JIM BAKER – CANNON (NC) SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1062

Website – https://coachjimbaker.com/

Email – jimbaker@e-timeout.com

Twitter/X – @coachjimbaker

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Jim Baker is in his first season as the Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Cannon School in Concord, North Carolina.  Baker spent the past seven seasons at Central Carrabus High School where he had a record of 132-53 and won 2 NCHSAA 3A State Championships in 2023 and 2024 going 65-0 during those two seasons.

Prior to his stint as a high school coach Baker was the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Catawba College from 1994 – 2014 amassing an overall record of 344-236.  He guided the Indians to the NCAA II Tournament nine times, won 6 South Atlantic Conference Championships and 6 South Atlantic Conference Tournament Championships.

Baker began his coaching career as an assistant at Catawba in 1978 where he also played his college basketball from 1975-1978.  He also spent time as an assistant at VMI, Virginia Tech, Davidson, Belmont Abbey, and Wingate University.

On this episode Mike, Jason, & Jim delve into the multifaceted challenges and rewards of coaching at the high school and college levels.  Baker emphasizes the significance of cultivating not only exceptional athletes but also character-driven individuals who possess a fervent desire to succeed. He reflects on his extensive coaching career, sharing insights on the importance of teamwork, discipline, and the necessity of instilling a strong work ethic in young players. Furthermore, Baker discusses the evolving landscape of college and high school sports, particularly in light of the recent changes in player mobility and compensation structures, which pose unique challenges for coaches. Ultimately, his narrative underscores the profound impact that coaching can have on the lives of young athletes, fostering relationships that endure long beyond their time on the court.

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Have a notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Jim Baker, Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Cannon School in Concord, North Carolina.

What We Discuss with Jim Baker

• Growing up in a basketball family, heavily influenced by his father’s coaching
• Access to a gym at a young age shaped his love for basketball
• Coaching requires not only great players, but also individuals who possess a strong desire to win
• Building a successful team necessitates fostering the ability for players to collaborate effectively on the court
• The importance of character and integrity in athletes
• Loyalty is the most important trait for assistant coaches
• The evolution of college basketball has presented challenges with the advent of the transfer portal and NIL agreements
• Strong relationships between coaches and players are critical for long-term success
• Why coaches must adapt their strategies to ensure that their teams play cohesively and share the ball effectively
• The need to always show up and be present
• Building a cohesive team of individuals who possess a collective desire to succeed
• His commitment to building character and instilling work ethic in his players
• The importance of sharing the basketball, as teams that prioritize assists tend to perform better, showcasing that teamwork is fundamental to success
• The shift towards a more transactional approach in college athletics diminishes the values of loyalty and commitment, often prioritizing immediate gains over long-term development
• Setting realistic expectations helps manage player aspirations
• The enduring connections with former players who still seek his guidance years after graduation
• Advice on coaching your own kids
• Creating flexible standards rather than hard and fast rules
• Why mentorship from other coaches has been pivotal in his development
• Coaches are now managing one-year teams rather than building long-term rosters
• High school players are facing more challenges in securing scholarships

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THANKS, JIM BAKER

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JIM BAKER – CANNON (NC) SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1062

[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 the head boys’ basketball coach at the Cannon School, Jim Baker. Jim, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:14] Jim Baker: Thank you so much. I’m excited about being with you and hopefully, I won’t kill the show off and we’ll have a good time doing it.

[00:00:21] Mike Klinzing: We’re thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into all the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your career. And we’re going to start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball. I know your dad was a long time high school coach, and we’re going to get into the influence that he had on you, but just tell me about your indoctrination to the game of basketball.

[00:00:44] Jim Baker: Well, it was a great situation for my brother and I my brother ended up being a college baseball coach, was at Florida State and, and ops guy. And I’ve had a really good career playing. Playing college basketball and getting to go to college and coaching college. And now back in high school, I’ve done it a little bit in reverse, but my dad was a basketball coach, athletic director, sister principal, then principal.

My mom taught. Physical education at the high school. So we were just around it 24 seven. And I remember, I think I was probably a sixth grader and I had a key to the gym. And it was a different era. I mean, we’d go over in the gym and play basketball after all afternoon. And then when I got a little older, I could go in and work out as much as I wanted to.

And I wasn’t a great player, but I loved the game. I love being around it and it’s taught me so much and great life lessons along the way. But. My dad’s coaching staff raised us with my dad and, and we were just around them and my, both my brother and I went into coaching my mom and dad sent us both down and said, Hey, y’all don’t go into high school.

Don’t be a teacher, go make money, get business and so forth. And we both. Followed in, in my dad’s footsteps. And we joke, my mom was a heck of an athlete and she was probably the best athlete in the family. But my dad had a tremendous amount of influence on both my brother and I, and, and he just retired from Florida state.

I probably should be retired, but I enjoy working, enjoy being around the kids, but. So much of what I take with us, and I’m sure my brother does too, was it’s grilled in us of being around our dad, and it was such a different era growing up, I, I watched the football coaches hand dragged the track with a tractor.

With a string, with a a line machine. I watch them hand mow the football field. I mean, if you told high school coaches now you got to push them over that football field, you wouldn’t have anybody, you wouldn’t, nobody would work for you. And we were around it and, and just saw how they worked and they enjoyed it.

And another big factor. Catawba College, where I ended up going to school, didn’t have a gym at that time. And I ended up being the head coach there for 20 years. They would practice at our high school quite a bit and play games. So I remember just being a little kid in the gym, watching them big old dudes practice and soaking wet.

And yeah, I remember Very early on running home one day, I made three baskets with a volleyball. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my mom, I mean, I finally got the ball up on the rim and it went in. So being around my dad and, and, and him coaching me and then. Go full circle here. I am probably near the, more closer to the end of my career than the beginning.

We have our senior tonight, tomorrow night at, at Canon and my youngest son started he’s, he’s a starter for us at Canon and there’ll be all the families coming in. So it’d be a great event tomorrow night, senior night. And he’s had a really good run himself and it’ll be a little bit teary eyed.

I’m sure. Cause it’s like, it’s gone full circle with, with the whole family.

[00:04:06] Mike Klinzing: How old were you when you realized that you were so lucky to be able to have that type of gym access? Did you have any idea that other kids weren’t growing up the same way, same way

[00:04:16] Jim Baker: you were?  I really didn’t until probably in high school.

And I would go at that time playing the playgrounds. I mean, we played on the blacktop and  we go play, you learn to talk some trash and, and yet. You had to win to stay up and these kids these days know nothing about it. I mean, they’re all travel teams and they’re running around, but we had to go to the park and learn how to play.

And if you didn’t play and you couldn’t win, there wasn’t nobody going to pick you up the next game. And, and then I was able to also, by having access, get in the gym, practice, shoot.  do all the Pete Maravich ball handling drills and throw the ball off the wall a hundred times in one spot. And but the game had changed so much.

I mean, there we get, I stood there and you make 25 shots in one spot before I moved to the next, but, but now you’d be pretty obsolete. That’s all you could do in the game of basketball. But It was a, a heck of a life for my brother and I just to be around it  watching dad coach and, and, and so forth.

And we learned so much from him and the other coaches, just a work ethic that you got to show up. You got to be a good person. You got to have some character. And I was telling my team yesterday, so many people, they don’t make it in this world because they don’t show up. And if you learn to show up every day.

Answer the bell. There’s going to days you don’t want to be there. I, I get it. I mean, we all have bad days and, and I was telling my high school team that there, there’s days that I don’t want to be there, but I got to show up and a difference in a man and a boy, a boy does what he wants to do.

The man does what he has to do. And I think just watching my dad and his, his coaches and back then there were, there was not a huge staff there was a baseball coach, a football coach, and everybody sort of helped coaching each other. And I just being around those people and, and they meant a lot to me, even as I got a little bit older.

 after I graduated, became a whole head coach, seeing those coaches around. And of course they’re, they’re a little bit older now, but I always learned to appreciate them more and more the older I got, what they instilled in me as a, as, as a young kid and then tried to carry that on into my coaching career.

[00:06:43] Mike Klinzing: When you think about your dad and getting the opportunity to watch him coach first and then eventually getting a chance to, to play for him as a player, and now you think about yourself as a coach, when you kind of reflect on who you are and, and what you’re all about as a coach, what things do you think?

