A new era: Luke Loucks officially introduced as head basketball coach at Florida State

A glimmer of hope walked through the Moore Athletic Center Auditorium door on a wet, rainy Monday morning.

Florida State athletic director Michael Alford officially announced Luke Loucks, a 2012 FSU ACC championship team member and fourth all-time in career games played, as the eighth head men’s basketball coach in Florida State program history. Loucks takes over for his former coach at FSU, Leonard Hamilton, who is set to resign his post at the end of the 2024-25 season.

Loucks, a former assistant to Mike Brown (Sacramento Kings) and Steve Kerr (Golden State Warriors), always knew he wanted to stay close to the Florida State program. He said he tried to come to Tallahassee with his wife and three young kids whenever they could, beginning his press conference by saying, “It’s good to be home.” Loucks’ wife, Stevi, swam at Florida State, and the new head coach shared that he met his spouse because of a program that connected athletes from other teams.

The Clearwater native worked the crowd, drawing laughter with funny anecdotes, including his first conversation with FSU President Richard McCullough.

“President McCullough was geekin’ out. He kept asking me all these questions about paint touches, and what these graphs mean, and I’m like ‘dude, I don’t even know you,’” Loucks said.

Loucks’s presence is reminiscent of Mike Norvell and Link Jarrett’s in their ability to fill a room and instantly flip the switch from coach to colleague. Just like those two, Loucks wanted everyone to take away how he will move heaven and earth to win games.

“I’m not signing up to bounce somewhere for a better job, I’m hoping this is my last job. The way to do that is to be successful. I’m coming here to win. You should have that level and standard of excellence in everything you do. I don’t care if it’s Duke or someone else, I’m coming to win,” he said.

To wrap up his opening remarks, Loucks revealed an answer to one of Alford’s final interview questions: Why?

“Number one, there is an emotional connection to Florida State ... I grew up a Florida State football fan. It was truly a huge part of my childhood ... Number two, the career side ... I want to be around the best, and Florida State and the athletic community is one of the best in the world,” Loucks said.

During the morning’s Q&A, Loucks revealed more about his coaching philosophy and how he wants to build his team.

“I want to recruit Florida, and my roster construction will be heavily based on roster retention. We are going to develop you to make more money than you’re going to make with us or anywhere else ... In the transfer portal, I can watch a game for five minutes to tell me if you can play for me,” he said.

“I wanted to finish with the Kings, but the reality is it’s impossible. If I don’t get here and get going, I’m going to pay for it for the next 12 months. As soon as that portal hits, if you’re not three days ahead of that, you’re in trouble. I probably slept a combined nine hours the last three nights,” Loucks added.

Loucks also discussed in more detail the schemes he wanted to run on the offensive and defensive ends of the floor.

“The pro style is starting to mesh with the collegiate style. For a while, those two were vastly different. I’m going to bring some of that. It starts with our pace and space to become efficient,” he said.

“Defensively, it starts with communication. Any defense that has ever been a good defense communicates at a high level. The second part is ball pressure, a staple of Coach Hamilton’s for a long time. Third, you have to protect the paint. Lastly, finish every possession without fouling,” Loucks explained.

All press conferences are filled with smiles and schmoozing, and Loucks knows the work begins now. But Florida State basketball fans have something to invest in for the first time since before COVID-19.

The full press conference can be found below

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FSU basketball head coach Luke Loucks opening press conference: Video, transcript

Introduction

Michael Alford: I love standing at this podium on special days like today because you get to bring a great family home. First of all, I want to thank President McCullough for everything he did during this process. Board Chair Peter Collins and the entire Board of Trustees for their belief, support of our unified, unified vision for our basketball program.

I’d also like to thank Nada Usina, Greg Brown of New Advisory Partners for their expertise in assisting us through this process. Thank Doug Walker, our Deputy Athletic Director, and Cindy Hartman for their assistance in putting up with me throughout this process. I’d like to thank Laura for putting up with me at the house during this process of late night phone conversations, zooms, walking around, talking to myself and truly appreciate her. Coach Pat Kennedy.

Thank you for coming. I’d like to also thank former athletic director David and his wife, Mary Coburn. Thank you for your support. And of course, the entire Loucks family, Stevie, Charlie, Kobe, Crosby. Nice to have you guys home. Many of y’all know old Stevie was quite the swimmer back in the day in the 1500s.

So she’s the speedster of the family. So hopefully the girls get that speed, right girls? Mom’s quite the athlete. I know it’s a special day for Luke and the families today. I want to also start today with a few words about Leonard Hamilton. You know, we’ve been blessed in our men’s basketball program for 23 years to have a man of impeccable character and class.

When you, when you look up class and character and integrity, there’s always a picture of Leonard Hamilton right there. And we have truly been blessed by the university, what he’s meant to this department, that program. More importantly, what his core values are all through this community. And you couldn’t ask for a better man to lead this program for 23 years.

So I want to thank Leonard Hamilton for all he’s done. It’s always great to bring home a Seminole family, and there’s a few of them in there, but I could tell you through this process, Luke’s preparation. And really stood out his passion for Florida State University. Every conversation we had, he just kept bringing it to a different level.

And especially when you look at the analytical part of this game, his knowledge of this game, how prepared he was to talk about the future of Florida State basketball. We couldn’t ask for someone better to lead this into the next decade plus, right Luke? We won’t be here a while, but he brings unique qualities to Florida State and he fits our culture.

And that was so important going through this process of identifying someone who not only knew the game, not only had a vision for where we were going to go and go in the future, but also who fit our other head coaches. When you look at our head coaches, we have the very best, and a few of them are here, Coach Jarrett, Coach Poole, we have the best coaches across the country.

But more importantly, we have a culture amongst those coaches. That is truly special, and it is very important that we found someone who could come in and be a part of that and fit Florida State. And we found him. So, with no further ado, I’d like to introduce the next head coach, Florida State University, Luke Loucks.

Opening Statement

Luke Loucks: Thank you. It’s good to be home. It’s good to be home. Flying in yesterday was a was a special moment for our family. Stevie was holding back tears the whole flight. Our kids were were thrilled. You know, they’ve been to Tallahassee a few times. We try to visit quite often, but they don’t really know what it means, what we’re about to be and I do.

