Coach Lewis Interview
Kevin Lewis, who was born and raised in New York, is a former NBA and NBL player. He is currently the head basketball coach for The Emery/Weiner School and has won state with Episcopal High School. I recently sat down with him to discuss his career from playing basketball as a kid growing up in New York to coaching high school basketball.
You were born in New York. Basketball culture is huge there. Can you describe a bit about how growing up there influenced you to have a passion for basketball and shape you as the person who you are today? “In New York, basketball wasn’t for recreation. It was a way of life. From the time that you can play, when you are 3, 4, 5 years old, you wanted to be the best at it. Everybody would step into the arena or the park, we played a lot of outside basketball, and everybody wanted to be the best. You pretty much shaped your personality around how talented you were and everybody kind of judged you as a person or how well you played. It was a very special time to grow up in the era when basketball was so important and in a place like New York.”
At what point did you realize that you wanted to pursue a career in basketball? “In a sixth grade game, I came off the bench. I remember I scored 13 points. I remember riding the bus home that night with my teammates and they said, ‘Man you gotta chance to be really good. If you put some work into it, you could be really good.’ I thought that night, ‘You know what, I am going to make a commitment to myself to be the best that I can be.’”
When did you start being recruited and how did it feel to see your dreams becoming reality? I started getting recruited probably end of my sophomore, junior year, and you know, at the age of 14 my mom and dad sat us all down and they said, ‘Listen we have a big family and it will be really tough for us to afford to get you guys all into college unless you get a scholarship. You are going to have to go into the army. We cannot pay for everybody to go to college. So I made a commitment to myself to be the best that I can be. As I started traveling a little bit, I played in what they call now “The Empire State Games.” It is in Syracuse, New York. You go up there for a week and colleges get to look at you; you get recruited. Well I started getting recruited by all of the New York schools and by the time my senior year came around, I had over 300 offers. I visited St. John’s, I visited UMass, I visited SMU, and I visited Connecticut, which was a big pick of mine. I was player of the year in 1982 in the Hudson Region Valley of New York State. Now let me remind you, every player of the year in the state of New York has to go to the Big East. So by now my choices are down to St. John’s and Connecticut, but then SMU came about. Coach K. left Westpoint and went to Duke, and Bobby Knight was at Indiana, who knew the coach I played for. They both sent me a letter and said, “We don’t have a scholarship, why don’t you take a good look at SMU, he’s a good coach. I think you will like Dallas. I took a visit to SMU. When I went to St. John’s, it was like a circus, cameras everywhere. I went to Connecticut, it was like a parade. But when I went to SMU, nobody knew who I was. I thought this was a chance for me to get a good education and kind of restart my life. I took it.”
In your freshman season, you averaged 2.7 points per game, 1.2 rebounds per game, and 0.6 assists per game. As a sophomore, you averaged 7.9 points per game, 4.1 rebounds per game, and 2.3 assists per game. In your junior season, you averaged 5.5 points per game, 3.2 assists per game, and 0.9 assists per game. In your final season as a senior, you averaged 18.6 points per game, 5.3 rebounds per game, and 1.2 assists per game. Can you talk about how you improved throughout college every season and how you had such a huge jump in your senior season? “If I could do it all over again, I would take it more seriously my freshman year. In recruiting, coaches can lie to you. They can tell you that you can be the guy. I thought I was going to be the guy. When I got there, there were three other guys at my position. The transition was tough on me my freshman year. I kind of regrouped in my sophomore year and kind of got things together. In my junior year, I did not have to average as much because we were number two in the country and we had things rolling. I realized at the end of my junior year, I was talking to my dad and I said, ‘Listen, I didn’t have a good freshman year, I had an okay sophomore year.’ He told me, “You always wanted to get drafted. You need to drop everything right now. Come home to New York, and we are going to train. That is what I did. I went home to New York, I trained everyday for that summer. I lost 20 pounds, and I came back to school. I remember before I left, my coach said, ‘I know you are going home, you are probably 15 to 20 pounds overweight. Why don’t you just come back, finish out your season, get a job because you are not going to get drafted. What can I tell you? You didn’t have a good year.’ So I go home and I train, I come back 20 pounds lighter, and I look him in the eye and I said, ‘I will get drafted.’ He did not know that he was giving me an inspirational speech about getting my degree. I was going to get my degree regardless. I wanted to play professional basketball.”
