d bring them in and I’d have kids on my team go, man, what are those guys doing? I’ve said, we need those guys to get better. You know, we need to get better.

So the gym has to be alive. And that’s what I would do. I would develop a real culture of playing because you can’t get good unless you play and then just go back to shooting and just go. Go. Go.

[00:58:39] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that goes back to our conversation right off the top, right?  About pickup basketball and you said it yourself that you grew up playing against grown men, right? Learning how to figure out what’s my role and figure out how to use your body and be strong in certain situations and all these different things that when you’re playing with your own age group, I think you don’t get nearly as much of that. And so it’s interesting that the first thing that you went to when you talk about building the program is developing that love for the game of basketball. And that’s a piece of advice, honestly, Kamal, that I’ve given out to a lot of parents in terms of You know, people come and they’ll talk about, Hey, I want my kid to do this.

Or my kid wants to do that. And this, and they’re worried about when the kid’s eight years old and how good they’re going to be. And I always tell people, I’m like, look, like what you do as a parent with your eight year old. I mean, yeah, you have to provide them with some opportunities, but the reality is they’re, they’re not going to be a good basketball player unless they love the game.

And so your job as a parent, or in this case, your job as a coach is to foster That love for the game. And when you foster that now, suddenly you don’t have kids who you as the coach or you as a parent are forcing into the gym or dragging into the gym, those kids want to be there. And then that’s really where you’ve got something.

And parents, I think a lot of times don’t see that. I think coaches sometimes overlook how important that love for the game is.

[01:00:06] Kamal Assaf: But you develop by playing, not by doing drills. I mean summertime we would. You know, I do some defensive shell because we had our summer camps. I mean, we’d go to different camps.

I don’t know, but we’d go to UCSD. We’d go to San Diego State. We’d go to USD. We’d go to Santa Barbara. We’d take them on the train and go to Santa Barbara. So we would do that and we want to play well. So we do shell and we do some team concepts. A lot of it was individual skill development and play.

Bill Walton one time told me, he goes, Hey, individual skill and condition. That’s what it’s about. I don’t like the condition without the ball. So I’m playing, we never ran sprints. It was just playing. I mean, in practice, we went five on five a lot. We had a long court at my old school, La Jolla high school.

It was longer than most high school courts. It might’ve been a college court, NBA 94 feet and we would play. And we do all kinds of full court stuff. I learned from Mike Dunlap. Five on four, four on five, full court, cutthroat. And we were playing and I mean, kids loved it and it was competitive.

And you’re not sitting there saying, okay, let’s run a couple of sprints. We never ran any sprints. If I get pissed off at them, I say, go step outside cause they wanted to play. So practice mimicked the game, but you develop a culture of playing. And you get kids. to play and it sells itself.

I mean, and I would jump in and play. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to play. So I was out there playing with them too and, and not, not during the season. Sometimes during the season, if we needed a guy, but, and I would always bring guys in, but I think that’s the key to a successful program is, it’s have to be based on playing the game.

Basketball IQ is priceless if you can develop it. And then toughness you got to get them lifted weight and then shooting and skill development. You’re in the gym all the time and then the football guys have to get in there. And you want football guys because you can’t win with driveway jump shooters.

I always tell. Friends you got to get guys, athletes and competitors. They don’t have to score, but you need them. So I always think I go to the football coach. I used to go to Loyal High football coach. I’d sit down and say, well, when are you going to have them? Okay. I’ll work around that because I needed those guys.

Cause they would come right off the football field and they would play and we were playing against Norman Powell. We played against Klay Thompson, Damian Lillard in the playoffs. I mean, we played against good people. And so we had to have tough guys and we had to develop a culture and a skill and a style of play in summer.

So when they came off the field in December it took them a while, but they understood what we were doing. They were getting on a train. They, they knew. So I think those are some of the things I’d say, but playing is so fun two on two, three on three, four on four. I mean, I could, I would do it every day right now if my knees didn’t bother me all the time.

I mean, it’s just so fun and it’s, it gets you strong and fit. So I would tell a coach, but, but if you don’t love it, then you shouldn’t coach because it’s too hard and there’s not, in high school, there’s no payoff. I mean, there’s a payoff in, but it comes out of time.

[01:03:02] Mike Klinzing: There’s not a financial payoff. How about that? Zero. Yep. Yeah. All right. So the payoff

[01:03:07] Kamal Assaf: It’s have to be born out of love. You have to love it. Love it.

[01:03:11] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you this. What, what was, what was for you the, the most difficult part of being a head coach at the high school level?

It could be something in the game, outside the game, administratively. What was the hardest part about being a high school coach?