You learn from your dad that are still part of you as a coach, even today. I think a couple of

[00:07:09] Jim Baker: things you look back my, my, my dad had such solid character and I I tried to, to always be that the people that you coach and, and, and you guys know as well as I do this day in time, not everybody’s going to agree with you, not everybody’s going to like you.

But you got to be straight up with people. I mean, you, you can’t BS them and the players figure you out quicker than you think you, you that, that you think so that they know real quick if you’re lying to them, if you’re not being straight up with them. And I think just that character part of my dad being such a solid Christian person that trying to carry that on with me.

And I mean, I’ve got a pretty unique. Career everywhere I’ve been D1, D2, public schools, private schools, military schools. And I think through that whole time, I’ve just tried to have the character. We’re not perfect, but  do the right thing. Treat people like you want to be. I’ve got a team right now that’s really young and I got to get after them a little bit and I always feel bad I, I had to call a time out the other night and we’re down 13, zero.

We’re down 20 to four and a half and come back and won the game. But I had to go off on them a little bit and you feel bad,  what I’m saying? But sometimes you got to push the envelope a little bit, light a little fire on them. But through that whole period, I’ve really tried to have a good character, do what’s right and treat people like you want to be treated yourself.

That’s a lot of sense. I

[00:08:46] Mike Klinzing: think if you Don’t learn any lesson from your parent other than that one. I think the world would be a much better place if that was the lesson that Finn, everybody was able to pass along. I don’t want to ask you about the relationship between you and your dad as player coach and then have you compare and think about how the relationship is with you as the coach and your son as the player.

So how did you. Navigate that relationship when you were younger and you were the player. And then how did that maybe impact how you approach that as the coach coaching your son, if that question makes any sense at all?

[00:09:23] Jim Baker: Yeah, I think my dad was always a little bit harder on me because he had to be,  what I’m saying?

He had to get on me a little bit more. My son playing for me now I try to be even across the board. I mean, if I get on another kid, I’m gonna get on him, but I’m not gonna make him feel uncomfortable about being my son. And  we’ll have some talks on the way home Jake, what are you doing?

Why are you doing that? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and my, my dad was pretty smart about stuff. He didn’t have a whole lot of rules. I remember looking back in high school and the one bit of advice when I became a head coach at Catawba College, he said, son, you’re going to be a very good coach. But the only thing I want to just warn you, don’t make a rule that’s going to back you into a corner.

And if you do, your best player is going to break that rule by accident. And I, I was at Virginia Tech and, and we had a rule, if you laid for curfew, you, you didn’t play the next game. And Ben Bocoles, who played at Virginia Tech, played for the Miami Heat, played about 11 or 12 years.

We were getting ready to play Georgetown and John Thompson was his Olympic coach that year. And, and Bimbo went out with some friends and they took him out to eat and coach Allen, Frankie Allen’s the head coach, he just happened to go downstairs to get something to drink out of the drink machine.

And Bimbo comes walking in about 9. 15, curfew was 9 o’clock, and, and so now we couldn’t, we couldn’t start him. That was the rule.  it was a rule. We talked about it over and over. Don’t be late. Don’t be late. Well, he got stuck in traffic or something and he was a great young man. And all of a sudden, the next morning comes out in the newspaper that  Bimbo Cole’s not starting.

And everybody made a big deal that here’s a Olympic player going back playing against his coach. And all of a sudden he’s sitting on the bench. And, and, and Frankie said that to me coach Allen, he said later on, he said, man, I learned a big lesson, man. And you gotta have a little bit of gray in there.

And so. After my dad told me that, and then when I became the head coach at Catawba, and thinking back on that situation, I made a rule, and this was my team rule, and I’ve used it through everything I’ve done every year of high school. Don’t do anything that’s going to embarrass you as a person, that’s going to embarrass your family, that’s going to embarrass your school.

And it’s going to embarrass your team. And if you do, we’re going to deal with it. Now that gives me a lot of little gray wiggle room. And you ever, you ever think about this, you take the blue blood programs, Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, you never hear a whole lot about discipline out in public.  they find a way to take care of it.

You may maybe get the kid up the next morning and run him at 6 a. m. Maybe run him for a half an hour out of practice or something like that. But I’ve learned, especially with the newer generation of kids coming through, that you, you, you got to get a little bit in that gray area. And  another rule in, in this sort of was offshoot of what.

I learned from my dad, and I’m not going to treat, I’m going to try to treat every kid fairly. And I call it the money in the bank, and I tell them straight up front, a freshman, you have no money in the bank. Seniors, if you’ve done what you’re supposed to, you’ve got some money in the bank. Now, if that freshman has cut class and goofed off and hadn’t done what he was supposed to do, and the bus is getting ready to leave and that freshman’s nowhere around, I’m leaving him.

But if that senior’s never missed the bus in three and a half years, I know something’s wrong. I’m waiting on him because he’s, he’s accumulated some, and I tell my players, I tell my high school kids And when they screw up, I said, Hey, look, you drained your bank account on that one. Okay. And you, you, you bet you better figure out a way to get some more money back in, in the bank.

And I think by doing that, both of those concepts helps these kids to grow up a little bit helps them to make better decisions.  there’s a lot of things coming at him. And, and I think my dad sent me now right after he says, you’re going to do great. Just, just be careful. And cause he had the same thing in high school.

He had a kid that was all everything. And  if you didn’t come to school, you couldn’t play and. He went to his house to game day and it was a different era and knocked on the door and the kid’s sound asleep. So he had to sit him down didn’t play him that game either. Well it’s hard and fast rules.

But also I think there’s some gray in there that you have to negotiate and deal with. Now that makes a lot of sense. I think

[00:14:27] Mike Klinzing: that it’s very easy to have, okay, this rule and this is what we want to do. And boom, it’s black and white. And then all of a sudden. A situation comes up, which we know, right. That almost everything in life is gray in some way, shape or form.

And so you better be prepared to deal with that. And again, I think that’s a mistake that sometimes coaches make earlier in their career when they’re like, I want it done my way or the highway. And then eventually you come to realize that there has to be. A little bit of way that you can finagle it to make it work in certain situations where the circumstances would, would dictate that.

And so I think that’s probably a really good way to, to approach that kind of like the standards based versus the rules based.

Tell me a little bit about your decision to go to Catawba, obviously you said they were playing games in your high school gym where, when, when you’re growing up, but just tell me a little bit about your decision to go there and what your experience was like there as a player.

[00:15:28] Jim Baker: Well, it, it, it, it’s funny how the good Lord works things out.

I, I went to UNC Charlotte as a freshman because my best friend to this day was going. And I went down and Walt Doan and made the JV team and Lee Rose was the head coach back in the day. And he had Cedric Maxwell and, and Melvin Watkins  those guys were there and The next year, they went to the Final Four, and I got to play JV basketball there, but that, that was an era where I think he had like 18 or 20 scholarships, and, and it was a little bit of a different era, and I made the JV team.

And, The day of the first game, the scholarship guard in front of me decides to red shirt. And we were huge. We were 6’7 6’8 The JVs were huge because everybody’s just stacking up big kids. And so I was the only guard in the program, so I got to play every minute of every JV game. But I wanted to play and I was never going to play on that level as a player.

And my dad had known coach Sam Moria there at Catawba. It was about four miles from my house. And he reached out to him and said, come up there. And he put me on some scholarship. And the rest is pretty much history.  I went there and didn’t play a ton to my last year or so played. And then.

Help my head coach for a year sort of like helped the football and basketball in the same year. I worked with football as the offensive scout team coach in the fall, then worked with the basketball and I loved the recruit. I was gone all the time. Of course I was single and so forth.

And, and then I hopped around a little bit, was a D1 assistant for 12 years, went to Davidson for eight, Virginia Tech for two, VMI. All through that period, I had talked with the top about coming back, but I didn’t want to come too early.  I didn’t want to come and just wait and wait, wait. And of course a little country boy and I’m at Davidson and we got it going and we won it in 96, went to NCAA, had another good year in 87, then went to Virginia Tech and we’re in the old Metro league and.

We’re, we’re flying around and we’re playing at Louisville and Cincinnati and Memphis and I, man, fun is a lot of gear and whatnot. I just wasn’t ready to  give that up and then end up going to VMI. I loved it there. After I left Virginia Tech, went to VMI for two years and then they, I was calling them about a player and coach Moyer had gotten on the phone.