In college you studied and got a bachelor’s degree in psychology. How were you able to balance time in between studying and playing basketball? What motivated you to study psychology as your major? When I first went to SMU, I wanted to go to the business school. We went on a road trip and I was too far behind. Psychology was a major I thought was very interesting. I really enjoyed psychology. I pretty much got drafted to the NBA and graduated the same week. I am a people person. I love to have conversations with people where you can learn things. You get in this world and everybody deserves a hello and goodbye. You can learn so much more by just listening. Psychology taught me how to listen.
You chose SMU and you explained a little bit why. Are there any reasons besides the coach? At the time I went to SMU, Dallas was hot. Cowboys were hot, sidekicks were hot. SMU basketball started coming up. The city was hot. I was used to living in New York. SMU helped me. I had an academic advisor. He sat me down and said, “Listen, if you do everything I tell you to do, you will graduate.” At that time, a lot of athletes were not graduating. I was one of the very few who did. He sat me down and put out a game plan for four years. I did not care how hard it got. I followed it, and I graduated on time.
On June 17, 1986, you were drafted to the San Antonio Spurs as the 125th overall pick of the draft in the 6th round. How did you feel going into the draft and how did you feel once you got drafted? Initially, I was supposed to go to the Sacramento Kings. They traded their pick when it was time to pick me. The Spurs, who had been watching me throughout my whole career at SMU, called me and asked if I would like to be a member of the San Antonio Spurs. I was so thankful. I did appreciate the draft. I was excited. They wanted me to possibly go to the CBA. The Spurs did not release me because they wanted to keep me on the roster. I couldn’t play for a year because they (Spurs) had me on the roster. I left the Spurs to play in the NBL. I played great there.
Can you tell me about your experience in the NBL and playing overseas? Australia was like when I left New York and came to Dallas. It was a culture shock, it was a different world. I should have taken advantage of it when they gave me a big time contract, but I knew I was going to the NBA. I got a call from someone in the Mavericks organization and they said, ‘We got your rights.’ I had to fly back and I was with the Mavericks for a little bit. I stayed with them during camp, just for a short time. I was exhausted and I needed some time off. I got approached by the Globetrotters organization. It was the Harlem Magicians. They invited me to camp, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I ended up doing it, went to Tulsa, trying out, and made the team. I traveled to Bogota, Colombia. I was in Bogota with the Harlem Magicians. At the end of the trip in Bogota, the Globetrotters came up to me and offered me a contract to travel in Europe, Argentina, Panama, all those places. I declined it because my son Kelvin was about to be born. I wanted to come back and be a dad.
Starting in May 1999, you became the assistant basketball coach at Baylor University. You recruited students and athletes. What motivated you to transition into coaching? How was your experience being a college basketball coach for the first time? I did well in high school at Episcopal and some other places. My head coach at SMU was coaching at New Mexico. He called me on the phone and said, ‘Meet me at Busch International Airport in three hours.’ He sat me down and said, ‘For the next twenty minutes, I am going to convince you to come with me to New Mexico. You have done well in high school, you know how to recruit, you have a great personality, you have a great smile, people like you, you are great recruiting material.’ So I took the job there. All of a sudden, at the end of that year, I got called into the office again and he said, ‘We are moving to Baylor.’ I did not have a choice. I packed up my family again and we moved to Waco. I stayed with him in Waco for three years, left there and went to TCU for four years, left TCU and went to the University of Houston for five years. I had a good coaching career. I learned a lot from the coaches that I worked under.
In May 2002, you started working as an assistant basketball coach at Texas Christian University. Can you tell me about your experience working at TCU as an assistant basketball coach? How different was it from Baylor University? At Baylor, I was mainly just a recruit. At TCU, I was involved more in the recruiting part, scouting part, and a little bit of the coaching part. When I got to the University of Houston, my last couple of years with Penders, I was the senior associate head coach. I was in line to be the head coach. Penders had a heart condition and he resigned. All of the coaches looked for jobs.