Whenever I do interviews with Sacramento when I’m in front of a group of people, I constantly get feedback to get to your point, to land the plane. And the reality is I’m a, I’m a storyteller. All right, so this, this plane is going to circle the runway a few times. So if you need coffee, if you need a bathroom break, just raise your hand. I’ll pause. But the reality is, this may be a little thorough, all right? And I know the ACC is streaming this, and I appreciate you guys streaming this.

I will fit it in the time. I’m going to start, I’m going to start this press conference with talking about my wife. Because she’s, she’s the most important thing to what I do. She’s the backbone of our family. And the reality is, if you’re, if you’re a coach, having a having a partner that understands what you do is, is it’s not important.

It is vital. You cannot coach at this level or any high level without a strong partner. Her sacrifice. We joke about it. She’s a single mom for most seasons, right? I’m flying. I’m preparing. We’re on the road half the season. And even when we’re home, I do my best to be present for my kids, for my wife, for our relationship.

The reality is, it’s, it’s, it’s an impossible task. And you have to give up somewhere. So her sacrifice for our family for me to be able to stand in this spot, I would not be here without her. So I appreciate you. I love you. And I’m happy for you, for you to stick with me. And I’m, I’m fortunate for that.

Moving on. And Michael touched on it. Just Coach Hamilton and what he’s meant for this for this program. He’s a man of extremely high character. I say he’s a Hall of Fame coach, but more importantly, he’s a Hall of Fame person. Again, without his mentorship, without his guidance, both playing for him recruiting me and then post playing career.

How he’s helped me navigate as a professional athlete transitioning into coaching. Just his thoughtfulness and his mentorship has meant the world to me. I can’t speak enough how important he’s been to this program to lead them to the place of national relevance where we’ve had 20 plus NBA picks over the last 20 years, making a, and I could be wrong on this, so don’t quote me, but I think combined current contracts in the NBA is upwards of $800 million, and a lot of that is due to Coach Hamilton, the type of kids he recruits.

The type of kids I will continue to recruit of high character of high intelligence. But how he pours in to his players is something that I want to emulate, right? He cares about the person more than the player, even though the player is important. Because at the end of the day, we want to win games.

We want to be competitive. But pouring into the person, right? He wants to develop good fathers, good husbands, good business leaders. Which is gonna go on far, far beyond the court. And that’s what you see in his programs. And you saw it the other. I was I was so sad that I missed his last home game, but I probably have 20 face times with former players who were just thrilled to be a part of his last day at Florida State.

And so his his his again, his mentorship has meant so much to me. Is a truly special man. And then moving on from there, what I think one of the things Coach Hamilton has done at an incredible level is surround himself with the best, right? Hire the best assistant coaches who he sees becoming head coaches.

And that’s something I’m going to try to continue. I want to be around the best coaches in America, and that’s something Coach Hamilton’s done. Starting with Stan Jones, who’s one of the most brilliant basketball minds I’ve ever been around. He’s been loyal to Coach Hamilton for 20 plus years now. He is absolutely instrumental to Coach Hamilton’s success.

So I want to thank him. I had a privilege of playing for him and having a close friendship with him. And then moving down to who recruited me, Andy Enfield. He is unbelievable, brilliant mind. And before Andy Enfield became Andy Enfield, I was playing tennis with him in Clearwater Beach when he’d come down and recruit me and you could see the competitive nature and just the joyfulness that he had.

And there was no doubt in my mind from the day I met him that he’d be a successful head coach. Other names that come to mind. Corey Williams, right? Corey is an unbelievably successful coach. And all these guys came up through Coach Hamilton. Dennis Gates, another name that comes to mind. I have a close friendship with him.

One of the most loyal, thoughtful people across the college basketball community and all the sports. He, all of these guys come under Coach Hamilton’s tree. Just like I have, you know, and even Charlton Young, you know, CY it wasn’t at Florida State when I was at Florida State. And a lot of people don’t know this.

He actually recruited me to Georgia Tech. I’ve known my, my mother and I went on a visit in Atlanta and CY I picked us up from the airport. And within five minutes, my mom’s almost dying with tears from laughter and his, his ability to connect. We’ll always serve him. Well, he’s a bright basketball mind.

He’s going to be a head coach again sometime soon. And then even going down the list of guys you probably don’t know. Met the Matt Clines, right? He’s an assistant for Dennis Gates at Missouri. Guys that were here with me as student managers and GAs, right? Coach Hamilton has this innate ability to see something in people and produce basically what he became.

And it’s extraordinary. And I hope to continue that, couple of thank yous really quickly to Sacramento Kings, especially Mike Brown. Mike Brown’s one of my mentors along with Coach Hamilton and. Another guy that I would not be standing here if it weren’t for Mike Brown’s mentorship. He’s one of the first people I met in Golden State far before I got to Sacramento.

Mike Brown and Ron Adams, two veteran coaches did not need to do this but pulled me under their wing separately. And taught me how to coach, taught me how to teach, taught me how to prepare, taught me what’s right, what’s wrong, how to operate, especially when things get tough and in this business, a lot of adversity hits and the way you handle yourself far more off the court is oftentimes going to be much long, much more long lasting than what you ever do on the court and those two, but especially Mike Brown, his mentorship, giving me opportunity after opportunity, some of which I probably didn’t even deserve.

But he saw something in me to build me up and it led me to this to this point in my career. Another guy in Sacramento who’s now the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, Jordi Fernandez. Myself, Jordi and Mike all coached the Nigerian team together. In Sacramento, Jordi’s, Jordi’s mentor, mentorship, his friendship helped me tremendously as I navigated new roles, new positions, new responsibility.

He’s a absolute tremendous coach. He’s going to be an NBA coach of the year. And what they’re doing in Brooklyn is really special. The Phoenix Suns, James Jones, Monty Williams who gave me an opportunity to join their team. We had the best record in NBA that year, a super successful year. It was very short because I left for Sacramento so quickly.

But both of those guys have had a huge impact on my life. And then other people in Phoenix, I work with Kevin Young, who’s now at BYU. B Gates and the 76ers, Ryan Resch and their whole front office was incredible to work with. In Golden State, Steve Kerr, super thankful, can’t put it into words how meaningful it is that he gave me my first opportunity as a coach.

And I was a player and I was trying to navigate. I knew I wanted to coach eventually. And he threw, he threw an opportunity, created a role for me. And in that role, I was able to learn, I was able to grow. And I was able to learn how to operate. And all of those things have helped me along my journey.