[01:03:29] Kamal Assaf: Oh, that’s a great question. Well, one is it’s hard cutting kids because you love it so much and you love kids so much, it’s hard cutting them. But you know that if you take them and you take them sometimes, they’re going to they’re not going to play.

And eventually some of them end up quitting, which you hate to see. So one is it’s hard to cut kids. I don’t like to do that, but I always felt like I had to, I couldn’t take 18 on the varsity. I probably had to keep it to 13, maybe 14. So that’s one thing that’s hard, but it’s also hard to just hold kids to a standard when they’re your best kids and they just goof around.

I had a couple guys that smoked weed before a game and I had to take off the team because they played high and, and they, they were absolutely you know, they had, they had to come off the team and that was heartbreaking because they were two of my best players. But years later, one of them texted me and thanked me and said you were right and I appreciate you doing that.

And furthermore, he said, I want to get into coaching and that might’ve been my greatest success. You know, not the winning. We won occasionally we won a couple of city titles in our division. And that was great, but it was the fact that maybe I could make an impact on someone saying, hey, look, there’s, this is the standard, you broke the rules, and so you can’t play.

And it was heartbreaking because I’d seen our best player, our team tanked. But, but that’s hard. It’s hard because it hurts your heart. And as a competitor, you know that if you take two of your best players off the team, you’re not the same team. Two out of five. And two of the dynamic guys not two of the two of the slower guys.

These are two of the best athletes. So you take those two off your team and you just go from nine and two to 11 and 17 really quickly. And you lose the team sometimes because these kids are charismatic kids. But I think that’s one of the hard parts is you’ve got to have standards. You’ve got to hold them to it.

And but you’ve also got to communicate those standards and then hopefully if you’ve treated him well and you’ve treated him with love and respect, there’s a lesson there that they’ll pick up at some point. I mean, this young man reached out to me probably seven years later, I mean, to talk about blessing.

[01:05:41] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.

[01:05:41] Kamal Assaf: And we’re in touch still and he’s still someone, I helped him get a JV job and, and if I got a job as a high school coach again, I would hire him in a heartbeat. And, and never tell a kid about his story, but just, just because he is just such a, such a good young man and he’s grown up so much.

So I think it’s hard. It’s hard holding kids sometimes to that standard when you as a competitor want to win. However, you know that you’re, you’re coaching you’re coaching young men to be leaders. And that’s really what you’re doing. If you can win, that’s fun too. But you know, sometimes you don’t do, you don’t get to win as the nuggets found out as everyone finds out.

[01:06:23] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I think there’s no doubt about that. It’s interesting too. I think that when you start talking about those. sort of redemption stories, right? Of a kid that you kind of had to take a hard line with. And there’s, there’s really nothing honestly better than getting that phone call from a kid like that.

That again, you hear you had an impact on them in the moment, which may have felt to the kid But really when it comes to the, the, the story of their life turns out to be a huge positive. And like you said, I think being able to make an impact on the young people that you have underneath you as a head coach.

I mean, that’s really, again, what it’s all about. It’s what it’s all about. Teaching wise. And we, we, we’re so lucky to be able to have. Those kinds of opportunities. And you mentioned a couple of times that for people that are listening that you, you teach at one school and then when you were a head coach, you were at a different school.

And I think that that’s something that, I think it was less common back 20, 30 years ago, where most of the time you had the coach in the building, but now. There’s, there’s way more coaches that a lot of times they aren’t even in education. They just come in and they, they coach they coach high school and they’re not either, they don’t teach in the building or, or oftentimes, like I said, they have a completely different job.

So what did you do? Cause I always found it. So when I was an assistant varsity basketball coach, I was in the elementary school and my two other coaches that were part of our staff taught in high school. And I was literally right across the parking lot, but I know there were lots of times where I kind of felt.

like out of the loop because communication would go out and I was in another building and I’d kind of be, I was sort of like, I was the last one to know. So how did you handle not being in the building on a daily basis with your players and what advice would you give to somebody who’s in that same situation?

[01:08:20] Kamal Assaf: Well, it’s the hardest thing in the world, because you can’t really solve problems, you get hit with them right when you walk through the door. You know, if I’d practiced at 3, I was getting there at 2:55. If my practice was at 5, I was there at 4:30. So there was no meeting place, there was no classroom, I didn’t see him on campus.

So the best thing I can say is, you want to do your work to develop a relationship out of season. So spring has got to be three days a week. You’re on campus, you’re just playing, you’re having fun. We did team dinners, which were transformational. I got it from my brother. So team dinners meant that every Sunday, some kid and their family would host us.

And so we’d go over there and just joke. Sometimes we watched the game. I remember we watched the Giants and the Patriots when the kid, caught the ball on top of his head and the Patriots lost that undefeated season. The year they were undefeated that year and, and, and they lost the Giants.

