Inside Houston Basketball’s Cutting Edging Development Center — How Innovative Nap Pods, Recovery Rooms & a Jordan Wall Help Power Kelvin Sampson’s No. 1 Ranked Team

When Jamal Shead brought his own pillow from home to University of Houston basketball’s reimagined cutting edge training facility, Lauren Sampson knew the nap pods had truly caught on. “Jamal was ready to move right in,” Lauren Sampson, UH’s director of basketball operations, says with a laugh.

The basketball-only Guy V. Lewis Development Facility underwent an extensive second floor renovation in 2023 and Houston’s No. 1 ranked basketball team in America is certainly making the most of those changes in a welcome to the Big 12 dream season. UH now boasts a nap lair which keeps all outside light out and wakes players up with special recovery lights. All designed to facilitate the best sleep possible.

“It shows the commitment we have towards innovation.” Houston assistant coach Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “If you’re a young person thinking about where I’m going to spend the next four years. I want to be somewhere that in four years it’s still the best. And I think that’s one of the big things.

“We don’t try to be current here. We try to be forward thinking. What’s going to be the thing four years from now? Let’s identify it. If we’re going to ask for considerable resources and investment, let’s not be reactive. Let’s try to set the market.”

Which means creating a state-of-the-art nap room and centering the entire redesign around recovery areas. When UH basketball players step through the striking red door that leads to their inner sanctum, they’re entering a land where every single thing has been thought out to help make them better players.

“There’s not another school — certainly in the area — that’s got a nap room,” Kellen Sampson says. “It’s all about recovery and rehabilitation and how quickly can you go from depleted to your body’s battery is back to 100 percent. Throwing as many dollars and cents as we can at recovery is innovation.

“When you’re able to kind of speak on that in recruiting — man what kid wouldn’t want to be a part of a program that’s cutting edge. Man I haven’t seen that. Oh man, I can see myself here.”

Shooting guard LJ Cryer, who transferred to Houston from a national championship program at Baylor with its own bells and whistles, has become a quick convert to the Cougars’ innovative focus on recovery, with the renovation revamp getting completed after he arrived on campus over the summer.

“Now we’ve got that little sleep room and you can go to sleep without light beaming in your face,” Cryer tells PaperCity. “It’s like a crib in that room. And we’ve got the recovery lights and stuff and all that. It feels a lot better being up there.”

Just another possible edge for a UH program that takes that No. 1 ranking and a 25-3 (12-3 Big 12) record into Saturday night’s University of Oklahoma homecoming for coach Kelvin Sampson. These Cougars, who are poised to win the best basketball conference in America in their first season in the Big 12, have played at both Baylor’s brand new $212 million Foster Pavilion and the University of Texas’ $375 million Moody Center in recent weeks — and they left confident their own facilities more than stack up to the conference’s big spenders.

“We set the standard for arenas in this state especially, by capping it at 7,100 (capacity),” Kellen Sampson says of the Fertitta Center. “I thought we set the standard. And everybody in the state is reacting to it. ‘Oh wow, man, an arena that size might be the way to go.’ ”

The emphasis on recovery and treatment in the development center set the stage for those game nights to be very productive. This Guy V. Lewis reimagining gives what UH associate AD for sports medicine John Houston and director of sports performance Alan Bishop, two of the best in the country in their fields, do centerstage treatment.

“I’ve thought more about rest and time off these last few years than at any point in my career,” Kelvin Sampson, UH’s 68-year-old basketball lifer of a coach, says. “That’s one of the reasons why, when we did our remodel, we put a recovery room in there so our kids would always have a place to go.

“And rest.”

When UH basketball players step through the striking red door that leads to their inner sanctum, they’re entering a land where every single thing has been thought out to help make them better players.

The Wall of Jordans

University of Houston’s reimagined Guy V. Lewis  center is not just about rest and recovery. It includes some striking showy touches too. Like The Wall of Jordans on the second floor that is one of the first things recruits see. This display tends to stop everyone in their tracks.

“It shows the commitment we have towards innovation. If you’re a young person thinking about where I’m going to spend the next four years. I want to be somewhere that in four years it’s still the best. And I think that’s one of the big things.” — UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson

There is just something about seeing that many Air Jordan shoes — many of them coveted by sneakerheads, which almost every high-level basketball player is — in one spot. In the world of recruiting — where so much is said.by everyone — UH’s Wall of Jordans speaks for itself.

