A previous winner of the NBA’s Coach of the Year award, Byron Scott is taking on a unique challenge this week as he coaches a young Fil-Am Nation Select team at the NBTC National Finals.
Few coaches can match the coaching pedigree of Byron Scott. He coached for 15 seasons in the NBA, including back-to-back NBA Finals appearances with the New Jersey Nets, was named Coach of the Year in 2008, and is one of the rare coaches to have coached both the East and West All-Stars in the All-Star Game. He’s coached NBA legends such as Jason Kidd, Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant.
This week, though, Scott faces a new coaching challenge as he handles his youngest team ever in Fil-Am Nation Select, a collection of mostly teenagers from the United States with Filipino blood who are aiming to repeat as champions of the National Basketball Training Center (NBTC) National Finals.
“I’ve coached some pretty young teams, but yeah, obviously this is the youngest team I’ve ever coached,” said Scott moments after Fil-Am Nation opened their campaign with an 85-72 win over Top Flight Sports Canada. “And again, it’s a lot of fun, coaching young people that want to learn and want to get better, that have a competitive drive and a competitive nature about themselves.
“This was a good game today, a good match. We’ll look at the tape, you know, evaluate some of the things that we did well, some of the things that we didn’t do well. And we’ll try to improve on those things the next game.”
One of Scott’s players is Caelum Harris, who once suited up for Gilas Pilipinas and who was part of last year’s champion team. “It’s definitely exciting knowing that I’m a part of a team that wants to win and I’m getting coached by a legend,” Harris said. “Honestly, it’s amazing. And I want to take everything in every day at a time.”
Scott revealed that Harris wasn’t feeling 100% during the game. “This is special for me to be able to coach these young men, especially Caelum, who had food poisoning last night. So he’s getting over that. But like I said, this is a lot of fun. This is something that I enjoy doing. I enjoy being around young people and teaching them the game of basketball. When I stepped off the plane, we talked about, this tournament, we talked about winning.
“That’s the number one goal. That’s what we came here to do. So, off to a good start, but we still got a lot of work to do.”
Byron Scott said his biggest challenge with this type of team is giving everyone enough exposure.
“The biggest challenge is getting them all the type of minutes that they would love to play,” he said. “You know, when you have this many guys that are gifted as they are, you find it as a coach hard to get them to be able to play the type of minutes that they’re accustomed to playing.
“But I think they understand that it’s a team, and that we’re trying to win a championship here in this tournament. So they have to sacrifice a little bit, as far as some of the playing time goes. I would love to keep all these guys happy and let them play, you know, 30 minutes out of the 40 minutes every single night, but that’s not possible. But as long as we get the Ws, that’s the most important thing.”
Harris, meanwhile, acknowledges that he’s now the elder statesman on this team.
“This year, we’re a lot younger. I mean, a lot of these guys are freshmen, sophomores, and then me being an older guy. So I feel like it’s just going to be more about trying to get those immature things out and bring the team together.
“I think for me, it’s more about making sure my teammates are in the right position and, you know, getting them accustomed to Filipino basketball. It’s a lot more physical and you’re not going to get every single call. So I think it’s my job to just calm them down and let them know that everything’s going to be all right.”
This is actually just the latest of what have been several trips to the Philippines for Byron Scott, who is married to Fil-American Cece Gutierrez. He celebrated his birthday here alst Friday, and so far it’s been a whirlwind stay.
“It’s been great. I celebrated my birthday here. You know, I have my wife and family members here with me as well. She still has a lot of family that live here in the Philippines. I went to another party yesterday for one of her relatives. So it’s been great. It’s been great to bring in my birthday in a different country, in a country that I love to be a part of.
“So I’ve enjoyed these last three or four days, but now, starting with today, it’s time to get down to business and try to win the tournament.”
Banner images from NBTC.