And we were sitting at this young man’s house, all having dinner, just go ooh, and an on. So it was team dinners during the season in league that really gave us a chance to just joke around and talk and connect without any ball. And then there was spring open gym and then summer open gym.

And then training and then fall. So it was you, you vote with your feet in life. And so you hope that you show that the young people that you’re committed to them, to knowing who they are, you’re an authentic person, you’re an educator and you love the game and you care about them. And if you can communicate those things, but it’s time, right?

The greatest coaches throw the most time at their job and they do things outside that you don’t see. To develop that. And I think all those things would be things I’d tell a young coach to do. You know, making sure that you’re, you’re, you’re coming onto campus off season, you’re, you’re taking them out to eat, you’re doing stuff in summer, and hopefully you have some ability to connect with them during the season.

I thought team meals, I don’t know, did you ever do team meals? They are so, they’re magical. Yeah, for sure. They’re getting their home cooked meal, and they’re just talking, and. There’s no agenda. You’re not talking hoops. Although I was talking hoops too, because we had Laker fans in there, so I was telling them how Lakers were overrated, but Kobe and Shaq were overrated, but they weren’t.

I was just teasing them. It’s all those things. I think kids need to know you care about them and their progress, their success, and who they are. And then I think at the end of the day you share this love of basketball. It’s like I tell people the window, they give you permission to come into their lives during the most important part of their lives.

You know, they’re 13, That’s the most important formational part of their life. And they give you permission to come in because they want to be around the game and they want to play the game. And what greater gift is that? What greater gift is that when a parent says you’re a coach, or I’m going to respect you, or you’re going to help shape my young man.

And so I have a guy, Santa Barbara, who’s the women’s varsity, women’s college coach, UC Santa Barbara. He went to Harvard, majored in math, played there. I mean, I have so many great stories of kids that have done well. And to think that somehow I was part of their life journey and I still see parents in the community because I live in the same community.

And I see parents and every day today I saw one of my assistants. I coached his two sons who went to BYU to play volleyball. And I just saw him today. It’s a blessing. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, coaching. It keeps on giving. If you do it well, hopefully you just keep seeing the rewards.

You’re constantly reaping rewards. And that’s connection and community and I just can’t say enough about if you want to do it, it’s hard, but it’s definitely a beautiful life a beautiful gift.

[01:12:10] Mike Klinzing: What do you love about coaching middle school right now?

[01:12:14] Kamal Assaf: I like turning kids into players.  I like turning kids into players. And again, I don’t do that, but I just provide an opportunity, try to be a conduit, try to be an encourager. Middle school is, again, we have a lot of multi sport guys. I have a couple guys, dad’s played for the Chargers, so they’re going to be big ol Hoss, but they have to get in the gym.

So just getting kids turned on to hoops, encouraging them to go and, and, and, develop their game. Most of these guys are multi sport guys, which I like, but it’s getting them to, to play in summer and to move into the high school program. So I watch the Varsity games, sometimes I announce them and it’s fun to just say, Hey, those guys were on my team sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade.

So just, just helping the varsity program. We’re a very academic school. So a lot of kids go six through 12. So think of me in the gym, let’s coach them up. And so as a varsity coach I don’t get many workouts with them, but I have probably 30 open gyms. Did I have 30 open gyms? I probably had 20 open gyms this year over Christmas and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, because I just feel like, hey, let’s get in the gym and play. And so it’s just helping them develop along their way, helping the school have programs that make a difference in kids lives.

And so encouraging is such a big part of coaching. And so of course, I’m trying to teach them basic skills, play off two feet drawing a kick, different shooting things, man defense, little pressing. So it’s just kind of developmentally what we try to do with all the kids, whether they’re calculus pre algebra to calculus or any of that.

[01:13:55] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. All right. One final two part question, Kamal. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest basketball related challenge? And then number two, when you think about what you get to do every single day as a teacher and a coach. What brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:14:19] Kamal Assaf: Oh, that’s great. That’s a great question, sir. Like biggest challenge I think will be just trying to figure out what my next chapter is. You know, my daughter’s getting the age where she’s pretty independent. She’s 13. So I think I want to develop a club.

My brother is a fantastic coach, two years younger. He’s at a local school that has K-8. And so we have another friend who coached high school ball in Oregon. And so the three of us are thinking about putting a club together and just teaching skill and working on development. So the biggest challenge would be how can we launch this?

Make it worthwhile for kids, make it focus on development, and make it something that parents can buy into. So it’s not just, hey, we have to win this club tournament. I don’t care about club tournaments, I care about teaching them how to play. And so, can we put that model together? That’s more like a Snow Valley, Iowa model and less of a typical club model.