And said, Baker, I am leaving one more year. It’s time for you to come back. You’ll take over in a year. And he’d been there for four years. So my wife, Tina and I were getting married in June and I called her up. That was sometime like April and say, Hey, we’re moving to Salzburg. He goes, what? And so I went back, helped him his last year and, and recruited, did everything but coach the the offense.

He wanted to coach the offense. And then the next year I took over and we were able to win the championship my second year and went to the NCAAs and had a great run for 17 years. My last couple of years were a little bit shaky, but it’s funny how.  things work itself out as a young kid. I remember standing there and he’s probably six, seven years old thing about, Oh my gosh, look how big them guys are.

And the Lord behold,  what, 18 19. I’m, I’m playing there. Then 20 years, 15 years later, I’m back there as a head coach. And It’s just funny how sometimes things run course and there’s some divine intervention in there you get detours, you go right and left and whatnot, but  it all went full circle for me and, and it, it was a very good situation.

[00:19:32] Mike Klinzing: So, as I was looking at your, your coaching resume, I thought that there was a possibility that maybe we had crossed paths. When I was a player and you were coaching at VMI, but I think we missed each other by one year. So we played, when I was at Kent State, we played VMI Uhhuh during the nine, during the 90, 91 season, which I think is the season before, before you got there.

[00:19:57] Jim Baker: Yeah. We, I was at Tech that year. Yeah. Virginia Tech, that, yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:02] Mike Klinzing: Wow. Yep. So we, we played them at in the Cornell, like in a Cornell, like in season in season tournament. That year, so I thought, well, that would have been a real coincidence had we had we crossed paths.

[00:20:13] Jim Baker: Yeah. And, and that’s what I, I tell people being in LA, you can’t burn bridges cause it all, that bridge comes back to you.

For sure. Yeah. You gotta

[00:20:22] Jason Sunkle: be, you gotta be smart about it. Mike, did you win that game, Mike? Did you win that game? We did.

[00:20:26] Mike Klinzing: I did. We did win that game.

[00:20:27] Jason Sunkle: So we did win that game. And I, that’s why they hired you, Kim, cause they,

[00:20:31] Mike Klinzing: they love Mike and Ken States.

[00:20:34] Jim Baker: Let’s go. That’s pretty good.

[00:20:36] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, we won that one. We didn’t win a whole lot when I was a junior.

That was during our time. So my, during our pre conference season, we were, I think we were 7 and 4. And I tell this story all the time, but we had, we played, I was playing the small forward at like 6’3 175 pounds. We, we played that year. We played the Cincinnati team. Well, maybe you guys ended up you guys were playing against in Virginia tech, but I remember I was guarding Levertus Robinson, who was

[00:21:02] Jim Baker: like

[00:21:03] Mike Klinzing: six, seven like two 40.

And I’ve never been more, I’ve never, I’ve never been more overwhelmed on a basketball court than in that game. Like they just completely just physically dominated us. But anyway, we were like seven and four at that point. And then our, our season, our season kind of fell apart from there. We went from playing three guards, we put a big guy back in the lineup.

And so we weren’t playing our best five, at least, at least in my opinion, as a humble player. But anyway, long, long, long ago was, was when? That was when that was happen in Cincinnati.

[00:21:33] Jim Baker: Bob Huggins was coaching then. Yeah, he he was uhhuh He was a coach. Yeah, yeah,

[00:21:37] Mike Klinzing: yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:38] Jim Baker: So went down, there were, when we gotta to Virginia Tech, they had come off probation and I was with Frankie Allen, tick price.

I was with some good guys and, football, basketball had gone, both gone on probation was the first time ever they had put both schools on probation and we, we, we, we won I think 11 games and we won 13 and probably by claim to fame, we beat Louisville home and home, we beat Memphis home and home, we beat Cincinnati two out of three that year, but Bob Huggins Well, it was a piece of work.

I mean, we we, we could hear his halftime speeches between the air condition vents and Castle Coliseum and he didn’t hold too much back. So it was a classic. It would be all over YouTube if somebody had recorded it for sure.

[00:22:24] Mike Klinzing: Well, I have my, my Bob Huggins story when I was a kid. So this was when I think it was going into my 10th grade.

Year in high school, and we went to a team camp, like at another high school here in the Cleveland area, and it was in the traditional camp model where you had your stations in the morning and then you had lunch and then after stations, you had a guest speaker to kick off the afternoon and Huggins was the guest speaker and he was talking about post moves and just doing a demonstration on different ways to work with your post players or whatever.

And he brought this kid out of the audience who was probably a 10th or 11th grader at the time from, he was from another high school and brought this kid up there and this kid was kind of a, kind of a soft kid and he brought him up and Huggins had the pad and was. We don’t work in a hit, he’s hitting them and the kids trying to score and make moves and Huggins is a big guy and Huggins is banging them, banging them.

And then Huggins starts getting mad because the kid kind of can’t execute the moves that Huggins is trying to teach them. And by the time Huggins was done with his talk and beating up this kid with the pad and kind of yelling at him, cause he couldn’t do all the things that he was supposed to do. Like this kid was in, like, he was holding back, holding back tears from this afternoon lecture at camp.

It’s one of those things I’m like, like, I don’t know if I ever want to, I don’t know if I ever want to play for, for coach Huggins. That seemed like it was a little. That was a little rough when you’re a 10th grader to to kind of experience that. So that’s a funny story. So yeah, there’s always, there’s always good ones.

All right. So when you think about your time as a D1 assistant, what, Anna, what do you think are the best characteristics of? A great assistant coach, if you had to narrow it down to two or three things that you think make for someone who’s a great assistant, what are those characteristics?

[00:24:27] Jim Baker: Well, I think probably the number one thing, if, if, if I were the head coach of a D one program, I will try my best to find those guys that I know that would are good people and that would be loyal to me.

And it’s, it’s, you got. These staffs and you look over on the staff and there’s 19 people in a suit and, and, and there’s a lot of opinions over there and  everybody’s got the answer and I joke with my staff and whatnot and I got a great staff. Here at Cannon and I brought, when I came up over from Central Cabarrus, I brought my three guys with me, but I was joking with someone.

I said, yeah, I let them guys coach the other night. I gave them controls of the plane and they about ran it to the mountain. We were down 20 to four. Then I had to grab them controls and straighten it up. But I see.  you can sit in that office and you can argue about if it’s the right foot forward or the left foot forward or if it’s six inches or if it’s eight inches.

I remember when I was through my Davidson period we, we take three, three and a half hours to plan an hour and a half to two hour practice. And, and there was a lot of discussion on the right way and how we want to do it. But then you had to be able to go out there on the court and have one voice, one face and everybody on the same page.

And I think right now that is the hardest thing because just like the players are hopping on that money the NILs, the assistant coaches are all in the same boat. I mean, they all want to advance their careers. They all want to make as much money for the families. And to find those loyal guys that are going to be there.

They’re going to cover your back they’re, they’re going to be your voice. It’s hard to find and it, it, it really is. My oldest son is assistant at Kennesaw State. He’s 25. He’s with Pettway. He, he walked on the coach. He walked on at Presbyterian with Dustin Kearns. He goes to Dustin goes to App State, takes Jamie with him.

They got him a GA with Alabama with Nate Oates. He’s down there with Nate Oates for two years. He was Brandon Miller in a GA and. Jaden Bradley, and this small world, Jaden Bradley played at my school, at Cannon. That’s where he came from, out of high school. And my son was there, and then Coach Pettway gets a job at Kennesaw and takes Jamie with him.

And, and, and so I’ve all, I’ve, I’ve always talked to Jamie at 25. Now they play tonight. They, they beat Western Kentucky. I get to watch them play and we go try to see him play as much. And he’s a young coach and he’s always asking me, what do you do? What do you do? I said, Jamie, whatever you got to do, you got to be loyal to coach Pettway.

You can walk in his office, you can shut the door and say, Coach, can I talk to you for a minute? I don’t know if this is the right thing. I don’t know, but, but, but, but, when you go out in public, you, you gotta be 100 percent Pet Ways Man. And, and I just think, this day and time, it’s so hard to find that. And  it’s, we, we’ve messed up college sports so bad, I think lately.

And, and you’re going to laugh when I say this, I left Catawba, ran a basketball facility for a year here in, in, in the Charlotte area. And I saw the worst of the worst with this AAU and travel. And I’ll be doggone. We’ve made our division. NCAA division one, two, and three athletics, just like travel ball.

