from The Athletic when KE was asked why George Mason now......
When you get to a place like Tennessee, there’s no other assistant job I would leave for. I mean, you don’t leave Tennessee to go anywhere, not to go to a blue blood. Working for a guy like Rick Barnes is a pinnacle of your career as an assistant coach. You get to a point where, especially as a young coach, I think is a little bit different for older assistant coaches, but where — and I’d have these talks when athletic directors and search firms would call, Coach Barnes would sway me away. He’d say, ‘Nah, not that one.’ It was, yeah, you get to a point where you don’t want to take a bad job. And as an assistant coach at Tennessee, working for a great head coach, you don’t have to take a bad job.
The next level here is being an African-American coach. African-American coaches rarely get second opportunities after not succeeding. The numbers would suggest that it’s a vastly different story from White coaches who may not succeed or get fired. Where they often can fall into other jobs, it’s different for Black coaches will get fired. So that falls in line with not taking a bad job just as much as any other thing I’ve just said.
And as we looked at this thing, we decided that George Mason was a good job. I was involved with a power (conference) job this cycle, and Coach Barnes asked me, he’s like, all things considered, take money out of the decision: Would you rather be at George Mason, or this other job? And my answer was actually George Mason. Because of the history. The not so far, not so distant history. Because of the recruiting, because of the city we’re 14 miles away from, because of the league — I think the Atlantic 10 is such a good league, it’s a great basketball league, I grew up loving it. I thought it was a tremendous opportunity at the right time. I’m super fortunate and thankful.
When you get to a place like Tennessee, there’s no other assistant job I would leave for. I mean, you don’t leave Tennessee to go anywhere, not to go to a blue blood. Working for a guy like Rick Barnes is a pinnacle of your career as an assistant coach. You get to a point where, especially as a young coach, I think is a little bit different for older assistant coaches, but where — and I’d have these talks when athletic directors and search firms would call, Coach Barnes would sway me away. He’d say, ‘Nah, not that one.’ It was, yeah, you get to a point where you don’t want to take a bad job. And as an assistant coach at Tennessee, working for a great head coach, you don’t have to take a bad job.
The next level here is being an African-American coach. African-American coaches rarely get second opportunities after not succeeding. The numbers would suggest that it’s a vastly different story from White coaches who may not succeed or get fired. Where they often can fall into other jobs, it’s different for Black coaches will get fired. So that falls in line with not taking a bad job just as much as any other thing I’ve just said.
And as we looked at this thing, we decided that George Mason was a good job. I was involved with a power (conference) job this cycle, and Coach Barnes asked me, he’s like, all things considered, take money out of the decision: Would you rather be at George Mason, or this other job? And my answer was actually George Mason. Because of the history. The not so far, not so distant history. Because of the recruiting, because of the city we’re 14 miles away from, because of the league — I think the Atlantic 10 is such a good league, it’s a great basketball league, I grew up loving it. I thought it was a tremendous opportunity at the right time. I’m super fortunate and thankful.
