How Kelvin Sampson Used His NBA Time to Become College Basketball’s Best Strategist — A Coach Who’s Willing to Learn

“One of the great things about being a human being is being willing to change,” Sampson says. “And being in the NBA taught me that I needed to change. I learned a lot.”

Those NBA years turned an already excellent coach into an even better one. Kelvin Sampson expanded his offensive horizons, built himself into arguably the best strategist in college basketball coaching today. The University of Houston is winning big under Sampson because of talent, toughness, defense and all the program building this basketball lifer has done, sure.

But it’s also winning because it has one of the most efficient offenses in America. Again. These 31-5 Cougars rank ninth in the country in offensive efficiency this season. Houston finished fifth in offensive efficiency during its Final Four run in 2020-21.

So much for Kelvin Sampson being just a defensive coach. If UH is going to beat No. 1 seed Arizona this Thursday night to advance to the Elite Eight, it will have to show that offensive prowess. The 33-3 Wildcats average 84.6 points per game, third in the nation. Houston will need to exploit matchups and take advantage of any poorer defenders in Arizona’s lineup, the kind of thing Sampson and his coaching staff did in springing Taze Moore for a season-high 21 points in a second round win over Illinois.

Those are NBA principles, targeting matchups more than leaning on a set go-to scorer or two night after night. Things Kelvin Sampson learned in this time in the league.

“That’s probably where his time in the NBA changed him the most,” UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson says of his dad. “He just doesn’t over manage our guys offensively the way that he probably did 20 years ago.

“And I think it certainly allows us to have spurtability. We have five guys in our starting lineup who could be the tip of the spear offensively on any given night.”

Kelvin Sampson is a better offensive coach now than he was at Oklahoma (where he made a Final Four and an Elite Eight) and Indiana (where he went 43-15 in two seasons). Because he made himself a better one. When the NCAA hit him with a five year show-cause penalty (essentially banning him from the college game for that time period) for something that is no longer even against the rules anymore (extra phone calls and texts), many men would have spent their time railing against the unfairness of it all.

Or just felt sorry for themselves. Kelvin Sampson went back to work, trading the power and prestige of being a major college head coach for the grit and grind of being an NBA assistant. In many ways, he would become a student again.

“It showed me what I didn’t know,” Sampson says. “Sometimes you get in those situations and you just get humbled. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. When I first got to the NBA, I thought I could coach an NBA team. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I wasn’t anywhere close to being qualified.”

Kelvin Sampson and The Learning Grind

One of the best college coaches of recent times would study everything Gregg Popovich during his time with the Spurs. Kelvin Sampson credits Scott Skiles with being a generous teacher. And he picked up plenty more by scouting the NBA offenses of coaches like Stan Van Gundy, Mike Budenholzer, Terry Stotts and Doc Rivers, turning an assistant’s duties in another way to learn.

Then, he’d go back to his hotel room and write it all down in that small yellow legal pad.

“Then to help me learn it even more, I would copy it,” Sampson says. “Just kept writing them down. I was writing the same thing down over and over. And then I’d draw stuff up that I learned.”

The rest of college basketball probably wishes Kelvin Sampson never had to go to the NBA. Because he’s even harder to beat now. It’s unlikely that Sampson would have given a 19-year-old point guard like Houston’s Jamal Shead the kind of freedom he has during his late 1990s years at Oklahoma.

“He just doesn’t over coach you on offense,” Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “He’s just going to kind of let you breathe.”

Kelvin Sampson partly learned that by watching players like James Harden go to work. Even more, he marveled over the intricacies of NBA game plans, how they’d defend Chris Paul in the pick and roll two completely different ways depending on what side of the floor he was on.

“For people that think they don’t coach in the NBA, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know,” Kelvin Sampson says when I ask him about his time in the league. “There’s so much I didn’t know and there’s so much I learned. It helped me evolve.”

If you’re wondering why the University of Houston is having this amazing basketball renassiance under Kelvin Sampson — in its third straight Sweet 16, pushing for more — in many ways it comes back to this 66-year-old basketball lifer humbling himself. In leaving his ego outside the door, even when he was hurting over that seemingly draconian NCAA punishment.

Kelvin Sampson turned himself back into an eager student. That now surely faded small yellow legal pad is testament of a coach who made himself into an even better coach. That pad may belong in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame right with Kelvin Sampson someday.