‘One of the very best.’ Why Gonzaga’s Mark Few is revered by USA Basketball luminaries past and present

LAS VEGAS – It’s difficult to decipher what’s being said on the court some 30 yards away, but fairly easy to understand what’s going on near the end of the fourth and final practice of United States Olympic training camp in Las Vegas.

In a half-hour, the group will break and start shifting its focus to an exhibition the following day against Canada. For now, there’s just enough time to workshop zone defense before things wind down at UNLV’s Mendenhall Center.

Any member of the high-profile U.S. coaching staff would have proper credentials or qualifications to lead this exercise.

The head coach, Steve Kerr, is a nine-time NBA champion a player and coach with the Chicago Bulls and Golden State Warriors. His assistants include Erik Spoelstra, a future hall of famer and two-time champion coach with the Miami Heat, as well the Los Angeles Clippers’ Ty Lue, a two-time NBA champion , winning one title as a player and another as a coach.

Those three excluded, there are quality resumes just about everywhere in this facility on July 9. Famed Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has a courtside seat next to Brad Stevens, the former Butler and Boston Celtics coach who’s now the franchise’s general manager. Jim Boeheim, who lived and died by the 2-3 zone during his illustrious 47-year run at Syracuse, is also watching on.

But on this day, needing a brief but effective tutorial, the Olympic gold-medal favorites are deferring to Gonzaga’s Mark Few.

Cradling a basketball with one hand, Few uses the other to orchestrate, direct and organize, moving perennial all-stars, international basketball icons and future hall of famers around the court like chess pieces. One moment, he’s delivering pointers to Steph Curry, Joel Embiid and Jayson Tatum. When the next break in action comes, Devin Booker and Jrue Holiday are on the receiving end of his instruction.

Few might be the only U.S. assistant without a particular three-letter acronym on his resume – “the outlier,” he jokes, in relation to his NBA peers – but work experience is discarded and any semblance of hierarchy disappears whenever the national team staff comes together with a common goal in mind.

“Just incredible people and humble, even with the incredible amount of success they’ve had, the amount of humility they have is impressive and inspiring,” Few said. “But also they love to share ideas.”

And pitch in, as Spoelstra did, when their colleague needs a practice dummy to help teach zone defense.

In a coaching room with this level of pedigree, acumen and experience, a true outlier would stick out if one existed. Despite Few’s best efforts at self-deprecation, nobody on the coaching staff or within the USA Basketball contingent is allowing that theory to gain traction.

“He’s a brilliant basketball coach,” Spoelstra said. “One of the very best in this business.”

•••

How well is Few getting on with the other coaches, higher-ups and USA Basketball dignitaries he’ll be spending the next three weeks with at the Paris Olympics?

Reviews up to this point are nothing but positive.

The Gonzaga coach is in the early planning stages of a comedy show with Lue, according to the fourth-year Clippers coach. The concept was actually conceived by Orlando Magic/USA Select coach Jamahl Mosley, probably after realizing the phonetic similarities of their last names.

“That’s my guy,” Lue said. “I didn’t know (Few) from afar, but he’s one of the funniest guys I’ve ever been around. We talked at least once or twice a week during the season and that’s who I hung around with last year those five weeks we were together.”

No word yet on when the pilot episode of the comedy show will debut.

“So (Mosley) said we’ve got to come out with a show called ‘Lue and Few,’ ” Lue said. “He said it’d be a great show, but (Few) is a funny dude, man.”

The Gonzaga coach has been persistent in trying to set up a pickleball match with Spoelstra – the popular paddle sport has become one of Few’s favorite competitive outlets when he’s not coaching basketball – but efforts have been to no avail.

“When he’s not on campus, he’s with his family on the lake, skiing behind their boats or flyfishing. Pickleball a little bit,” Spoelstra said. “He’s tried to drag me out there a few times, I’m not doing it. So I love his passions, I love hanging out with him and I’m honored to call him a friend.”

The longtime Miami coach isn’t far from the world pickleball capital in Naples, Florida, and he’s given the sport a try, but word of Few’s skill level has quickly spread through USA Basketball circles, likely stifling any motivation Spoelstra might have to get on the court during a day off in France.

“He’s too good, he’s skilled,” Spoelstra said. “I’m also mindful of this is kind of the modern vision of CrossFit. A lot of injuries are happening from that.”

Mutual interests have helped Few bond with USA Basketball managing director Grant Hill. Wakesurfing is a popular escape for the the two-time national champion at Duke and seven-time NBA All-Star, who visits lakes in the Orlando, Florida, area when he has downtime from his various executive positions.