But without Steve. I don’t know that I ever get started in coaching. So special thank you to Steve Kerr, the Lakob family, Kent and Kirk who I have a strong friendship with and a close relationship with, and their executive and ownership team. And that, those years in Golden State were truly special.

We had some of the best teams in the history of basketball. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people both on the coaching staff, executive level, but most importantly, the players you coach that had a tremendous ability to have the world’s best talent, but operate and work like they were the least talented team on earth.

And when when that happens, special things happen and you saw championship after championship. So for me to work with those guys was truly incredible. One of the last questions in one of the last interviews that Mr. Alford asked me, and surprisingly enough, a few hours later, President McCullough asked me the same question as his final question was, why, why do you wanna do this?

Right? You’re on this great path in the NBA. Everyone says you’re going to be a head coach eventually, which I wish I’m honored and thrilled that people would say that about me. Why would you want to come back to college? And I gave the same answer, I think, pretty closely. And it’s twofold. Number one, there’s an emotional connection to Florida State.

One of my first memories I don’t know how old I was. I could do the math real quick, but 1993 National Championship game. And I’m at my grandfather’s house. You know, my dad’s there. My mom’s there. All brothers, sisters, cousins. Both of my dad’s brothers who both went to Florida State. So as a true family get together, you know, we got food, we got music, we’re watching the game, they win.

It’s a stat and it stuck. It’s a core memory of mine. From the time I’m three years old and then the 99 national championship game, and I grew up this Florida State football fan and a fan of their players. And I. The brand, you know, it was truly a huge part of my childhood. And then fast forward, obviously to playing here, right?

And I met my wife probably 40 feet to my right. And it was it was the literally the first day on campus. We’re both dating other people. Florida State used to run something called a bridge program where the new athletes. Come in and the older athletes show them around, right? So they show them around campus, where to eat, where to go to class, where you’re going to live.

And so Stevie was fortunate enough to be my counselor. And so we, we literally, the first, maybe the first person I met on campus was now my wife and the mother of my children. Now, there are some in between of how we got to dating and that’s for another time. See, I’m not landing the plane yet. I’m still in the middle of my story.

But the reality is this place holds so many special memories for me. And even beyond playing here, right? Watching the 2013 National Title Game. When we’re living in Belgium and playing professionally, our kids all have Florida State, you know, jammies they wear to bed. And we try to explain how, how cool it is to be part of the Florida State community.

So that’s the emotional side, right? You have this, this like burning desire because you, you’ve seen it and you felt it and what it feels like to win at Florida State. And there’s, there’s nothing like it. You know, there’s, there, when we were here, they’re winning ACC championships in football and baseball and in basketball.

And we could feel how important that community was and how much fun that is to be a part of. So that’s the emotional side. And then the career side is, and anyone that knows me knows I’m pretty competitive and I can’t turn it off. And I want to win. I want to win everywhere I go. I don’t care if I’m playing you in ping pong, deck of cards.

I’m going to find a way to beat you. And if I don’t, I’ll keep trying. I’ll invite you over the next night. You’re gonna keep coming over until I find a way to beat you. And so career wise, I want to be around the best. And the reality is Florida State and the athletic community is one of the best brands in the world.

Again, I’ve seen what it feels like to win at Florida State, and I want to be a part of that. And I wanted to lead and that’s totally separate from all the emotional things. If I never played a Florida State, if I grew up a whoever fan, I would still want to come to Florida State and coach because I know this place is special.

Moving forward, and I truly believe this, every great coach, no matter what the sport is, has a standard. They have a standard of a way to do things. And mine has evolved. I learned a lot from Steve Kerr. I learned a lot from Mike Brown. From spending some time with Monty Williams. But also my, my father grew up a football guy, so he would always constantly bring home Tony Dungy quotes and Bill Parcells quotes and Bill Walsh quotes and Belichick quotes and all of these guys, and especially in our sport, the championship level coaches all have a championship level standard before the results ever come.

And that’s something that I truly believe in that I’m going to bring to Florida State. My players are going to feel it, my staff’s going to feel it, the administration’s going to feel it. My standard is very simple. It’s five things. And I’m going to go through them really quick. So the first one is be on time and be present, right?

Have the ability to respect people’s time, show up on time, and when you are somewhere, be where your feet are. There’s so many distractions in the world and social media and phone calls, especially in our positions of leadership. There are a lot of times our mind wanders, right? And the same with your players, all the pressure they have from their agents and their families should be scoring more.

But the reality is if you’re not present, you’re not anywhere. So be present and then just respect people’s time. Show up on time. The second thing is put the team first always. And this is a really challenging one, especially for this generation of athletes. Everyone has an ego to some level, right?

There’s a competitive desire to be the best individually, but the reality is we play a team sport. And I tell my guys all the time, if, if you want to play an individual sport, you know, go play golf, go play tennis, great sports, good environment. You can still compete. You don’t have to rely on teammates.

Go be a swimmer like my wife. Just race the person next to you. But the reality is if you want to succeed with a team sport, you have to sacrifice something for the team. Everyone’s not going to score 20 points a game. And you have to constantly remind yourself that I need to help the guy next to me. And if a room full of players does that, special things can happen.

So put the team first. Third part, and I’ve touched on this. And it’s probably my favorite of all my standard is have a competitive spirit. You will not win at a high level if you don’t compete. And it has to be a contagious competitive spirit where if anyone does not compete, they stick out like a sore thumb.

And to be honest, I’m not going to want to coach those kids. I want the most competitive group of kids in college basketball. And I will be relentless in finding that as I recruit, as I find the portal kids, as I go recruit high school kids, international kids. As I recruit my re recruit my own players with the way the dynamics are, I will find the most competitive group that I can find year in and year out.

All right, number four is a Belichick quote, and I know he’s our enemy now in North Carolina, but obviously you’ve got to respect what the guy’s done in his career is do your job, show up and do your job. In addition to that, Pete Carroll had a saying, we spent some time with the Seahawks in their training camp, and he had a saying, no whining and no excuses.

That’s number four. Do your job. No whining, no excuses. Golden State Draymond Green added some profanities, which I’m not going to get into in this press conference, but in private, I’ll fill you in on those. But if you have a group that shows up, they know their role, they know their expectations, they know what their job is.

And every single person in the room executes their job. Collectively special things can happen. And finally, number five is find, find joy, right? We play a child’s game. I coach a child’s game of putting a ball in a basket. And the reality is that should be fun. That should, you should find some passion and some enjoyment in what you’re doing.

