University of Richmond Athletics
TBT: A Spider In Brooklyn
09/22/2016 | Men's Basketball, #ThrowbackThursday
This summer, rookie NBA head coach Ken Atkinson welcomed Bob Black, the Voice of the Spiders, and Associate Director of Athletic Public Relations Will Bryan, to Brooklyn, for a revealing story and video about what the Spider Hall of Famer learned from Coach Dick Tarrant, what he missed with his dad, and the challenge of bringing the Brooklyn Nets back to NBA relevance.
By Bob Black
Just shy of seven o'clock on a gray, cloud-covered summer morning, the city that never sleeps actually looks rather sleepy. Not Ken Atkinson. He is an hour into his day, having already guided two visitors from Richmond on an all-access, behind-the-scenes tour of the Brooklyn Nets sparkling new, they-thought-of-everything, training facility.
The 49-year-old Long Island native and Spider Hall of Famer, is in the infancy of his first NBA head coaching job. He's the first Richmond Spider ever to be head coach of a major league professional team, and he's not about to waste time.
He takes a seat at an oversized conference table in his still undecorated, spacious eighth-floor office with a panoramic view of New York's famed skyline. It's the same table where in two hours he will sit with his hand-picked assistant coaches — cobbled from Cleveland, San Antonio, Atlanta, and Denver. He will lead them in mapping out a new era of basketball in Brooklyn. But for now, he cradles a cup of coffee and reminisces about the glory days of his alma mater.
“Remember the midnight game?” Ken asks. “I tell that story all the time.”
Click here to read the full story as it appears in the September edition of the University of Richmond Magazine. To view the video, please click below.