You get mad. The coach, the coach yells at you. You just do what you pick up and leave. And I really believe I tell people this all, I believe in the next year or so you’re going to be able to play for two teams in the same year.  somebody is going to sue I don’t like this coach. I made a mistake.

I want to go here. Well, no, you can’t. Well, we’re going to sue. And then somebody is going to give in. Well, the travel ball, you would see. Kids hopping from one team to the next team to the next team, and it’s, it’s just carried over into all of our college sports right now. And, and somebody asked me, Because I was pretty blessed at Catawba.

I mean, we, we had nine 20 win seasons. We had two 19 win seasons. We had a tournament record of about 24 and 11. I mean, I had some guys that could play. I, five of my kids are in the college Hall of fame at, at Kaba. We had 20,000 points scores in my 20 years there, and I would’ve never kept them. Now , ?

Yep. And, and, and 60 of 64 of them that were with me for my, through their. Completion of the, graduated and now no one is talking about graduation rates. Nobody’s talking about drug testing, none of it, we just thrown all that out the window. And that boils back to me. Somebody said Baker, could you coach college now?

And I said, yeah, I would totally change my approach. He goes, what do you mean? I was about your family. I was about loyalty. I was about getting your degree. Just throw all that out the window. Now, now I could be as selfish as I want. I go find 10 new players every year and see if I can win for one year.

And, and, and, and to me, the loyalty part is so, so important. And  finding those guys that can do it is hard, but I think it still can be done.

[00:30:26] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let me ask you. Let’s dive into the way that college basketball has changed that you just described in terms of the impact that the portal has had, the impact that NIL has had, and I think that where we are now, it’s hard to imagine that this system is sustainable.

I do think that there is a lot of that. I’m now coaching instead of building a roster for four years, right? Where you’re like, man, I got a great incoming freshman class. And as these guys develop and they get to be upperclassmen, that that’s really when we’re going to be able to thrive. And that is sort of out the window, right?

Especially if you’re coaching at a division two school like Catawba, where if you bring in guys and they have a tremendous amount of success in their first year or two, those guys are going to be out the door. I mean, there’s no question that. Having a thousand point score at the division two levels, it’s going to become more and more rare because those guys are just going to leap and go to the next level.

So when you look at as a longtime college basketball coach, when you look at the system as it is right now, where do you think this ends up? Like, how do you think that this ends? I’m just curious to get, and not that we’re going to hold you to it. Not that you really have any, any more idea than any of us, but I’m just curious where, how do you, where do you think this ends up?

Cause I just don’t think what we’re doing right now with. NIL and guys jumping all over the place. I just don’t know how this is sustainable and what college sports looks like five years from now.

[00:31:54] Jim Baker: Well, I, I think the NCAA threw their arms up in the air and said, we’re going to let these kids. Go like they’ve been doing in tribal ball.

Just, just let them hop around. And they threw them up and they had no foresight of how it’s going to affect everybody. And I think the idea we were going to let, let these kids move around to help the kids, but I think it’s helping the coaches more than it is the kids, because you probably know better than I do half the kids in the division one portal didn’t get picked up.

So those kids are on the street, probably 60 percent or more of the Division 2 kids didn’t get picked up. So, I mean, right there, let’s, I’m gonna just off the top of my head say there was 1, 800 in Division 1, Division 2. That’s, that’s 3, 600 kids. So 2, 000 of them are out of sports after one year. And maybe if they just stayed at that school and, and grinded it out a little bit suck it up put their big boy pants on as people say, and, and work a little bit harder instead of worrying about where I’m going to go next.

Or if a coach doesn’t like me, or I don’t like the coach and they, they hop out of the system. Well, what I think, I think it backfired because now a coach can call you in. And when I was coaching, you had, you had to document the kid missing class or doing something he wasn’t supposed to. You had to document his behavior.

You had to go to the AD, I mean, you had to jump through some hoops to take his scholarship from him. And now some of these coaches are texting these kids, says, Hey, you’re not coming back, but go into the, you need to go on the portal. One of my former players was coaching at a college and he called me in tears.

He said, coach, we just put 10 players in the transfer portal by a group tech.

My gosh. And he says I, I’ve been in these kids homes. I’ve been telling the mamas and, and I’m going to look after your kid. You come here, we’re going we’re going to get your education and all that. And then after a year or so. They’re just fired now, granted, that’s the real world.

But was that the purpose of college athletics to begin with? And I think there’s going to be a lot more issues coming. I don’t see how the money can keep coming in.  the alumni at some point, I mean, it’s you can’t keep going. I mean, you’re seeing. Florida State getting sued cause those kids didn’t get money  I’ve heard of quite a few big time recruits.

They, they refused to play out players. They faked the injury cause the school wasn’t paying them. I mean, it’s just, to me, it’s out of control with no plan. I, I see this now they’re going to come in what limited like 20 million and now they come up and say, well, you got to divide it 50 50 with the and I got two daughters that were college gymnasts.

I’m saying, oh yeah, let’s, let’s go. But  what’s going to happen that the girl that’s playing tennis is going to sue because she’s getting. 25, 000 and the star football player is getting 4, 000, 000.  it’s going to come. I mean, it’s just a matter of time. But my assistant here at Central and at Cannon, we used to argue about all the time, politics, and we did, we both love each other and a good guy.

He kept saying, coach, we need to pay him. We need to pay him. We need to pay him. So one day I walked in, I saw Zion Williams was at Duke. I said, let’s pay them all. I said, how much you want to pay them? And I said, 2 million each. He said, coach, now you’re starting to think, you’re starting to think the right way.

I said, okay, 2 million each probably 40 percent tax bracket. He’s going to bring home 1. 2 million. He goes, coach, what are you talking about? Wait a minute. I’m paying taxes. You’re paying taxes. Why, why is he going to get exempt from taxes? And, and then all of a sudden, well, who’s going to pay for that jet for him to fly around and after the game to get home four hours quicker than taking a charter, who’s paying a hundred dollar pregame meal, who’s paying for that single room in the Marriott, who’s paying the coach’s salaries.

 if you’re going to pay him as independent contractor, now let’s take that 1. 2, now he’s got to pay for some stuff. He said, coach, that’s not right. You can’t do that. I said, wait a minute, you wanna make it a business? But I, I think the worms are out of the can, and I, I don’t see how they’re gonna get it back in there.

I, I really don’t. I, I honestly,

[00:36:52] Jason Sunkle: I honestly think that NCAA football in like five to 10 years is gonna cease to exist as we know it. And it’s gonna be the thir, it’s gonna be the NFL light, and it’s gonna be like the 32 teams and the Big 10, and the SEC. Are going to secede from the union and they’re just going to have, and they’re going to have their own thing and that’s, that, and that’s what’s going to happen.

And they’re going to pay the kids that that’s probably five to 10 years from now. So we’re going to be talking about,

[00:37:19] Jim Baker: yeah, it’s over a crazy situation. And I know when, when I first got into it.  Division 1 was a big umbrella with Division 3, by a thousand schools. Then they split it up into the Congress Division 1 Congress, Division 2, Division 3, each had, let’s just say for conversation, each had 333 schools.

And they, they would make the rules that apply to them and each school would have three votes. They would have the president, the athletic director, and the faculty rep. So each school was getting three votes on this thing. How did they ever let it get like this?  and, and, and now you see it’s like the NCAA, it’s just coming up every week with a new policy.

Who’s approving this? And, and we used to have to get it approved. I remember when I was at Davidson and before we got there, Eddie Beanbott was the head coach and he flew a kid in from Charlotte on a helicopter and landed on the football field to impress the recruit. And he was, Eddie was a heck of a coach, a showman and all this.

He had a Rolls Royce out there. It was his car. He picked the kid up on the track and drove him around campus and what. And then the next year, somebody complained, so the NCAA, they put a rule up, don’t helicopter travel and everybody voted on it and they voted it down. Well, we used to vote and I would see the voting on if the media guy can have a color, front color of the color.

 Florida State wanted them to come out with a media guide, it was all color inside with the school, they couldn’t afford it, complained. So then we had to vote, you can have color on the front, inside, back and front cover, okay? So if anybody’s even voting on anything anymore, and somebody got called for, was it Dion or somebody got reprimanded or written up for cheating?

I mean, there’s no rules. It’s just the wild, wild west. So, I think sometimes it worked out for me to be in high school near the end of it. I don’t have a lot of that to deal with, but I definitely think that if I were coaching college now, it’s almost the kids are just indispensable.  what I’m saying?