And if you can’t, you probably got some issues, right? And I, to be frank, I don’t want to be around you, right? And your teammates probably don’t want to be around you have a bad attitude, now I’m gonna try to help you. But a consistently bad attitude, you’re never going to succeed at the highest level.

So just from a, again, land the plane, I know that’s a lot, but that is my standard. That’s my team’s going to feel, and that has nothing to do with X and O’s, with analytics, with style of play. But every time someone walks in our building, I hope they feel those five things. Moving on to basketball philosophy, right?

And I’m not going to get too nerdy on you guys. But I am, I’m curious, right? And I think the best coaches in the world have a level of curiosity of finding the best ways to do things and constantly doing that over and over and over again, because the reality is we all think we’ve got to figure it out.

We think we know the best way. The other reality is someone else is finding a better way. And if you don’t constantly stay ahead of that, you will get caught and you will get passed. So if you boil basketball down to the most granular level, right? It’s a game of efficiency and a game of possessions.

If you can win the efficiency battle and you can win the possession battle, you’re going to have a great shot at winning every game. And there’s a lot that goes into efficiency, right? Style of play, pace, space, creating efficient shots, what those most efficient shots are. How you create them consistently, how the defense is going to stop that, how you adjust to that, right?

But there’s a level of understanding of what efficiency looks like that my team will understand. And the second part of that, if you’re not going to be efficient, because there’s always off nights, you miss shots, you know, the ball’s not falling. You have to win the possession game. How do you create more possessions to get more shots, right?

It’s just basic math. You’re not going to be more efficient. You need to create more shots. Or you limit the opponent from getting more shots than you do. And so there’s a lot that goes into that, right? And I’m not going to cover all that right now. But my, my basic, most basic basketball philosophy is win the efficiency battle, win the possession battle, offensively, I truly believe that the pro style is starting to mesh with the collegiate style for a long time.

Those two were vastly different, right? You would watch college game. You watch a pro game, completely different, more and more. You see successful teams playing a pro style, right? And so I’m going to bring some of that. But also meet the college game in the middle a little bit. So it starts with our pace, our space, right?

You gotta have great pace and you gotta have great space. It’s much easier to score on a defense when they’re not set. As soon as the defense gets set, especially in college with the spacing rules that we don’t have in the NBA. The reality is it becomes much more difficult, your efficiency drops.

So you got to play with pace. And I tell my players, if you play with pace and not great space, you don’t know where to go, right? It feels like a traffic jam. It feels like, you know, Tennessee Street at 3 p.m. You’re just, you’re trying to go fast, but there’s bodies in the way, right? You can’t get to where you’re going and that creates chaos and that creates turnovers.

And again, that’s where you lose a possession battle. The third part of my offense philosophy is touch the paint, right? If you attack the paint relentlessly, you will create an advantage. All right. And whether that’s that advantage is getting all the way to the hoop, one of the best shots in basketball, the best shot in basketball is a free throw.

It’s wide open. You get to take your time. My players will be able to make free throws. It’s very important to me. But the second most efficient shot is layup or a dunk. And so you have to attack the paint to do that. And again, it goes into your spacing. You have to create driving angles and gaps. But a relentless attack of the paint does two things, right?

You get those efficient shots, but it also collapses the defense, right? And that’s as a defense coordinator, Sacramento Kings, it’s constantly, how do you keep people out of our paint? And then the secondary is how do you protect the rim? Reality is if you’re protecting the rim with the help side defender, you’re bringing an extra body and someone else is wide open.

And so paint touches create rim attempts, free throws, but also kick out threes, which would be the third most efficient shot in basketball. And then, lastly, my fourth offensive stable is crash the glass, right? Create extra possessions with aggressive offensive rebounding. Again, analytically, I could go through all the numbers both collegiately and professionally of what these look like.

But when you crash the glass and create offensive rebounds. You create some of the most efficient shots in basketball, the putback, and again, the kick out three, because the defense has collapsed, defensively starts with communication. Now I explained this to Michael. I know he’s a baseball guy. But every defense that’s ever been any type of good defense communicates at a very high level.

And it starts usually with your big, who’s behind the play. Cause they can see everything in front of them. So to recruit and our evaluation big fellows that can communicate effectively to the guards in front of them. If not, they’re getting smacked by screens. Everyone’s mad at each other.

So a level of communication and that communication builds trust. The second part is ball pressure. Obviously a staple of Coach Hamilton’s for a long time. I’ve always believed in pressuring the ball. It creates disruption, creates turnovers, which leads to extra possessions. The reality is I was very poor at it.

And if I were Coach Hamilton, I would have never played myself. But the other reality is because I knew I was poor at it. I knew exactly where my help was going to be. So that level of intuition when you pressure the ball, it’s not a blind pressuring of the ball, right? You know your help’s built in, you know where your big’s at, you know where to angle people.

And to me, it’s very important. The third part, if you just flip the offense defensively. You have to protect the paint, right? If you allow the ball to consistently penetrate your paint, you’re going to be in a world of hurt. All right, whether it’s creating shots at the rim, kick out threes, fouling goes up.

So there has to be a level of ball pressure initially and then help behind and you have to trust and know where your teammates are going to be. And then, lastly. Finish every possession without fouling. And again, it goes into the free throw is one of the most, not one of the most efficient shot in basketball.

So we want to get rebounds and we want to contest shots without fouling the ball. So I know that’s long winded and I will go into much more detail and it’s something that we’ve done in Sacramento. Something with the Nigerian team. It’s something that I’ve seen in Golden State. And I’m gonna do this with you guys.

I’m gonna invite the media to one of our practices before training camp starts, before the preseason starts to put you guys through a film session and put you guys through some drills. So we’ll tape you guys up, we’ll get you some jerseys. It’s gonna be, we’ll have food after.

We’ll get some good barbecue. But you guys will understand when you watch our games, what we’re trying to accomplish, there’s gonna be no confusion and our players most importantly will understand. Our vision and our style right is going to be a style, and I’m not going to go into the teams that play like this in college, but I promise you they’re very successful in closing, and I’m gonna keep repeating this.

It is. It is an absolute honor and privilege to lead this basketball team. Our family could not be more excited to be back in Tallahassee. Just being in this room, it brings me back to college of how many times I had to sit in these seats and yawn while someone like me is up here talking. So I appreciate you guys being here.

