Nolan Smith still has a vivid memory of heaving a basketball into the Atlantic Ocean from the deck of a cruise ship. It was the loss-induced tantrum of a highly competitive 8-year-old. He was on a family trip with the NBA team his father coached for, playing pickup basketball with some older boys who also had their own basketball pedigrees.
His father, who won a national championship in college and played nine years in the NBA, demanded better.
“Son, if you’re going to play this game, you have to always have a great attitude and be a great teammate,” he told his son.
The scolding seared into Smith's brain because they were the last words he ever heard from his father. There, in the middle of the ocean, Derek Smith died from a heart attack that night at the age of 34.
Now in his second season as head coach of the Tennessee State University men’s basketball team, Nolan Smith talks about attempting to follow in his father’s footsteps. Like his dad, he won a national championship when he led Duke University to a national title in 2010. In fact, they won in the same city (Indianapolis) 30 years apart. Derek Smith reached legendary status at the University of Louisville after its championship run in 1980.
Injuries cut short the younger Smith’s playing career. But coaching has become his new calling. After working in some of the winningest programs in college basketball, Smith took his first head coaching job with TSU. In his first season, the Tigers broke a 32-year post-season drought and went to the NCAA tournament after winning the Ohio Valley Conference championship.
The success helped him recruit 11 new players inspired by his goal to not just revive a culture of winning at TSU but to become the first historically Black university to win an NCAA title.
In This Interview
- Learning from Coach K
- The draw of Nashville to new recruits
- The new business of college basketball
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