LeBron James’ Former Coach Keith Dambrot Retires One Day After Making NCAA Tournament With Duquesne

One day after leading Duquese to the NCAA Tournament, LeBron James’ former high school coach, Keith Dambrot, announced his retirement on Monday.

Dambrot and the Dukes knocked off VCU in the finals of the Atlantic 10 tournament, 57–51, despite a hilarious, premature confetti celebration at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The win sent Duquesne back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1977.

Dambrot, 65, began his Division I coaching career at Central Michigan before he was fired following a controversy involving the use of a racial slur, despite the backing of several black players.

He eventually popped back up again at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in his home town of Akron, Ohio. During the last two years of his tenure with SV-SM, Dambrot coached James and the Fighting Irish to a pair of state championships and the team was nationally ranked.

He eventually left the position to become the head coach at Akron University where he led the Zips to three NCAA Tournament appearances.

Duquesne hired Dambrot prior to the 2017-18 season. Despite 20-win seasons in 2019-20 and 2022-23, the Dukes could not break through the Big Dance.

That is, until Sunday.

Now the storied head coach has chosen to call it a career. Though he will coach the team through March Madness.

“I just decided before the season that this was gonna be it for me,” Dambrot said at a press conference announcing his retirement. “And so, at this point, this was it for me. I wanna thank everybody for the opportunity. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do, because I really don’t have any hobbies…so I might be coming to all y’all’s games all the time.”

Dambrot and the Dukes are the No. 11 seed in the East Region. They’ll begin their NCAA Tournament run against sixth-seeded BYU at 12:40 p.m. ET on Thursday in Omaha, Nebraska.