So many familiar faces and I’m not going to get emotional right now, but it is an absolute honor to be back and lead this team.

Q&A:

Chris Nee with Noles 247. Where are you at with assembling a staff, and what do you look for ultimately as you build out your staff?

Chris, let me ask you a question. When’s the first time we talked?

Oh man, 06 maybe?

I was 16...so I appreciate I’ve known you forever. So staff’s gonna be super important to me out of respect for Coach Hamilton and his staff. I’m not gonna comment on staff right now. He again, they’re on their own journey right now, and we’re all it’s our job to support that.

And they have a big game tomorrow against Syracuse. Myself and Michael are gonna fly up and I’m gonna be a fly on the wall and I’m gonna sit in the stands and I’m gonna support Coach Hamilton. The reality is he still has a great coaching staff, and so I’m not gonna comment on my staff while their season is still going on.

Peter Holland Tallahassee Democrat. My question to you is being surrounded by NBA coach like Steve Kerr and Mike Brown and being playing for Leonard Hamilton. What attributes that you take from being surrounded by all those coaches and what’s something to spend that you’re playing with your personality?

Yeah, great question. Going back even before those coaches. Out of middle school coach in Oak Grove, in Oak Grove Middle School in Clearwater, Florida, named Jamie Bobby and Jamie Bobby was one of the most fun and interesting coaches I’ve ever played for him. Maybe it was just because I was young and having fun.

I still to this day use some drills that Jamie Bobby taught me at Oak Grove Middle and going on to high school Jack Hoyt. And John Kubala, you know, one of his assistants. Jack is a Hall of Fame level coach. He’s been retired for 10 plus years now. But I’ve learned so much from those two, even before I played for Coach Hamilton.

And the reality is you could call it fortunate, blessed, lucky, good for however you want to word it. I’ve been surrounded by great coaches my entire life. And maybe it’s just right time, right place. Maybe it’s God, maybe it’s, you know, whatever you believe in. But the reality is I’ve had the experience even as a player beyond Coach Hamilton in Europe Hall of Fame level coaches at every stop that I was ability as a sponge to just soak up their wisdom and their knowledge.

And through that, especially in my coaching career, you figure out really quickly. What matters to you? And for every coach is different. Coach Hamilton is much different than Coach Brown. Coach Brown is much different than Steve Kerr, right? Steve Kerr is much different than a coach I played for in Latvia, right?

They all have their qualities of things that you like, and you want to replicate when you get in that seat. So through that, and I know I’m getting back here through that. They’re they’re again going back to the standard. I feel like every great Hall of Fame level coach has some sort of values or standard that does not bend.

It’s an everyday thing and their job. Pat Kelsey actually said it and his opening presser with Louisville last year and look at the job he’s done. A lot of people call us the CEO and he’s like, I labeled myself as a CRO. And I was like, wait, what are you talking about? And it’s the chief reminder officer.

And you remind people every single day what your standard is and you do not bend. And that’s something to me that all of the great coaches have. The standard may be a little different. The values may be a little different, but there’s an unrelenting, unrelenting ability to get a group of individuals.

Athletes to understand what the vision is and then go out and executed every day.

Jordan Silversmith. Tomahawk Nation. Welcome back to Tallahassee.

Thank you.

The last time you were here as a college player. How do you plan on navigating the new era of transfer portal and everything else in collegiate athletics and build a sustainable winner here in Tallahassee?

Yeah, good question. The reality and I’ve talked, I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of close relationships with a lot of powerful head coaches.

Basketball is a small world, doesn’t matter what level. Those coaches come to our training camps, learn from us. We learn from them. Everyone’s always on the phone. There’s a lot of connectivity between our industries. And you’re right, college athletics as a whole, especially basketball has evolved.

It’s evolved tremendously and it’s continuing to evolve. And everyone in college, not everyone, but a lot of people say it’s a wild west right now. Like no one knows what’s coming. How do you do it? How do you operate? This is crazy. Players are making more than coaches. Now they can transfer whenever they want.

That chaos has been my reality. Right. My reality as a professional coach and a professional player in Europe is constant roster turnover, constant ego management, constant players. One player is making a, on a 300 million contract and the other one’s on minimum wage. Minimum wage in the NBA is like 1.2 million, but

minimum wage compare comparatively, and there’s egos involved and right. I’m better than this guy. Why am I getting paid less? His contract is more. And then there’s coaches and all these guys are making more than you, right? And then there’s egos and then there’s, Hey, I want to trade because you guys aren’t coaching me this way.

You deal with that. That’s a Wednesday for us. Right? And so this reality of collegiate athletics, I don’t think it’s becoming like the mini NBA, a lot of people, many, many pro sports. It’s its own entity, right? But there are a lot of similarities and parallels to what our reality has been at the professional level.

So I’m very comfortable building those relationships, getting guys to trust you as a coach and as teammates, right? Especially you look at, I think Rick Pitino talked about this. You look at the EuroLeague team. And if you get a two year contract in the EuroLeague, it’s like shocking to people, right?

For the most part, you have a couple of local guys and then everyone else on roster is a new player. And coaches got to deal with that constantly, right? That turnover. And that’s just something you got to deal with. And now the reality is the quicker you can build those relationships and the, especially in your evaluation and recruiting, understand what type of guys you want to surround not only the current team with, but your staff with, do these players fit with what we’re about?

It narrows your gap of players. You got to recruit very quickly, number one. And then number two, there is some synergy, even though the individuals may change. There is some synergy and some characteristics of your team that will remain the same because you’re recruiting the same style of kid, right?

The hardworking, high IQ, super competitive chip on their shoulder. Yeah, I’m not going to compete with some of these teams, and I’m not going to name them, but the upper echelon of college, I’m not just not going to go after those kids. The reality, I want to recruit Florida. I want to keep Florida kids in Florida.

And within my roster construction, it’s going to be heavily influenced by roster retention, right? Recruiting the right kids on the first go around. And then they want to stay until they get to professional athletics. That is my skill as player development. That is my skill with connections throughout the NBA.

I’m going to build a staff with strong connections. We are going to develop you to make way more money than what you’re going to make with us or anywhere else. All right. And then thirdly, internationally, and then the portal, right? The portal is so important. And that’s where you got to get ahead of the portal.