I hate to say that nobody’s doing academic checks. They cause the kids are probably going to leave. It is just a free fall. And  these kids are hopping around. Somebody said on TV this week, I heard one of my coaches say that this kid had been at five schools in five years. And  there’s a reason he’s hopping around.

Either the kid’s greedy and he’s trying to help himself or he’s screwing up everywhere. And it’s one or the other. And but I don’t see how in the world they’re going to get it back under control. I, I just, I, I don’t, I don’t know. Hope I agree with you, Jim.

[00:40:19] Mike Klinzing: No, I agree with you. I think the thing that I look at, and when you look at the landscape of college basketball, when you look backwards into the past and you look at where we are now and you look into the future, when I look back, I’m not, I’m not philosophically opposed to players being paid something.

And I’m not philosophically opposed to players being able to transfer from one school to another and not have it sit out. Because when you look back in the past. It feels like, okay, I’m a player. I can sign with a school ostensibly, if I’m a basketball player, probably one of the main reasons why I’m going to that school is because of the coach.

Yeah. And so if the coach leaves and takes a bigger job and gets paid more money, and now I’m left holding the bag, and if I want to transfer to another division one school, I gotta sit out a year. That never seemed fair to me. When you look at, again, at the highest level, when you look at the salaries that coaches are making, and if you’re a player at Ohio state, or you’re a player at Alabama and your jerseys for sale in the bookstore, and you’re not seeing any money from that, you can see how players felt like, Hey, we should be paid.

And I’m not fundamentally opposed to that either. I think you make a great point that it just became the NCAA throwing up their hands and saying, well, just go ahead and. Do whatever, and we’ll try to figure it out as we go along instead of, instead of putting policies in place that allowed it to ramp up slowly.

Instead, it was just like they opened the, they opened the corral gates and said, just go and. And now we have this system where I just, I can’t even imagine how challenging it is coaching a college basketball team from a standpoint of, again, you can’t really build a roster from year to year. You’re basically coaching a one year team every single year.

So that’s gotta be, again, incredibly challenging. And you have to shift your, shift your mindset. Like you said, when you’re a coach, right, you’re. Getting to know the family, you’re concerned about the kid’s academics. You, you want to build them up as a human being. Well, if you’re only going to have them for a year, not that you can’t do those things, but it’s much more difficult.

You just have a lot less time to be able to, to be able to have an impact. And then the other thing that always, I guess, for me is interesting from a dynamic standpoint is if I’m coaching a college basketball team, and you can probably speak to this, being able to manage your locker room and manage the egos and manage.

Guys getting along and teammates and we’re competing and one guy’s playing and one guy’s not and just managing that is a challenge in some cases. And now you throw on that Jim’s making 75, 000 this year, Jason’s making 110, 000 and Mike’s making 12, 000. And so here’s my, here’s Mike sitting here going, why’s why is Jason getting all this money and why is Jim making more than me?

And now you’ve got that whole dynamic that you have to be able to handle and deal with. And again, I know it’s a new landscape and people are, you have to learn new ways to adapt and it’s part of the job. It feels like the idea of the portal and NIL I’m in agreement with. The execution of those two things has been horrendous and I don’t know, I, and now I think we’ve gotten to a point, like you said, I don’t know how we fix it.

I just don’t see how we can

[00:44:00] Jim Baker: go

[00:44:00] Mike Klinzing: the

[00:44:00] Jim Baker: other direction. And there’s so many good kids out there and there’s good coaches out there, but we’ve totally gotten away from the character part, the loyalty part, being a tough person, handling adversity and it’s just. If you get on the kid and he doesn’t like it, and like Bobby Knight, he always said, well, the bench is good sit your butt on the bench and the bud after a while, it’s going to tell the brain you play better.

And it, it, I, I’m, I’m a little old fashioned, I guess, from my upbringing and whatnot, the core values just seem like they’re gone. And, and we, we liberalize the whole thing. And I, I think we’re going to look back 20 years somehow. There’s going to be a ton of these kids that totally blew up the situation.

They got in trouble tax wise. They got in trouble with their money. They blew the money they, they, they went through it. And now they don’t have a degree and they, they they wasted three or four years and, and now they don’t have a degree because graduation rates, no one is talking about graduation and we went from beginning to hold the school accountable if they didn’t graduate to not even counting them now we just went, went to the extreme on it and it’s a little bit crazy.

Yeah. I’m a big Saban fan and I heard him when he testified before Congress, he said they used to bring all the recruits over and, and, and to their house on Sunday and the family and big breakfast spread and all this. And coach Saban’s wife, we get them together and talk to the moms.

We’re going to look after it. And he told him it was a waste of time. He goes, well, what do you mean? We’ve always done it. And she goes, they don’t care about what we’re going to do. They all want to know how much you’re going to get paid. And, and, and, and see, to me, that’s where the thing went sour it, it became a, how much I’m going to make is not in, in being around my, my, my oldest son, of course, he was Alabama and he’d hear all the stories on that very level.

And some of the money these kids were getting, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. And then you start hearing, well, this kid didn’t get this. Now that kid’s faking the injury because he’s mad at the coaches because they didn’t pay him. And I think it’s a lot more of that going on. And I think there’s a lot there. I think there’s a few kids making a ton of money.

And I think there’s a lot of them that I, I don’t know.  what I’m saying? I, it sounds really good. And  everybody’s worrying about what Johnny’s getting in.  it’s not, sometimes it’s not the X and O’s, it’s the Johnnies and the Joes, and you gotta have good players, but You got to get them on the same page and I think you brought up a great point that if, if Johnny over here is getting a hundred thousand dollars, but Joe over here is beating him out and he’s getting 12, 000 you got problems.

Sure. Absolutely. You, you got problems. And. Absolutely. And, and I know when I, I, I coached and recruited and I felt like we recruited some really good kids especially when I was at Catawba. And.  we’d sit them down and you’re going to laugh at this. I come up with this little story in, in your division two, you put a package together, you put their financial aid, their academic aid, then you fill it up with basketball.

So I’d build this little tower up with them and the money in there. And this is what, when I get it up there, I could been doing this long, I pretty much have an eyeball of what their grades were, what their parents income was. And I, I could be pretty close. And I would always tell the player, you’re interested in the next four minutes.

When it, when is coach Baker going to shut up? I do want to find out if we’re wearing Nike’s or not. Do we have any nice trips? Can we get up the cafeteria? I want to see what the food looks like. And I want to see what the girls look like. So the player was interested in four minutes. The dad’s sitting over on the couch.

He’s interested in the next four years. He’s wanting to know. Can my son play here? Do you think he will ever start? Is this a good fit for his skillset? And mom’s sitting on the couch and she’s not saying nothing. She’s soaking everything in and she’s worried about the next 40 years. If, if, if, if, if I trust this man with my son.

Is he going to make sure my son gets his degree? Because I’m worrying more about the type of man he’s going to be, who he’s going to marry, the father he’s going to be. So it was my 4 40, 4 4 40 theory I go through with it. But I think those days are pretty much over. I think you’re dealing with four minutes with everybody, .

And it’s become boom, boom like that. And, and, and we got away from the the education part of it, the value of it, the loyalty, and I’m so thankful I was able to coach it and I’m still really close with most of my Catawba players. And Because it, the, the whole timeframe before all this happened is so different.

And it, we were going to get that picture made. We was going to get the picture made with the families at graduation we was going to have the cookouts and, and, and all that family type of stuff. And I, I just see now it is a strictly a dollar business of the money and when, when at this moment and.

I, I got some pretty good high school kids. I had some really good kids over at Central. I mean, we had a remarkable run over there, and I couldn’t get the kids a scholarship because nobody wanted to take a high school kid. And, and, and now you look at it, apparently if you can go to junior college and they won’t count, count against you, and they’re going to give everybody five years.

So now these kids are going to be playing when they’re 25, 26 years old. I mean, how’s a high school kid, the only way he could make it right now is probably go D2. Then try to transfer up or go to junior college and hope he can survive that and, and ’cause junior college is not the easiest route. it, it, it’s a tough route to go.

And so I, I feel for these kids and, and it, it’s hard. It’s hard right now.

