Coaching Now A Part Of Cassell's Hoop Dreams

I eat, sleep and dream basketball.

-Sam Cassell, assistant coach, Washington Wizards

He's not kidding.

As a kid growing up in the 1980s, Cassell would shoot hoops all day with his pals on East Baltimore's playgrounds, then grab a bite "and brag about what we'd just done to each other."

At night, Cassell would curl up in his room on North Montford Street, a ball alongside his bed. Oh, the dreams that lad had.

"I was always the point guard for either the Philadelphia 76ers or the New York Knicks," he said. "Magic Johnson and 'Dr. J' [Julius Erving] were my teammates. But I was the star."

Now 39, Cassell, the guest of honor at a retirement ball in Baltimore Saturday night, is a bit worn down and beat up after 15 years of NBA play. But he has never outgrown his teenage crush on the game, a fact that might help his move into coaching, those who know him say.

Hired by last-place Washington in May, the former Dunbar High star boasts that youthful zeal plus a swagger that can't help but shore up the sleepy Wizards.

"Sam absolutely loves basketball like no one I ever met," said Pat Kennedy, who coached Cassell at Florida State. "He's a gym rat. The game is his passion, morning, noon and night."

That his one-time star guard would pick up a clipboard doesn't surprise Kennedy, now the coach at Towson University.

"At halftime [at FSU games], Sam would get all emotional and go after players, telling them to rebound better or to take better shots," Kennedy said. "He's not about beating around the bush. He gets right to the point. That's the giddyup enthusiasm you want in an NBA coach."

It's a career that Cassell began mulling at age 30 as a journeyman playing for Milwaukee in 2000. That's when Bucks coach George Karl pulled him aside and said, "You'll make a good coach if you take this aspect of the game serious."

And Cassell thought: Why not?

"I enjoy teaching basketball," he said. "I wasn't the most talented guy out there, but I know all of the angles. And I know the chemistry of the game. Coaching in the NBA is about more than X's and O's. It's about managing guys."

The take-charge stance, Cassell adopted early on.

"He played like a coach from the start," said Keith Green, a teammate at Dunbar, where both graduated in 1988. "Sam started as a sophomore - a skinny little guard barking orders to a bunch of upperclassmen. Their egos didn't want to hear it, but Sam was clearly a cut above the rest, always thinking two or three plays ahead."