You have to scout across the board and it’s a, it’s a huge task, but there is a, I could watch a game for five minutes right now. And tell you to your face if you could play for me, I would need five minutes and it’s the way you act, the way you operate, the way you hustle. And it has nothing to do with a level of putting the ball in the hoop.

Now, those things you need, right? You need a level of talent, but there’s a style player that I will recruit and I will be relentless in that recruit.

Ira Schoffel. Warchant.com. How you doing, Luke? You were a very good college player and you played professionally, but coaching these last several years, the best players in the world. How did you get them to buy in? How did you get them to convince them that you had something to bring to the table?

Thanks for the, thanks for the comment. I was not a very good player. I was an average player on very good teams. And again, I knew my role. I knew how to execute my role. I was not good. I have a couple of former teammates that would confirm that, the reality in any part of life, right?

Whether you’re a coach, whether you’re working in a business, running a business, the best way to connect with people. I don’t care their circumstances. I don’t care if they’re dirt poor or the richest person in the room. You have to have a level of a relationship building qualities and you have to find what people, what motivates people, right?

You have to find their interests. You have to build a relationship with whoever you work with. If you want any sort of impact on their life. And one of the things, again, going back to Ron Adams and Mike Brown, you never want to be friends with your players. But you need them to trust you, right? Or all of your words, all of your teaching, all of your coaching is in one ear and out the other, and it has to be authentic, right?

If you don’t build authentic relationships, you have no chance, no chance at getting through a kid, especially in those moments of pressure and games on the line, down one, six seconds left, they’re not going to be trusting you. Right. You have to build that relationship and it’s got to be a daily commitment to pour into these kids and in the pros, these adults.

And I’ll tell you one thing, a player at any level, but especially collegiately, professionally. I’m trying my best not to curse right now. They can read through the crap, right? They know if you’re authentic or not. They know if you actually care about them or not. And one of the qualities our staff is going to have, so again, starting with me is we’re going to be relationship builders.

We’re going to be able to communicate effectively and we’re going to understand that these relationships are far more meaningful than anything we teach or coach through that, right now you have the ability and the connection and that emotional side of what’s special about our business. When you do have to get on someone, when you do have to hold them accountable, when you do have to teach them hard and coach them hard and make them run, that comes so much more naturally because they know you care about them.

We’re going to go back fourth row.

Hey, Luke. Matt Minnick with Tomahawk Nation.

How you doing, Matt?

Doing well. Happy to see you here. You talked a lot about the metrics, the efficiency. That’s exciting news for me. I can’t wait to geek out on some of that. I’m not going to go too far in the weeds right now, but your teams have been gifted with tremendous passing bigs.

The Draymond Greens, the Domantas Sabonis guys that really help facilitate the offense? Is that something that when you talk about, you know, the NBA style starting to mesh with the college style? Are you going to look for a big who can pass?

Yeah, 100 percent and like you said, I’ve been blessed to coach those guys, the Draymond Greens, the Sabonises, and there is a basically, it opens up new doors when you have a skilled big, now there’s different ways of doing it, right?

You can have a rim protector, you can have a lob threat that constantly collapses the defense. And with those guys, you just don’t play through them as much. With a guy like Sabonis, we love giving him the ball. He makes good decisions and he can read the game and he can manipulate the game. Again, there’s different ways of doing it.

I would prefer the more skill and the more players I can have on the floor that can read the game. Right. And I don’t want to call it positionless because I’m going to have positions. But versatility is a good word. But understanding what we’re trying to accomplish and understanding how to create again, I’m going to keep going back to how to create an efficient shot, not only for yourself, but most importantly for your teammate.

And whether that’s my big, my point guard, my wing, two, three, four, it doesn’t matter. I want as many of those guys on the court as possible. And the reality is there’s a lot of different style of players. But if you watch college basketball right now, and especially the top level teams, there’s a couple of teams that have true bigs that just dominate the paint, right?

But a lot of these guys, more and more like you’re saying, and part of it’s because of the international game, the way the game’s evolved, you have bigs now that can pass, they can shoot, they can dribble, they can get in pick and rolls. They can be the ball handler, the screener. There’s a lot of versatility with the way the game’s being played these days.

And but again, I’m gonna recruit tough, hard nosed kids that hopefully have an elite level skill. And when you mesh that together as a puzzle, you know, there’s gonna be a lot of different puzzle pieces within that.

Liam Rooney from the Tallahassee Democrat. This last month or so for you, I imagine it was a very long, difficult process. But can you kind of peel back the curtain on what this was like balancing your role in the NBA, interviewing this job and then also when you kind of what was it like for you guys to finally realize this was coming together and materializing, if you can kind of put into words what that meant to you?

Yeah, first and foremost is an absolute honor to get the call from Michael and Doug Walker who has been incredible through this whole process. I’m truly, truly honored and thrilled to partner with these guys. I think they’re about the right things. I think they want to win. And I think their support is going to be instrumental.

And what we’re doing, but the process through that and through Nada and her group and Greg and the new search firm, they’ve been, it’s been seamless. And a lot of it, Michael starts every interview with, this is just a conversation and, as you guys get to know me a little more.

I like to talk. And so these conversations were very organic. They were natural. Obviously I prepared and put some stuff together of what I believe in. And it was fairly thorough. We didn’t get through even half of it. But they had a lot of reading material at home. I gave him homework which they did a great job with.

And even President McCullough, surprisingly, like they passed the information on to him and he was, he was geeking out about it. And he’s asking me all these analytical questions about paint touches and driving kicks and how the pace works and what these graphs mean. And I’m like, dude, I don’t even know you.

But this is, this is awesome. You know, if this is who I get to work with, I’m pleased. So the process has been incredible. It’s been thoroughly enjoyable. And even if I didn’t get the job right. And I would be disappointed because I really wanted it. Even if I didn’t get the job. I felt like it made me a better coach, right?

It makes you condense all your ideas. It makes you put on paper what you’re about. And to me, whether I got the job or not, I really, really enjoyed getting the getting to know these individuals. And it was completely seamless for my family.

Corey Clark with Warchant. Good to see you.

How you doing, Corey? You look good.

Hey, thanks, buddy.

You’ve lost some weight, man.

I have. Thank you. Thank you for noticing. I’m not going to ask you about the staff, but the job itself. Once the fun of being the new Florida State head coach wears off and the excitement of this. You get to work like what is the next week look like for you in the portal? I think opens up in two weeks maybe can you just kind of your time frame timetable of putting together a roster putting the other coaching staff and having to do it? How do you deal with it very, very quickly?