[00:51:01] Mike Klinzing: It really is. I think that when you look at the system, I, I hope that in some way, shape or form, it, it shakes out in a way that allows. Us to get back to some degree of sanity. I don’t know that that, I don’t know that that’s going to happen.

It seems like almost for going the other we’re going the other direction, but yeah, your, your point about high school players is, is really well taken. I think that’s, that’s one of those unintended consequences that I didn’t hear anybody talking about that prior to the portal and an IO coming in. There was no, I didn’t hear any experts.

I didn’t hear anybody coaches, nobody. Talked about, well, Hey, if this gets enacted, it’s going to really impact negatively the recruiting of high school players. And certainly that’s been the case. And the number of coaches at the high school level who have players that are capable of playing at the college level and tons of college coaches that we’ve talked about.

Have all basically give me the same piece of advice when it comes to getting a scholarship as a high school player. If you get, if you get an offer, you’re like, don’t wait around for a better one. You better grab that. You better grab that offer as soon as you get it and take it because those, those scholarships for high school kids are becoming harder and harder.

Yeah, fewer and fewer and farther between as we as we continue to move on and it’s just, I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see where. Where everything goes and I don’t, I don’t know what the landscape’s going to look like moving forward. So, all right, well, let’s get back to, let’s get back to your career and talk to me a little bit about, you’ve, you’ve mentioned it.

Several times, just in terms of the relationship that you have with your players at Catawba, tell me a little bit about how you went about day to day, building those kinds of relationships with your players, where the guys that you still are in contact with today. It obviously takes a lot of work to be able to build those relationships while they’re with you for four years to, to know that they’re going to call you up 10 years down the road and talk to you about the things that are going on in your life.

So just tell me, how do you build relationships as a coach?

[00:53:06] Jim Baker: I think that there’s a couple things in there and. I, I think you as a coach, you have to be pretty legit. And we talked about being honest with the kids and, and, and they can figure it out pretty quick and just being around my son his college career played for Dustin Kearns and their whole staff.

And just listen to him talk about how good people they are. How straight up they are. And, and, and I tried to do that with, with, with my players. And one thing I always did, and I don’t know if you could really probably do this now. I’d always sell it a little bit short. If a freshman came in and I thought he could play eight or 10 minutes a game, I’d say you probably gonna play four or six.

And, and then if you were a sophomore, probably by the time sophomore, you work way up, you’re going to be. Probably playing 20 and I’d say probably 12, 14. I didn’t want to set that kid up that you told me. And I tried to make a point to him that I never, I had a high school kid transfer out on me when I was at Central and the mother was a pain and she’s, she made the comment, you promised my son he’s going to start.

I said, whoa. I said, I, I, I coached a head coach 20 years of college and I never one time told a kid he’s gonna start. And, and I tried to project where they would come in and it fit in the program. Okay, your freshman, you’re gonna come in, there’s two seniors in front of you. You gotta work, you gotta get bigger, you gotta get stronger.

And, and I think through that whole process. I, I, I hope my kids felt like I cared about them and I tried to talk to them a lot at the end of practice, I’d preach to them a little bit, we’d have the thought of the day and I would get with them a little bit about,  their goals and their dreams and, and growing up and, and, and I think just that whole culture really helped me keep those kids there for them to graduate to, Yeah.

So that you carry, you love them and they may not always like me and, and I would tell them straight up. I said, I don’t need you to like me. I want you to respect me that I’m trying to do the best I can for you. And it goes back to a little bit of, of the, my money in the bank theory that we talked about earlier.

 I’m not going to treat you all as equal because. I can’t, but I’m going to try to treat you fair, and the guy that sits on the bench, I’m going to treat him with just as much respect as my thousand point scorer that started, but you, there’s a reason he’s playing and you’re not. He’s got more talent than you.

And  that’s just life I wanted to be in the NBA, but I mean, little white guards, 5’11, are playing in the NBA, not many, not many, but  we’re all blessed and we’re giving different gifts and abilities. And I, I’ve got  Ben, ve she’s perfect example. He, he came down parents had a tuition exchange program.

He came to Catawba, didn’t play a whole lot, and, and now he’s doing a heck of a job at, at Hargrave. I, I think I had 19 kids that went on they were kids then, but now they’re men. They’re coaching and, here I am at the end of my career, and I’m coaching against a couple of them now. They play for me, they’re in the leagues around us, and so forth.

I think we’re all got a different plan. We’re all in a different place. And you just try to help those kids and support them. And I’d always tell mama that I, I’m, I’m gonna borrow your kid for four years and you’ve done a heck of a job with this young man and right now he’s a seven or eight in your eyes.

He’s a 10, but he’s a seven or eight. I’m going to get him bigger. I’m going to get him stronger. I’m going to teach him to compete a little bit more. And when I give him back to you in four years, I want the kid to be a 10. And it was just sort of my way. And I always tried to give them moms a hug at graduation and say, mom, I thank you for loaning me your kid.

And I, I tell him, I I’ll still do anything I want. You don’t want me to do a resume, call somebody. And, and that’s how I ended up with the job at Canada and I was comfortable at the high school here in Concord, Central Cabarrus. We had won back to back state championships. We had gone 95 1 and over four years to count the COVID year, we were 107 3.

And we were nationally ranked, we, and we’re  average size public school. And my culture was bad when I got there, we won four games, we won six games. And we started, the kids started coming in and got a little more serious about it. And then it was like a machine. It just started rolling, but I wasn’t interested in any other job.

I said, I’ll just go ahead and retire here. You’ll coach a few more years. And the job at Canning came open and two of my former players. Dominique Reed was the boy’s assistant coach and Kelvin Dragford was the girl’s coach. He’s already won two state championships in 4A private in North Carolina. And I text Dominique, I said, Dominique, out of the blue, I text him.

I said, can I help you get this job? Can I call somebody? What? Because then he’s assistant coach. And he says, sit tight, coach. And he texts me back the next day and he said, coach, they’re wanting to move the culture in a different direction. They want to go with an outsider. Both Kelvin, that was the girls coach, and I gave the AD your phone number, and he’s gonna call you.

And, and, and so, that’s how it worked out. And I look back I’ve been I, I graduated from Catawba. I stayed and helped coach a year. I go to Wingett. I go from Wingett to Belmont Abbey, Belmont Abbey to Davidson for eight years. Virginia Tech for two VMI for two, back to Catawba for 21, 1 years assistant, one year running a basketball facility.

Seven years at Central Barris and now one year at can. And I’ve yet to get a job on a resume. And it’s a pretty amazing run that people, people know you, a little bit of an intervention there, that it’s a plan for it to work itself out. And every time I’ve applied for a job, I never got it. But it’s funny how the perfect plan was because of people it.

I tried to instill that. The high school kids are a little bit different because they’re a lot younger, a lot more immature about growing up, but my guys at Catawba, we had a 20th, not a 20th, it was one of our really good teams. They’d won 25 and 4, went to the sweet 16 division too. They set up a reunion for them all to come back to Catawba and I had one fly in from France, I had some international kids, I had one fly in from Croatia, I had one fly in from California, and I had another one fly in from one of the, I can’t think of over there right now, it’s three international kids and one from California.

Here they are, they fly in, they’re in their forties, and we’re hugging each other crying. And and that probably meant as much to me for all of them to come back, all of them.  you think grown men cry because they had a bond together they, they won a championship. It wasn’t a national championship, but we were a pretty good team, but they, they’re, they’re friends for life.

They’re friends for life on Facebook. They, there’s a text I got all in a text at team and the, somebody was talking trash about one of the college teams the other day, but.  we’ll all be friends or coaches of player related, it will be, it will go on forever. And I think that’s what it boils down to.

And that’s what worries me so much about what we’ve done in college right now. I was thinking this the other day, this is going south. I think the era of a lot of these kids being in their hall of fames is over. Because they’re not, they’re not going to be, they’re, they’re not going to be there long enough to accumulate the numbers, if, if that makes sense.

It does. And so I, I, I think that that’s a tough situation now, but  I think that family value of, of looking after the kids. And I used to joke with a lot of them when, when I got you, you’re a little acorn and I put you in the pot and threw some water on you. And now you’re, you’re a full grown oak tree.

And  a lot, a lot of it has to do with good parenting, but I think as a coach, you’re, you’re constantly trying to push these kids. You’re trying to lead them. Some days you got to get on the butt. Some days you got to hug them. Some days you got to kick them. And I had a theory at Catawba, I would, I was sort of easy going as I got a little bit older, but I would let some stuff build up.

