Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
There are a number of NBA players who’ve turned their attention to coaching after bringing their career to an end. That includes Gary Payton, who has found himself out of a job after the college he linked up with in 2024 eliminated its last remaining athletic program.
Having a successful career as a basketball player is by no means a prerequisite for serving as the head coach of a team, but that wealth of knowledge certainly doesn’t hurt when you decide to trade in your sneakers for a clipboard.
There are a number of cautionary tales concerning people who more than held their own on the hardwood but struggled to do the same when they started patrolling the sideline, as notable names like Elgin Baylor, Isiah Thomas, and Patrick Ewing struggled to join the ranks of Steve Kerr, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, and other guys who had much more impressive results after making that transition.
Gary Payton has spent the past five years pursuing a fairly quiet career as a coach at the college level. His first stint at a tiny school in Oakland came to a somewhat messy end, and the same can now be said for the program he pivoted to.
Gary Payton is no longer the head coach at the College of Alameda after the school eliminated its last remaining athletic team
Payton cemented himself as one of the best point guards in NBA history during the 17 seasons he spent in the league, and the Oakland native headed back to the Bay Area after he brought his Hall of Fame career to an end in 2007.
In 2021, he was tapped to serve as the first head coach of the newly founded basketball team at Lincoln University, a school in Oakland with an enrollment of less than 600 students that wasn’t affiliated with the NCAA. However, that experiment came to an end after three seasons, as Payton didn’t earn a salary for two of them while butting heads with leadership over funding issues.
He ended up picking up where he left off in 2024 at the College of Alameda just outside of Oakland. The Cougars, who were affiliated with the California Community College Men’s Basketball Coaches Association, went 16-15 during his first season at the helm, but dropped to 11-15 during the most recent campaign.
I used the past tense in that previous sentence due to what unfolded this week, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports the school announced it “will officially discontinue its intercollegiate athletic program” primarily due to Title IX restrictions.
When Payton came aboard, Alameda had a men’s basketball team and a women’s volleyball team, but the fact that the latter did not actually field a squad for the last two years means the former cannot legally continue due to the lack of options for female athletes (the school said financial reasons also played a role in the decison to pull the plug on athletics as a whole).
There’s no telling if Payton will set his sights on another overlooked school in the Bay Area, but he might want to find one that has its finances in order if he does.