Yeah, great question. And it feels like both with excitement of people, you know, in the text and the call, I apologize to everyone. If I haven’t gotten back to, I will, I promise I will. But it’s a lot, it’s a lot to deal with and it’s all great, great stuff.

You know, the congratulations. But it’s also, like you said, there’s time constraints, right? The portal is not waiting for anyone. And there’s a reason I wanted to finish with Sacramento Kings. I think we have a chance to do something really special this year, but the reality was it was impossible, right?

It was, after conversations with Michael with the Kings organization, it’s like, guys, if I don’t get here and get going, I’m going to pay for it for the next 12 months. And so immediately, right. And I always try to break it up. It’s the way my brain works, but you kind of segment things, right?

You got to think about your staff. You got to start building it. You got to figure out all those aspects. And again, I’m not going to go into detail on that with respect to Coach Hamilton and their staff. You got to think about the current roster, right? You got to think about who you like, who you don’t.

And I think they have a great team and a lot of, a lot of pieces that I’m going to consider, but you also have to get to know those kids, right? Their personalities, what they’re about, how they work. So getting here and then obviously traveling the ACC and watching them up close will be greatly beneficial for that.

And then you’ve got to start getting ahead of the portal and through this process, you’d be an idiot to not start using your resources at the NBA level, right? We have huge college scouting staffs and not only with the Sacramento Kings, but relationships you have throughout the league. So as you start watching film of guys that.

Potentially could transfer and potentially could be in the portal. You’re connected with agents. Like I said, basketball world is small, right? You’re connected to all these things. And once people know you’re interviewing, now you’re getting peppered with, this guy would play for you. This guy’s going to be good.

This guy’s going to hit the portal. You have agents, you have other coaches, you have scouts hitting you. So through that you mesh this huge list and condense it down of like hey, these are the guys that if they hit the portal, I’m gonna look at, and I’m gonna give a strong look at, and I’m gonna staff do Intel on, because you have such a small window, right?

If you’re not, as soon as that portal hits, if you’re not three days ahead of that, you’re in trouble. So the reality is you have all these different things going on, and then on top of that, we have, you know, I call it a responsibility or a privilege to come do this. Right. And get to talk to you guys and explain what you’re about and your vision.

All the while you have three kids under seven that you’re trying to be a father to, and trying to remind your wife that she still has a husband. So there’s a lot, there’s a lot on the plate and I probably slept a combined like nine hours in the last three nights and Stevie sitting there like poking me in the middle of the night.

Cause I’m texting away my phone. I’m on my laptop. She’s like, just shut it down for an hour. You can’t, you can’t. And there’s a quote that college coaches use is we, we sleep in May. Like this is the, this is the time you, you don’t, you don’t sit, you operate at full capacity and everything you do.

And that’s not even hitting half of the other things you got to worry about and deal with. But those are, that’s where all my focus is going right now.

Curt Weiler with the Osceola. You stepped into the role as the defensive coordinator for the Kings this year, I guess. How much defense does that go back to your time with playing for Leonard Hamilton? Obviously a big part of his background. How valuable a resource do you expect him to be as someone you can go to, an unofficial advisor of sorts?

Yeah, again, Coach Hamilton and I have a great relationship. I’m going to lean on him quite a bit. And he’s, whether I ask for it or not, he’s going to give me his opinion. And you guys know him. He’s a lot like me. He’s a storyteller. I always tell my wife, I’m going to answer your question in a second.

Here I go with the story. I tell my wife about my visits to Coach Hamilton in his office, right? He’s still the same couch 25 years. It’s the same couch I sat on when he was yelling at me for turning the ball over. And I tell her like, it’s impossible to escape that office. If you’re in there, it’s like a vortex and you cannot leave within an hour and a half to two hours.

You will be stuck in there. And a lot of times our trips have been like day trips, right? We got, we got 30 friends to see. We got a dinner, we got a lunch and I’m like, Hey, I got it. I have to go talk to Coach Hamilton. And she’s looking at me like, our whole day’s ruined, right? And so within that, I say all this is this past All-Star, we try to come back every All-Star break and try to come back as much as possible in summertime.

Stevie happened to be with me and I was like, Hey, I gotta, gotta go say hi to the boss. And she’s like, all right, well, you know, I’ll just figure out what I’m gonna do for the next two hours. And I was like, no, you’re gonna come in. And so she had the privilege of sitting on Coach Ham’s secondary chair in his office.

And listening to us talk back and forth for almost two hours. And she looked at me on the way out and she’s like, I get it now, right? I get, I understand. Like he, that guy can talk and he’s like so full of wisdom. He’s great for you. He’s smart. I’m going to be honest. I completely forgot what question you asked, but I was trying to find it.

I was trying to find it there. I almost. Defense coordinator, there you go. Bingo. So Coach Hamilton, Mike Brown, Ron Adams all these guys that are my mentors, right, are defensive guys, which is hilarious because I’m more of an offensive guy. And maybe that’s the reason they liked me is I’ll try to pick apart their stuff.

They would say, no, that’s not going to work against our defense. And it was a constant back and forth. As an offensive guy, your job as a coach is to study defenses, right? Study how they’re going to stop you, right? Where are weaknesses that they’re going to exploit? And so becoming a D, when Jordi got the job in Brooklyn, he was our defense coordinator.

I switched from the offensive side of the ball in Sacramento to the defensive coordinator. And Mike asked me, he’s like, are you, are you, I want you to do it. Cause I think it’s going to help you when you become a head coach. Are you up to it? I said, up to it, of course, I know everything about every defense, like you’re my mentor.

Coach Hamilton’s my mentor. And I know it goes into building a great defense because I’ve studied this my whole life. So it has been an absolute, absolute great experience to be the defense coordinator. And the reality is the way our roster was built, and there’s no disrespect, it’s just the reality.

We had a lot of offense players, and so to find ways creatively to come up with schemes and tactics and to game plan, of, of, hey, this is a reality. I got a guy that is an okay defender guarding some of the best offense players in the world. How do you, how do you build around that? How do you protect that guy as a team, as a unit, five guys against the ball?

So it was instrumental in the way I’m going to coach. And I learned a ton, made a ton of mistakes. I got chewed out a couple of times. I’m a little bit risky at times. I’ll swing for things. I’ll try crazy stuff that. And I’m like, I don’t know. I saw this scheme. I saw this scheme. I’m trying to mesh them.