And can it be successful? Do I have the time to do it? We’re thinking about one hour practices where man, it’s just gangbusters. We’re working on footwork, jump stops, bounce passes, cutting, working with fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh graders young kids. Right. And we’ll see where it goes. So that’s the challenge is can it, can we do it from a business standpoint?

Logistically, can we do it? We think we’ll gather people together because I think kids want to be taught. Parents want to have their kids taught. So that’s the one challenge. And then what I love is just. Just seeing kids every day sometimes at the end of the year, they drive you crazy, but I’m just so fortunate.

They’re such good. I have 55 kids in four classes and to think that I can encourage them, think about history, do American history I just feel so, to have a parent come up to me and say, Hey, my kid likes your class. Or see them really shine and be enthusiastic to know kids, to let kids know I know you and I care about you and I’m encouraging you to think deeply and to develop your skills as a writer, as a thinker, and then to also help them belong, you know.

I joke a lot, say I got a math test, it’s just math, don’t worry about that. So we joke a lot about the other classes not being that important, and they know I’m teasing them. But just, just what a joy to come alongside these bright young minds and help them in a tiny way, and then I get to see them become seniors and graduate.

So this year’s senior class I taught During COVID in world history and to see these kids graduate after what we went through as, as, as they were freshmen there’s, there’s a reward to that. So my school’s case six through eight, and then to see him in college. And then I went to this school too.

So to see graduates come back, class of 2018, 13, 8, I saw a reunion and I’m there with these guys, 2013, and the grown men and to think, hey, one day I had you in eighth grade or seventh grade history or, and you know, we still have that connection. I mean, it’s just, and some are doctors and attorneys and business people and doing great things.

So I think that that’s the gift too. Teaching is collaborative and it’s shaping and you’re working with families and you’ve got these bright young minds and if you can inspire them and encourage them and, and help them through. Then it’s just a beautiful gift. And that’s why I do it because I was given so much by my teachers, my coach, my English teacher and history teacher, Latin teacher, and people that came alongside.

So it’s just pain, it’s such a reward. You know, we get paid. I tell people we get paid a lot of currencies. Only one of them is green. Only one of them is green. The other currency, if it was just the green currency, I would be out of it. It’s the other currency that really means a lot to me.

The green is the necessary one, of course, for life, but you know, there’s so, there’s so much, there’s so many rich aspects of education that you get back. When I walk on a campus, I get all this positive energy from these kids. They just, they just brighten your day. And, and that’s, that’s, that’s really why I do it.

Done it for 25 years at this school. Bishops and four years in Texas. So I’m going into my 30th year, maybe 31st year. So it’s a wonderful opportunity. It’s a pleasure.

[01:18:49] Mike Klinzing: There you go. That is well said. And I think it sums up our conversation really well in terms of being able to have an impact on young people as a coach.

Yeah. And as a teacher. And Jason and I both have had the opportunity to do those same things. And I think you just, you summed it up very, very well. Before we wrap up Kamal, I want to give you a chance to share how can people who are listening, how can they reach out to you, find out more about you? So whether you want to share.

Email, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:19:24] Kamal Assaf: Yeah. Yeah. They can email me. I’d be happy to talk to anybody. Typically I, is it even, so my email is my last name. assafk@bishops.com

And that’s my email. That’s probably the best way. Is that typically what people give or do they give phone numbers too?

[01:19:51] Mike Klinzing: Nah, typically just email. So that’ll work. That’ll work. Anybody who’s, anybody who’s out there listening, you want to reach out to Kamal, email, it’ll be in the show notes so you can check that out.

And again, Kamal, I just want to say to you on a personal level, thank you for, for jumping on. Thank you to our mutual friend, Tim Gallagher, for connecting us. This was a really fun conversation to be able to learn more about you, your basketball journey, and just hear the wisdom that you’ve gained over your time as a teacher and a coach, and being willing to share that with our audience.

Can’t thank you enough for being willing to come on and share that with us.

[01:20:27] Kamal Assaf: I just appreciate both you guys for doing this. I think it’s a real credit to what you’re doing to share. And there’s something magical about it. I’m going to Snow Valley, Iowa. I’m hoping to run a camp myself and with Don Showalter, and I’m hoping that maybe I can do basketball in Europe.

That would be a joy at some point. That’d be awesome. I feel really lucky and I really feel you, what you’re doing is, is really, is, is a gift for about the game and for educators and for people who love the game. So, thank you. Yeah, I’d love to talk to anybody who’d be interested in, in asking questions or encourage anybody.

It’s a beautiful gift to be involved in the game in any way you can be involved and it’s given me a lot, continues to.

[01:21:11] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it certainly is. And again, I’m thankful every day that that I got involved in the game of basketball. I can never, I can never give back to it what it’s, what it’s given me.

So again, thanks Kamal, truly appreciate it and to everyone out there. Thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.