Likewise, Few fires up his boat and gets on the water whenever he’s back at his vacation home in Hayden Lake, squeezing in visits between summer recruiting trips, team camps and offseason workouts at Gonzaga. Since they spent two months together last summer at the FIBA World Cup, Hill and Few have exchanged stories, photos and videos over text message comparing their wakesurfing excursions.

“Few’s great,” Hill said. “I had a chance to get to know him a bit during March Madness and the NCAA Tournament. Obviously, it’s while he’s working and a lot happening, but to spend 6½ weeks with him like we did last year and go on this journey, he’s great. I’m a huge Mark Few fan.

“He’s a special, special human being.”

•••

On the surface, Few’s lack of experience at the professional level could be viewed as a hindrance, considering the 12-man American roster is made up exclusively of NBA players with sizable contracts, massive followings and, in some cases, egos to match.

Kerr, Spoelstra and Lue are good with X’s and O’s, but possibly even better when it comes to handling the personnel issues or locker-room dustups that most view as the only obstacle between this star-studded U.S. squad and Olympic gold.

Rather than employ a fourth NBA coach who may not add much value – at least considering what Kerr, Spoelstra and Lue already bring to the table – the U.S. staff likes to reserve one seat on the bench for an accomplished college coach, hoping for a different viewpoint.

The Olympic team deferred to Few on zone defense because he probably encounters it more often over the course of a 32-game college season than the other three do during an 82-game NBA schedule.

“He knows the game, sees things from a different perspective,” Hill said. “He’s not insecure because he’s a college guy with all these NBA people.”

Boeheim’s been in Few’s role, serving as a college assistant under Krzyzewski over three Olympic cycles – all of which culminated in gold medals for the U.S. Boeheim, who amassed 1,015 career wins at Syracuse, spent time at Olympic training camp and sat next to longtime NBA coach P.J. Carlesimo, an assistant on the 1992 U.S. Dream team, during the team’s July 10 exhibition against Canada at T-Mobile Arena.

Few’s done his due diligence and picked Boeheim’s brain for tips on how to thrive in the position.

“Yeah, we’ve talked, but (Few) is great,” Boeheim said. “It’s a great role. Obviously, the pro guys are running it, but you make an idea here or there. I used to pick like a restaurant to go to.”

Chuckling, Carlesimo interrupted: “He’s lying.”

“I just think he comes with a different perspective as a college coach and we all see something different,” Boeheim said. “We all do and even guys that are way smarter than us, you still see something that might be good and that’s what this is about. These guys work together, really.”

Building off that thought, Carlesimo said, “(Few) has taken a lot of ideas, too. He does more stuff similar than NBA than most people do.”

Over the next month, Boeheim might be fielding one or two long-distance phone calls from Few. There’s a chance he’ll need an assist on the zone defense.

“I told him, I said, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ ” Boeheim laughed. “He said, ‘Well, we won’t use it anyway.’ ”

Early iterations of the U.S. Olympic staff exclusively featured college coaches. In 1992, an NBA coach, Chuck Daly, was appointed to oversee the U.S. team for the first time, but until 2008 there was still a strong college presence at the Olympics, with at least two Division I assistants on staff.

“I think (Few) is the best and I think this is, because he’s done so many other good things for USA Basketball, to be able to involved in this at the Olympic level is just an indication of how well-thought he is,” Carlesimo said. “… Last couple years now it’s three NBA and one college, so it’s even harder to get selected for this. So it’s nuts, it’s unbelievable.”

Few’s involvement with USA Basketball gave him a leg up in the search process, but Kerr could have turned to any number of coaches – a total of 364 will be running Division I programs this fall – who would’ve been unlikely to pass up on the opportunity.

“I love Mark, he’s so much fun to be around.” Kerr said. “He’s smart, he’s got the college viewpoint, which is different from the NBA viewpoint, which is very valuable. Things like zone, zone offense, pressing, trapping. Things that you don’t see a whole lot of in the NBA, Mark has seen that forever so he adds that element to the staff.

“But the humor, the joy, having a beer with him after the game, it’s all fantastic. I love Mark.”

•••

International flights, film sessions and happy hours have strengthened the relationship between Spoelstra and Few in recent years, but the Miami coach estimates the two have known each other “going on three decades.”

The official count? Thirty-four years.

“Spo” was a 19-year-old point guard coming off West Coast Conference Freshman of the Year honors for the University of Portland, and Few was a 27-year-old graduate assistant for Gonzaga’s Dan Fitzgerald when the Pilots and Bulldogs met twice in the same week during the 1989-90 season. Gonzaga lost both matchups and limped to an 8-20 record.