Okay. Johnny cut class. Pete was late for this Marvin something happened like. And I just sort of let it build up. And then one day I would look at my coaches. I said, today may be the day. And I would, we’d be stretching and I’d sort of casually shut the doors to the gym and all of a sudden one of them would just make a turnover, just nothing out of the ordinary, but it w it was my day to absolutely go off and I’d go off.

I’d scream and yell, kick a ball, throw them out of the gym. And I never had to say anything else to him the rest of the year, because that one day made him sort of refocus, make him mad at me. It’s okay if they go to the dorm, but my last year or so at Catawba, I tried it. And it was a different type of kid and they all went downstairs to the locker room and just kept going and went to the dorm.

And my really good teams would send somebody up there, a manager, a trainer to negotiate me, letting them come back. And, and that was just a difference of the kid the mindset of the kid. And so, but that was sort of a trick. We were at central and in the spring of, of when he. 23, and we had a really good team and we were undefeated and we’re rolling along.

I said, let me, let me shake this bunch up a little bit. And they were good kids. I had raised my boys all year long. And I normally, I call them the center, the circle. And when, when they all get there, I sit back. So nobody’s behind me,  what I’m saying? So I can sort of see. Well, I knew the day before, a couple of them had stayed behind me and I didn’t step back.

So I let it go. Well, the next day I called them together, okay, blah, blah, blah. We’re going to do this and this. And they were back there pinching each other in the butt it’s being a, being a teenager. And all of a sudden I go off, I just absolutely go off. Y’all ain’t going to win it.

You’re not serious. You’re not you, you, you guys think you’re good. You ain’t done nothing yet, blah, blah, blah. I go off. I stormed out. Well, when I walked by, we had a our athletic trainer was a a Marine sniper in Iraq, and of course he’d seen everything you could possibly see. And his mouth was sort of dropped open because he’d never seen me go off on.

I winked at him and went out the door. And about an hour later, my assistant coach called me. He said, Coach, where are you? I said, I’m across the street at the Family Dollar. I’m reading a book. And so he brought my son over there. And when they pulled up, I started laughing. He says, Coach, you think, I said, you think I got their attention?

He said, my gosh, they’re scared to death. And I didn’t say another word to them. And, and I don’t know if you keep up with it. That was the team that went to Atlanta. In the regional throne  the national championship game and went down there and won three games, beat Simeon, beat John Marshall lost to the Boozer brothers.

We were leading by two going into the fourth quarter and up losing the national, they, they were so well tuned in and one of my team moms was coaching them because we couldn’t coach it. But that just shows you a little bit, they were good kids, but all they needed was a little bit of and that goes back to they may like me, but I really want them to respect me they can like me when I, when I’m in the nursing home, but, but I think that’s some of the stuff you learn to do as a coach, you learn to read your kids and so forth, but my, I had some really special kids at Catawba.

We could never quite compete for the National Championship Division II. We just, our scholarship limits were different in the South Atlantic Conference then, and it was a little bit harder. A lot of schools, you could give the kid the Pell money, and  that was 5, 500. Now you talk about back 15 years ago, you were able to give a kid 1, 500, he’s going to take the money.

Well, our, our conference rule, the pale money went towards a scholarship, so we had to recruit a kid that was a little bit not quite as good as everybody else, but, but I’m proud of what we did, and we had a really good run there. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:07:07] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny when you, when you’re talking about just kind of walking winking after you, after you go off on your team, I coach with a guy.

When I started my coaching career and at the high school where I, where I coached. And I’ve always said that he was one of those guys that had the ability. And I’d never had the ability to do what you just described or what this guy would do, where you could sort of plan out the fact that you were going to get angry and then sort of have a, have a tirade for lack of a better way of saying it, and then, and then be able to turn around, I’ll never forget when I was the assistant coach.

The first time that my head coach did this and we’re in the middle of practice and I’m kind of at one end underneath the basket and the team is at the opposite end for me and our head coach is like on the sideline and he steps out on the court and he starts yelling and his face is turning red and he’s going he’s going crazy.

He’s yelling at the kids and I’m just like looking at him going, hold it, man. And then he gets, he gets, he gets done with the tirade and he turns around, he turns around to look at me and he just goes. Just has this big, this big smile on his face. Like it was not, not that it was fake, but just he had the ability to turn that on and off.

And I just never had the ability, like if, if I was gonna be mad, I had to really legitimately be mad if I tried to be mad. Yeah. If I, if I tried to like gin up being mad, like you talked about how the kids can read you right away. Like nobody would’ve believed my angry, nobody would’ve believed my angry tirade because I probably would, I probably, I probably would’ve started laughing in the middle of it.

So. Anybody who has that ability, that’s a, that’s an ability that I always marvel at for sure.

[01:08:50] Jim Baker: Well, I, I’m a little bit of a history buff and World War II and I had a chance to go to Belgium in Europe. I think it was 18 times in 17 years doing basketball camps, working the women’s national team.

And it, it fit in perfect cause I, I, I wasn’t a big history buff in high school, but as I got older and I started watching the documentaries and I got to be a big Patton fan and been to Luxembourg, the cemetery, and read eight or ten books about it. But he made one quote one time. He says, no one needs to know if it’s the act or the actor.

And, and, and, and the other night we’re playing and we’re down 13, Oh, and 20 to four and a half time it, it, it was it was an act because I went off on them pretty good. And they come back and we, we, we came back and won a good game on the road, but sometime it’s the actor it.  no one needs to know, but me, is he really mad?

And, and sometimes you got to send a little shockwave sometimes your, your, your wife gets on to you, gets you off the couch, getting them dishes clean. And it’s the same way. And the thing about coaching, that’s hard to understand. Everybody thinks you got to just go get great players. But I think you’re going to have great people that want to win and that will make up sometime for, for the kids that are super athletic and they, they, if they don’t want to win, but the kids have to be able to play together and you, you, you, you can look at your assist and.

My teams at Central, we were averaging 87, 88 points a game in high school. That’s crazy numbers, but we’re averaging 24 assists a game. And when you’re assisting on that many points, you’re, you’re going to beat some people. Now, my teammate Cannon’s really young and I’ve told him and tried to put my system in and we’re averaging 82 points a game, but our assists are about 17.

So and we started off, we were turning that ball over more than we are assisting. And then we started, we, we spent a couple of days. Running them, if they went over this turnover limit in practice the, okay, we’re going to play a seven minute game. Each team can only have three turnovers, then we’re going to stop and run.

Well, it took about a week of that. It’s amazing how our turnovers came down and we’ve lost a little guard that can really shoot the ball and he, he was averaging about two assists. Our assists have come down recently and. I told the guys, Hey, if you want to win, you, you got to share that thing.

Mom’s over at the video camera and  she, he’s filming everything you do. The cheerleaders are looking good. The popcorn smells good. But you, you face out and you forget it’s, it’s a team game and the kids get caught up. I think watching the NBA, the NBA rules and the high school and college rules are not even the same.

The NBA wants a guy to get 40 so they can keep selling that beer. Yeah, 12 a can up there and, and they won’t stars. Well.  college is, is more in high school, it’s a street fight. And if you can’t play together, you can’t share, you can’t support each other, then you’re going to have trouble.

And I told the coaches all the time, and my first couple of years coaching high school, we went four games. My second year, I went six and I’m telling my wife, Holy cow. I think I made a big mistake. I don’t know if I can do this. The kids just won’t buy in. And then all of a sudden I started getting a couple that buy in.

And it’s amazing how, now we start sharing the ball a little bit more, we start scoring more and more points, we get a couple more kids in, and it’s, it’s funny how it multiplies itself. And, i, I think that’s, is a big key in, in what we do is a coach and coaching these kids. A lot of them don’t know. A lot of them, the only thing they see is, is Curry tonight going out hitting eight threes, but they shot maybe 40 threes in practice today and Curry shot 300 this morning and shoot around.

I mean, there’s a difference. There’s a difference. Nate Oates. He makes my, when my son was down there with Brandon Miller and Jaden Bradley, they had to shoot 3, 000 threes a week. Now you’re shooting 3, 000 threes a week. Add that up.  that, that was their goals. And  we see this kid on TV jacking that basketball and the high school kid gets in there and everybody yells, shoot, shoot, shoot.