You started working as the senior assistant basketball coach at The University of Houston in 2006, and you worked there until the end of the 2009-2010 season. The 2009-2010 season was huge for The University of Houston. At the end of the season, the Cougars played in the C-USA Tournament. In game one, y’all beat East Carolina 93-80. This ended East Carolina’s string of four tournament titles. In the next game, the Cougars beat Southern Miss 74-66 to advance to the championship game. In the championship, y’all faced UTEP and won 81-73. This was a huge win for the University of Houston as this was their first time making it to the NCAA tournament since 1992. The University of Houston was seeded 13th. What was the experience of coaching this team? How did it feel to go to the NCAA tournament and coach in it? What was the feeling of winning? “We go in there and we are in the middle of the pack of the conference. East Carolina and those guys are playing well. UTEP was 18-1. We just clicked at the right time. We had my son Kelvin, we had Aubrey Coleman who was the leading scorer in the nation at the time, we had Mo McNeil who was about 6'7-6'8 from Harlem, New York. We just clicked at the right time. When we won the first game, coach came in and said, ‘I told you guys all year long that if we clicked at the right time, we were going to make this work. We are here.’ After the second win, he said, ‘Okay, we are here. We got the second win, now let’s get everybody to believe in us.’ We got the third win. He said, ‘Now we are one win away from going to the NCAA Tournament. You have done everything I have asked you to do but one thing. This is the last one. We are going to knock them off, we are going to come here, we are going to celebrate, we are going to get on the plane, and we are going to get ready to get called on the NCAA board. They called our name.’ That is what happened. In the championship game, when we were warming up to play UTEP, no one gave us a chance, and the reporter came up to me with his microphone. I did not know he had a microphone and it was a big deal. I am down there with the team and he asked me, ‘In order for y’all to beat UTEP, what do y’all think has to happen?’ I was thinking I was just talking to him. I said, ‘If my son plays well, we will win.’ He gets right on national television and plays the recording. Before the game, he said, ‘If this is not motivation, I do not know what is.’ It was clearly me. Aubrey Coleman is averaging 25, Kelvin is only averaging 17. He had played well the first three games, but they have been playing a lot of minutes. We get in the game and Aubrey is 0/11. He was struggling. Kelvin got going. I knew who was going to win. He had 37 points and we ended up winning. At the end of the game, as he (the reporter) is congratulating us, he puts on the recording. It says, ‘If my son plays well, we will win.’ He said, ‘He knows his son.’”
In August 2010, you decided to become a high school basketball coach and coordinator. What was the transition between coaching college basketball and high school basketball? Can you tell me about your experiences working as a high school basketball coach? “Before I got into college coaching, I enjoyed high school coaching. I knew one day I would go back. I think picking up so much knowledge being a college recruiter and college coach, this would be special to go back and mold these young men to be better than I had before. I am better than I was when I was a high school coach before. I was excited about some opportunities. At Marshall High School, I taught special education. I did some coaching on the side like private lessons. Then, I took a couple of junior high jobs. I took St. Peter’s and we won city twice. I also coached St. Catherine’s. When this job opened up, my whole life I thought I have been an underdog and I like being the underdog. This is a job where they never made the playoffs in 30 years. I walked in during the Covid era, and we made the playoffs. Every game that I coach at Emery, we are always considered the underdogs. Now, the culture has changed. Things have changed. People are looking at us differently. Teams are preparing differently for us. My kids are believing in what we are selling. One of the reasons the kids are starting to believe is because I have them read. I have them read things. I am a psychology guy. When you get to stuff like focusing on your mind, or overcoming nervousness and self doubt, those are the things I want them to get through: fears. I want them to overcome their fears about losing, by preparing.”
What was the difference between coaching in college and coaching in high school? “In high school, the kids are more in tune with wanting to learn. You have to convince the college guys how to get better. The college guy thinks he has got it all figured out.”
What has been the most memorable experience in your career? “I think God has blessed me. He has blessed me to have a great high school career. He has blessed me to go off and play for an amazing college, being #2 in the country. He has blessed me to get drafted into the NBA, which is every kid’s dream. He has blessed me to get a college degree on top. I was very happy, and my parents were very happy. I went off and had a 12, 13, 14 year experience coaching in the college ranks. I have won 3 or 4 state high school championships. What stands out is how well I have been blessed. One thing that sticks with me is I thank God everyday how I have been blessed to have that kind of career.”
How do you think basketball has helped shape your life and your family’s lives? “Basketball, obviously from the beginning, is an amazing part of my life. It became my life. When I got married, I have been married 31 years, she understood that. As we raised our kids, we knew there was a chance that they could follow my footsteps. My first son came through, my second son came through, my daughter came through, and they all went through the same basketball process. Whether or not they chose to stay with it, which both of my sons did, that was up to them. In high school, junior high, they went through a certain process in my house, and we lived by that.”
What is the biggest lesson you have taken away from basketball? “The best lesson I have learned throughout my life is when I have failed. Failure is a learning key. It teaches you how not to do it the wrong way. It teaches you how to learn to do it the right way. The biggest thing I have learned is how not to fail, because failure has taught me that.”
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