Spoelstra’s background knowledge of Gonzaga gives him a unique frame of reference when it comes to the school’s historic 25-year run under Few. Spoelstra’s sophomore year at Portland was also the last time the Bulldogs didn’t finish with a .500 record or better – Few being responsible for most of the 20- and 30-win seasons that followed.

“He’s a hall of fame (coach). First ballot. Right now,” Spoelstra said. “And you would never know it by the way he can relate to anybody. He’s just a guy that likes to coach basketball, develop programs, develop players, make them better than when they first arrived on campus.”

The collection of esteemed coaches in Vegas earlier this month also included the one who’s responsible for Gonzaga’s most recent loss. Purdue’s Matt Painter, a longtime USA Basketball staffer, was in town for training camp, serving as an assistant to Mosley on the Select Team.

Painter, whose 2023-24 national runner-up Purdue team beat Gonzaga 73-63 at the Maui Invitational and 80-68 in the Sweet 16, finds it hard to wrap his head around the sustainability and level of consistency the Bulldogs have showed under Few.

“There’s a lot of people that have good teams or they have two to three years where they’re really good,” Painter said. “They’ve been damn good here for 25, 30 years and probably more than that. I’ve only coached for 31 years.

“That’s what to me is the most impressive is just their ability – they take a big hit in the draft or maybe a kid leaves or someone gets hurt or whatever, they’re able to just, oh OK, we’re still a No. 1 seed, we still get to the Elite Eight.

“Whatever it might be, they just keep putting themselves in a position to get to a Final Four or national championship.”

Purdue’s had the decided edge over Gonzaga in all three matchups over the past two seasons with two-time national player of the year Zach Edey, but Painter’s still entered each game with appropriate fear, particularly because of the level the Bulldogs consistently play at on the offensive end.

“A lot of just how fast they are, like how they break you down. Drew Timme was a really tough cover for us,” Painter said. “They did a good job of picking at us and getting some pick-and-pop 3s from guys that don’t shoot a lot of 3s. More than anything, it’s trying to keep them out of the paint, trying to keep them out of transition. They’re so good in transition, they’re so good at working you downhill and they’ve had really good players.”

There might be only one drawback – if you can call it that – when it comes to Few’s prolonged success at Gonzaga.

“The run, the run is incomprehensible,” Carlesimo said. “But the problem with it, they’ve been so good for so long that people don’t appreciate the magnitude of what they’ve done. … It’s mind-boggling. I’m biased because I love him.”

Earlier on in his Vegas stay, Boeheim met a woman who identified herself as a Spokane native. Their conversation started with standard small talk.

“ ‘Well, yeah, you’ve got a great coach,’ ” Boeheim said, sharing his account of the story from a courtside seat at T-Mobile Arena, minutes before the USA-Canada tipoff. “ ‘What do you mean great coach? He can’t win a big game.’ That’s what she told me. She’s a college-educated person.”

Immediately, Boeheim’s disposition changed and his vocabulary became more colorful.

“Because Mark’s a good friend of mine I said, ‘Are you full of it?’ ” Boeheim said. “She looked at me. ‘You’ve got one of the two or three best coaches in the country. Nobody can win games like that and you’re telling me he can’t win the big game?’ I was so mad.”

Carlesimo, the former Seattle SuperSonics coach, resides in Seattle full time these days and attended Gonzaga’s nonconference game against national champion UConn last December at Climate Pledge Arena.

“I was there and I’m shaking my head and saying, this is unbelievable,” Carlesimo said. “People are like upset, we lost to UConn. I’m going, what are we talking about?”

Believers of Few still far outnumber the skeptics. That’s especially true inside the Olympic basketball camp, a competitive and intimidating setting into which it can’t be easy to blend. Few’s well past the integration process now, evolving into an indispensable member of this high-achieving, highly acclaimed U.S. Olympic staff.

“He speaks his mind,” Hill said, “and there’s just a great working relationship, working dynamic with him and the other coaches we have.”

Not to mention, immense respect and admiration for what Few’s accomplished over 2½ distinguished decades at Gonzaga.

“It’s incredible, it’s incredible what he’s done,” Hill said. “It probably doesn’t get enough attention, frankly, for how difficult that was. Every year being relevant, being a team that wins 20-plus games. It’s just a credit to his vision, his ability to execute, his ability to recruit and his sustainability to stay at a high level as a midmajor. Not an easy thing to do.”

Maybe Few’s self-evaluation isn’t far off. Maybe he’s an outlier after all.