‘So lucky and blessed.’ Mark Few’s summer experience with Team USA paying dividends for longtime coach, Gonzaga

Mark Few prefers to keep things low key during the offseason. It’s easier said than done for a prominent Division I basketball coach, but the more time spent with a fly-fishing rod or pickleball paddle in his hand – preferably with a cell phone nowhere in sight – the better.

That said, the longtime Gonzaga coach was perfectly OK with his most recent summer where time on the court trumped time at his favorite fishing holes.

Few, who’s entering his 25th season at the helm of the Bulldogs program, was selected to serve as an assistant coach for Team USA at the FIBA World Cup, which was held in late August and early September in the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan.

Since he returned to Spokane, Gonzaga players have been inundated with stories from Few’s travels and on-court experiences he feels can help the Bulldogs both in the present and in the future.

“I’ve already probably talked too much about it sometimes with these guys,” Few said recently at West Coast Conference Media Day. “I think it’s what they can relate to, they all want to get to that level.”

Few came back rejuvenated from the experience, even if Team USA didn’t meet its own expectations of winning a gold medal.

After victories over New Zealand (99-72), Greece (109-81), Jordan (110-62) and Montenegro (85-73), USA absorbed a loss to Lithuania in its final group stage game (110-104). The team then beat Italy in its quarterfinal game (100-63), lost to Germany in the semifinal round (113-111) and then lost to Canada and former Zag Kelly Olynyk in the bronze-medal game (127-118).

Asked if he was able to draw any lessons from the experience, Few barely hesitated before issuing a long, thoughtful response.

“(Took) all kinds of things,” he said. “We could do a show on that.”

Expanding, the Gonzaga coach said, “It was just a phenomenal experience. Could not have been a better group of people. It’s just so unbelievable, the type of people. I’m so lucky and blessed to work with there. Just our meetings every night casually and when you’re with each other for 43 days and pretty much on your own with those guys, you really get to see a lot of stuff and learn a lot of stuff and experience a lot of stuff.”

Few, who owns the highest winning percentage among active NCAA Division I coaches (.836), was the only college coach on Team USA’s staff. His cohorts included the Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr, the Miami Heat’s Erik Spoelstra and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue – coaches with 31 combined years of NBA experience and seven championships.

Few didn’t take the company he kept for granted.

“So impressed with the level of success Steve has had, Spo’s had, Lue’s had, Grant Hill’s had,” Few said. “And just how humble they are. It’s unbelievable. They’re incredibly humble and easy to talk to and just a joy to be around.”

Kerr has shared a story about the visit he took to Gonzaga as a high school player . John Stockton “wiped the floor” with the now-Warriors coach in a pickup game, prompting the Bulldogs to go in another direction, he told former GU guard Dan Dickau on the Scorebook Live Today podcast .

Few didn’t build a relationship with the former Chicago Bulls guard until after the 2015 Pan American Games, when the Gonzaga coach worked with Los Angeles Lakers head coach Mike Brown.

When Brown took an assistant coaching job under Kerr with the Warriors, Few would occasionally drop by to observe practices in the Bay Area and catch up with Golden State’s staff.

“Everybody said we’re similar with our approaches or whatever,” Few said of Kerr. “Again, just couldn’t believe how good a person he is. Just great and he’s very thoughtful and just so incredibly deep and well-read and a great basketball mind and does a great job delivering it to the players.”

Few’s summer trotting the globe with Team USA initially took him to Las Vegas for training camp, then exhibition pit stops in Malaga, Spain, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before the squad finally made it to Manila, Philippines, for a longer stay at the FIBA World Cup.

The complexion of Team USA’s roster is likely to change before the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, with NBA stars LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid and Steph Curry all expressing interest in competing, but Few said he was encouraged with the direction of basketball in the country after spending a month-and-a-half on courts, airplanes and buses with young stars such as Anthony Edwards, Paolo Banchero and Tyrese Haliburton.

“I’m just so excited for the future of basketball in the U.S. because these players are really, really good guys and they’ve got a lot of stuff on their plate,” Few said. “Taking care of all the people around them. They’re making a lot of money, but they’re doing a great job of taking care of their bodies and they’re true professionals with how hard they work outside of practice and everything.”

Few will get to tick off another bucket list item next summer. There shouldn’t be any changes to the Team USA staff ahead of the Paris Olympics, where a cast of NBA All-Stars will attempt to defend the gold medal the country won three years ago in Japan.

“So that’ll be another huge challenge, but huge opportunity for shared experiences and learning,” Few said. “Look man, when you’re together that much, these are good friends of mine now. That’ll be a lot of fun.”

Few’s commitments to the FIBA World Cup team didn’t disrupt summer workouts in Spokane because those had finished by the time Gonzaga’s coach left for Las Vegas. But he’s already contemplating how he’ll restructure things in 2024 with the Olympics taking place July 26-Aug. 11.

“It’ll have a different pace next year,” he said. “So I’ve thought about that and thought about how we’ll have to do our summer practices around it. We’ll have to figure that out.”

He acknowledged there’d be more concern “if you probably haven’t been at a place for 35 years and 25 years as a head coach,” and reiterated that the positives of his association with USA Basketball far outweigh any perceived negatives.

“I think it benefits (Gonzaga) tremendously,” Few said. “Just the association with USA Basketball and the people, then obviously the experiences for me I can share with these guys.”

More than a month later, he still isn’t done talking about it.