If mutual need means anything, Brian James is the perfect basketball coach for Hinsdale Central.
Central needs stability in its boys program. James needs stability in his basketball coaching life.
Both hope they found it last week when the school named James as its boys coach.
He will be the third coach in three seasons for Hinsdale Central, which in turn will be the fourth coaching spot in the last decade for James.
James, though, isn’t some high school job hopper. His last three coaching positions have been at NBA addresses, where he even helped coach some guy named Jordan.
That was with the Washington Wizards, where, as basketball operations chief, Michael Jordan hired Doug Collins as coach in 2001. Collins hired James, an old friend and colleague, as an assistant. But by June 2003, all three had been shoved out the door.
Since then, James has stayed busy as a Seattle SuperSonics scout, a columnist for ESPN.com and a TV basketball analyst. He enjoyed that work but knew he would coach again.
That’s what he had done for 18 years in high school, including six seasons with Glenbrook North, and it was what he had done in an eight-year NBA run that also included assistant coaching jobs with the Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors.
After two years out of coaching, James was restless.
“I missed the games,” he said of coaching. “I missed the competitiveness and the relationships with the players.”
James, 49, came close to landing another NBA job, but promising leads fell apart. College coaching didn’t pan out either.
So last winter James turned his attention to the high schools and got in touch with Hinsdale Central athletic director Tom Schweer. Central has many of the attributes that had made Glenbrook North a good place to coach: excellent academics, talented athletes motivated to succeed and strong administrative support.
Many a coach would regard a drop from the NBA to the West Suburban Conference as a monumental comedown, but James isn’t one of them. He loved high school coaching and says he expected to do it again, just not this soon.
Family concerns made the Hinsdale job especially appealing. James’ wife, Julie, grew up in the area, and both she and James have family here.
James’ family–including stepson Chris, 19, daughter Dayna, 11, and son Brady, 7–had stayed behind in Detroit from 1998, when he took the Raptors job, until 2002, when they joined him in the Washington area. He has particularly enjoyed being a more normal dad the last two years, driving the kids to school and coaching Brady’s basketball and baseball teams.
He has no regrets about coaching in the NBA but doesn’t want to turn his children into nomads.
“I wasn’t looking for a one-year fix,” he said. “The NBA is a great thing, and I simply loved the last 10 years, but there is a sacrifice you do make.”
James inherits a basketball team that was 10-17 last season and has been reeling since March 2004, when authorities charged longtime coach Robert Mueller with criminal sexual assault for an alleged relationship with an underage female student. Mueller, who later was charged in a similar incident, was suspended that month, and Schweer did not receive the OK to replace him until early July.
Bruce Buhrandt coached the team last year on an interim basis. Hinsdale officials chose James from a large pool of candidates that they whittled to three finalists.
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“Where can you find a guy with credentials like this?” Schweer said, referring not only to James’ NBA background but also the job he did at Glenbrook North, where he took over a struggling program in 1989 and went 139-34 with two trips to the Class AA Elite Eight. “He has a great history as a coach in high school and coaching the elite of the elite in the NBA.”
James’ resume has impressed his new players, who are also relieved to have the uncertainty of the last year behind them.
“I think the whole team’s spirit is up,” said junior guard Pat Morris, who along with his teammates probably will meet James next month. “A lot of people are already excited about next year because we think we have a lot of talent, but now it’s kicked up another notch with a real good coach.
“Central basketball has always been a big deal in this town, and we’re happy to know we have a good figure heading us in the right direction.”
James, a workaholic’s workaholic, will build his program from the feeder level up, though he knows he’ll have to adjust to the fact he’s now coaching preps, not pros.
“It’s not like I haven’t been around high school players,” said James, who will teach physical education at Central, “but it will be an adjustment–for the kids, I’m sure, and for me.
“I think you just have to be honest and really show them through your work ethic how you’re going to be, and in return that’s all you can ask of them. Hopefully, we can achieve some success, and it will mushroom like it did at Glenbrook North.”
If it does, a college or pro job may tempt James. Schweer believes that’s a chance he has to be willing to take.
“If you don’t hire good people, you don’t have that problem,” he said. “We realize Brian is a quality coach, and that’s why we want him at Hinsdale Central.”
Schweer, though, wants to avoid a one-and-done situation, and so apparently does James, who emphasized there were only a few high school jobs he would have considered taking.
“I won’t close the door on anything,” he said of the future, “but I thought this was a very, very good situation for me at this point of my life, and definitely for my family.
“I would like to think if this works out I would be here for a while.”
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