Loudly.

“If I was coming out of high school and I come to Houston, see the winning tradition, Guy V. Lewis now, everything we have, Coach Sampson, and I walk into the development center and go on that second floor, and I see that Wall of Jordans,” Houston associate head Quannas White says excitedly. “Oh man.

“I’d probably sign that day.”

It is one thing for recruits to know that Houston is a Jordan school. It’s another to get a look at all the shoes and realize what that really means.

“Who doesn’t wear Jordans?” Kellen Sampson asks. “There’s a lot of schools that are Nike. It’s awesome that we’re Jordan. People ask if it’s really important. Yes, it’s that big a deal.

“. . . There’s not a school in America that wouldn’t crawl over broken glass to be a Jordan school. There’s a certain pizzazz and sexiness. . .  There’s something that’s understood that you don’t have to spend time explaining. It’s what (former UH standout) Nate Hinton said.

“We became a Jordan brand right after Nate signed and he said, ‘Yo, that’s big Coach. ‘ ”

Now it’s big enough to have its own wall, another feature of this redesign largely overseen by Lauren Sampson, who looks at this stuff the way Dune 2 director Denis Villeneuve looks at futuristic action scenes. UH basketball’s largely hidden away lair is a place built around the knowledge that details matter. That is why every refrigerator in the building is see through like in a 7-Eleven so the items are more likely to be grabbed.

“They’re so much more likely to drink it and eat it if they see it,” Kellen Sampson says. “So make every fridgerator like a convenience store. Not this stainless steel classy. They’re likely to walk by that and not grab a water.”

“Now we’ve got that little sleep room and you can go to sleep without light beaming in your face. It’s like a crib in that room. And we’ve got the recovery lights and stuff and all that. It feels a lot better being up there.” — UH guard LJ Cryer

A Houston Basketball Player’s Second Home

Much of the UH basketball’s development center and the renovation center around the idea of making life more convenient and a little easier for players like Shead, Cryer, J’Wan Roberts, JoJo Tugler and company who put so much into the program and getting better. This is why a full cafeteria was built into the second floor so Houston’s players can have all their meals — or as many meals as they want — in the facility without having to trek to a dining hall.

The nap pods also are about hearing the players.

“You just listen to our guys,” Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity of the approach. “Because so many of our guys since COVID are in more online classes, so we used to have these massive, ugly, hideous, heinous air mattresses laying around. And from June until October (during preseason conditioning), we’re up at 6 in the morning.

“So guys are exhausted. And they don’t really want to — in the dead of summer — walk clear across campus. They really just wanted to sleep. So we’re just listening to them.”

The striking NBA wall — with photos of UH players currently playing in the league like Quentin Grimes, Marcus Sasser and Jarace Walker — the Houston basketball history/Big 12 wall, and the women’s basketball wall (the women’s program shares this facility) on the first floor of Guy V. Lewis are good for recruits and visitors in general to see. They are part of the aesthetics of a redesign that employed the DLR Group to help make Lauren Sampson and the rest of the Houston staff’s ideas come to life.

But it is the listening (and observing) the players who actually use the facility that’s pushed most of the innovation. The Cougars’ inner sanctum used to be full of TVs that no one ever watched. College kids don’t watch TVs. They’re on their phones. So most of those TVs got removed, replaced by places for the players to charge their phones, extra lounge spaces where they can relax.

And those cutting edge nap pods. Which are mighty convenient for the coaches who put in endless hours watching video, breaking down scouting reports and helping the players get better at the facility too.

“My favorite part is the sleeping pods,” White tells PaperCity. “You come down, get a great workout in, go up and take a shower and you don’t even have to leave this place. You can take a nap, come right back down and shoot.”

Those pods mean more than the sweet looking plush black and red locker room with each player’s picture and name above their roomy locker stall. This sleep emphasis puts this UH program a few steps ahead in many ways. Again.

“Lauren’s the best at figuring out consumer idea things to apply to our kids,” Kellen Sampson says. “It’s kind of a collaborative approach, but I would say anything that’s really, really cool comes from her.”

For the Houston players — particularly the ones who’ve been around for years like Shead and Roberts — getting to enjoy this second floor renovation is further validation of how far UH basketball’s come.

“It’s just a reward for our success,” Roberts says.

After all, the Big 12 leaders deserve some cutting edge digs, an inner sanctum to be proud of.