And at times they work great and at times they don’t work at all. But the reality is going back to a foundation of doing things. Offensively, defensively, you have a foundation, what you’re about. Doesn’t matter who you’re playing, doesn’t matter where you’re playing, doesn’t matter if it’s a playoffs or preseason game.

There’s a foundation. And then the fun and the creativity comes from all the game plan adjustments, all the tactical adjustments and ways you can exploit your opponent.

Ryan Kelly WCTV. It’s clear you’ve done a lot of homework on going from the pros to college, the messing of styles, the meshing of what’s going on behind the scenes. But I’m curious. What do you think is going to be the biggest operational change for you making the jump from the NBA and now to the college ranks?

Yeah, that’s a great question. The real, and I got into it a little bit. The reality is in the pros, we have massive amounts of resources, right? Just financially, it’s an insane amount of people that get, you know, 12 to 15 guys on a court. And at this level, you have to be much more resourceful with the way you do things.

All right, that’s number one. Number two, and the pros, and there’s a lot of bridging the gap and meshing, but you generally have really three things. You have your business side, you have your front office, and then you have your basketball operations which your coaching staff and collegiate athletics, it’s really just two.

You have your administration that’s over all the sports, and then you have your basketball side which is a quasi. And so there’s just way more on your plate, and you can’t turn it off, right? The travel is better in college. And before the All-Star break, I think we played 14 out of 17 games on the road.

I, and even up to this point where we flew to Tallahassee over 51 days. I slept in my own bed like 12 times. And so lucky enough for Stevie, I’m going to be around a little more with our schedule. But the other reality is you’re never, it’s a constant go between recruiting, between calling, between scouting, evaluation, there’s never an off switch.

So even though I’m around, I’m still going to be, you know, doing what I need to do to build the team the way it needs to be built.

When did you realize all the players always want to coach at some point? It seems like, but when did you realize you want to coach? And then also, so when did you realize you might be pretty good at this?

Was it feedback from a player? Did another coach say you get the chops to do this? Or when did that realization dawn for you? Yeah, the first one, I think I was eight years old playing peewee football in Clearwater, Florida, and they give out all the awards, right? And MVP, blah, blah, blah. And I played quarterback growing up in football and they gave me the coach’s award.

And I was like, coach is a word that has to be the MVP. What are we doing? But the reality, it opened my, my dad was a coach at a smaller level in high school football growing up. And again, I was just surrounded by people I found fascinating as a child growing up, reached through my teenage years. I always found that side of preparation and that side of, you know, game planning.

I found that fascinating. It’s probably why I got to the level I got as a player, because if any of you have seen me play, I’m probably the slowest player to ever play here, right? I had no athleticism, but I found a way. I found a way to be smart. I found a way to be aggressive, and I found a way to fit in to help the team win.

So there’s always been an aspect of coaching that I’ve always really liked. And especially as I got to that point in my professional career where I knew things were wrapping up, I was getting injured. I had spine surgery. I tore my hamstring. There was this constant injury. I’m like, my body’s done, but my mind’s sharp.

So let’s transition that into something that could be useful and something I’m passionate about. The second part, and I think it goes back to who you surround yourself with. I’ve been so fortunate to be surrounded by some of the best and brightest minds in basketball. And for whatever reason, they poured into me and helped me so much along the way.

And not always, but maybe once or twice a year, Mike Brown would take me out to eat. And he did the same thing with Jordi Fernandez who’s now the coach in Brooklyn Nets. And he would tell us, and he said, you’re going to be a head coach. It’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when, and it’s my job, just like Gregg Popovich did for me to help you get there, but more so to help you get there, to prepare you when you get that job.

And so in the back of my mind, it always kind of stuck of like, oh, I might have a real shot at this. Now, on the flip side, he’d be brutally honest with you. You got to be better at this. You got to do this differently. You got to communicate more effectively when you stand in front of the group, you have to have a presence.

And there was constant feedback which again, he didn’t have to do this, but he had someone do this for him. And that reality is what got me to this point. If I didn’t have a guy like Mike Brown, if I didn’t have those mentored Leonard Hamilton, I would never, I wouldn’t even sniff this. I would still be doing player development, a low level in the NBA.

So those people are the reason I’m standing here right now. All I know Coach Kennedy’s here and he had a lot of success when he was here. Coach Ham’s had success. Going back to Coach Durham, they had success. But when you, when you play a Florida State in the ACC. There’s not necessarily the expectation that it’s gonna be at the top of the heap. Can you just talk about winning at Duke?

What you guys did the ACC Tournament. What those accomplishments did for you and how do you carry those into this job? Yeah. First, you forgot about Don Loucks, our first head coach at Florida State. I do not know if we’re related. You mentioned that we’ve had a rich history of coaches and I don’t know the exact number I’m going to butcher, but I think it’s like seven coaches in the last 76 years, like not only great coaches, but they’ve been here a long time and that’s what I’m signing up to do.

I’m not signing up to come here and bounce somewhere else for a better job. I’m signing up. I’m hopeful that this is my last job. And the only reality in that is you have to be successful. You have to be successful. You have to treat people the right way. You have to work your tail off. You got to win ballgames.

And as a player, we felt that we, I think we came in when, call whatever you want a cold streak then been the NCAA Tournament in a handful of years. And I could tell the staff was feeling that heat and we’re coming in as players like we’re about to win this thing like that. That was the style that we had.

We had an unbelievable, unwavering confidence and what we were doing. And it was, it was probably a little naive and a little absurd, but that confidence is what brings a group together of now you can win at Duke and now you can beat Carolina by 30. And those things are what I’m looking for here.

Right. I said it earlier. I’m not setting expectations and a couple of people I’m close with. They’re like, do not talk about winning championships. Do not talk because it sets a bar. So I’m like, I want that bar. I’m coming here to win. And if anyone doesn’t like that, I don’t want to work with you.

Like you should have that level and standard of excellence and everything you do. And if you don’t, I probably don’t want to be associated with you. So in terms of it. Are we going to have that confidence to go into Duke? Duke’s unbelievable. I know Jon Scheyer. I played against Jon Scheyer. He’s doing an unbelievable job.

But I don’t care if it’s Duke or we’re playing Charlie’s 7 and under team. I’m coming to win. And everyone that plays for me, everyone that works with me, is going to feel that.