And The kid can’t shoot a lick and he shoots it up there and nobody knows it. The other team lays it up on the other end. And all of a sudden you, it’s happened to us the other night. We took some bad shots and next thing  we’re down 20 to four. So I think it’s funny how the game is and getting these kids to share the play together, to, to like each other, pull for each other.

It’s, it’s a little bit of a hard situation to stay in time.

[01:14:13] Mike Klinzing: I mean, I think it goes back to what we talked about. In the college game, right, where if you’re only there for a year, how invested are you in the success of the team versus the success of yourself as an individual? And to me, there’s no doubt that if I had to boil basketball down to one secret ingredient, what you just described goes sharing the ball and, and being willing to, to pass the ball and play with your teammates.

I mean, there’s obviously a ton of other things that goes into winning, but if you can get your team to buy into making the extra pass and sharing the ball, that’s the secret ingredient to basketball that helps teams win. I don’t care what level you’re at. I don’t care if it’s college, it’s pro, it’s high school.

When you, when you share the ball, your odds of success go up. Astronomically without question. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

[01:15:07] Jim Baker: And it’s funny, we’re, we’re in the analytics and, and I know coach Oates and, and his staff and my son, Jamie was always sending me their analytics on shooting threes and so forth.

But I, I got to believe my analytics are a little bit different. I think that assist the point relation ratio is as important as shooting threes. And if, if, if if you get 60 points and you only have 10 assists versus if you had 15 assists, you may have 70 points. And if, if, if, if, and my team now at Canon is new, I’m new.

It’s, it’s a little bit like for me teaching Chinese. They haven’t quite learned by end that we, we rip the ball, we spread the floor, we rip it, and it’s, the rip is not to score, the rip is to set somebody up, and we, we get called in that still to this day, but I, I got some good kids, and I think over, The next year or so I’ll be able to, to, to get it to that point of let, let, let’s get that assist up over 20 when you get that assist over 20, some good things are going to happen out there on the court.

So,

[01:16:25] Mike Klinzing: yeah, absolutely. All right, final two part question. It kind of goes along with what you just said in terms of looking forward with your team and your program. So the first part of the question is when you think ahead. A year, two years down the road. What do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question is when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:16:53] Jim Baker: I think the biggest challenge will, will be the school I’m at is a great school and it’s a college prep. It’s like being in college. It’s a little bit hard to get into. We can take some kids that qualify for financial aid. We don’t ask for athletic scholarships.

But we’re playing against some schools that offer some athletic scholarship. So we naturally got that, that little bit higher hill to climb to get up there. But I really think if I can over the next. Year or two, get the right mix of kids in that, that, that won’t play together. Won’t share they couldn’t buy into our system.

We’re, we’re go, we’re going to be fine. And I, I enjoy what I do.  I’m, I’m.  near the end of a private coaching career, but I enjoy going out there. I enjoy, we got senior day tomorrow night. It’s going to be bittersweet. I think I mentioned that my son, Jake, it’ll be his last regular season game and had the opportunity to coach him.

And  he was at central and, and was a part of those back to back state championships team. He came in with me, his record was 95 and one. And he was I poured a clog with what we did and he has good friends the key, the left, a lot of them went to college, but  I, I, it’s still be a little bit odd after being around him for four years now he’s not going to be there next year.

He’s going to be in college somewhere and still having the drive and the joy, the won’t and go and do it.  that probably be a little bit of a test for me.  you get the point, you’re, you’re, you’re spending more time with other kids. The great thing about it, I’ve been able to spend this time with, with, with my son.

Right. And I knew, I knew it was going to be a little bit of rebuild. And I said, Jake, you, we go over and we can get a winning season and get the program going in the right direction. You’ve had a heck of a high school career and we were out eating last night and I said, Jake, we can win one or two more, .

You, your high school career may be 110 and 12 or 13, I mean, in two state championships and that’s a heck of a run and  you can’t win them all, but you can learn from the situation you’re in and. You can take what you get these four years and, and use it down the road.  when things to get going tough, you can draw back.

Okay. We were getting our tails kicked on the road. We were down 24. We kept playing. Well, it’s the same thing in real life.  you’re going to get smacked around. And, and, and to get off the subject a little bit, I tell my kids all the time, when you get tired of getting your butt kicked, you’re going to make changes to win.

And sometimes you got to get tired of losing to make the changes. And that’s sort of what happened to us. We got off to a hard start. We’d had eight practices and next thing I know I’m playing the defending 2A championship. We’re playing a loaded schedule. We lose six straight games. And I’m coming in going 95 and 1 for the last three years.

And all of a sudden I’m 0 and 6 and I’m thinking, oh, I may not come over here. But all of a sudden we got our turnovers down. We got our assists up a little bit and we started winning. And it took that growing pains to go through it. And I’m excited. I think it keeps you young the older you get  my career has probably been a little bit backwards.

 most people would go to high school and maybe work their way up, get it get your foot in the door. But I, it’s, I’ve been blessed with how it’s come around. And my oldest son was a college basketball player. My, my two middle daughters, both were college gymnasts. One’s a senior now.

One’s in New York working in a gymnastics. So I guess being around you, my parents, it ties back what we talked to. They were all in the sports, they were around it. My mom was the perfect coach’s wife, always there and whatnot. And, and then our, our family, I mean, it, it’s about winning and last night two nights ago we played and my wife was there and she was with some friends my other three were watching all the games online and we got in the car and she said, oh my gosh, I got 82 tasks.

And they’re, they’re commenting on every play if my son hit a three, Jake for a three capital letters and whatnot. So I, I, the long answer to your question, I think is, is I go forward I’m looking forward to the challenges seen. And the only reason I came over here, it was for Jake.

He, he, he decided this is what he wanted to do. And just to see if I could flip another one. And  I think you got to put a goal out there. Sometimes the gold’s got to stretch you. It’s got to change you. You got to learn new things. And I think that’s looking, looking at my career and I started to see now how it all sort of fit together, ?

People come and go in your life some divine intervention God will send somebody and you, you miss out on your top two recruits and all of a sudden the one you didn’t even recruit, you get him and he turns out being a hall of famer. And I think that to me, that’s what the thing starts fitting together.

And the right people contact you, right people crossing your path. And it’s a lot like a comet.  the comic comes by you and you’re together for a while, then you split off. I think that’s the neat thing about coaching college and, and High school coaching that you get to associate with these young people.

 there’s a few that I’m not overly in contact with that I coached at Catawba, but there’s quite a few I am. And I’m sure as we get older and the kids from central, I’ll be in contact with me. I still get a parent may call me and say, Hey, coach, can you send so and so a text? He, he seems to be a little bit down he’s at college and whatnot.

And I think that’s the great thing about it is his relationships and being a part of something special.

[01:23:13] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. There’s no doubt about that. That’s well said. I mean, I think all the basketball piece of it is great. Ultimately, I think the relationships that you’re able to build through the game are the ones that down the road, 10, 20 years, when those guys call you back up or when you have the reunion and you guys are giving each other a hug and you got tears in your eyes like that.

That’s ultimately when  that you had an impact and you’ve created something, you’ve created a legacy through the players that you’ve been able to touch as a coach. So I think that’s, that’s really well said, Jim. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share. How can people reach out to you?

Connected to you, whether you want to share email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:23:57] Jim Baker: Yeah, you can get ahold of me at JimBaker@e-timeout.com. If you have any questions or anything, and my football coach at Cannon taught me to put my whole system online and I’ve written a couple of little books and got a good collection of things and it’s just coachjimbaker.com And I went through our system at a central, our pressing system, our offense and made video clips and put it all there and it’s available at a very reasonable price. He just kept poking me, Baker. You got to do it. got to do it. You got to do it.

I spent all last spring playing around with it and getting it together. My system at Central is a little bit different because it was all based on turnovers. The more turnovers and my analytics were not threes, how many threes you shot. My analytics was how many times we’re going to turn you over.

And I come up with a formula called is points per turnover. And if, if you divide your turnovers into your points, say if you average 12 turnovers into 60 points, you’re averaging five points per turnover. Well, my goal is Central is get that 12 up to 20 and now you divide 20 into 60 and it’s three points.

So I came up with a system and I put all that stuff together and that’s it coachjimbaker.com and that’s the same as my X account, @coachjimbaker. Yeah, it is my X handle too.  

[01:25:28] Mike Klinzing: Perfect. So go online, check out what Jim has there at coachjimbaker.com, Jim, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on and join us.

Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.