BOSTON — Here’s a sports trivia question that will stump most fans: What is the only high school or prep school with more than one graduate serving as a head coach in the NBA today?
The answer is Worcester Academy.
Dallas Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle played for the Hilltoppers in 1978-79 and Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone played for them a decade later.
“I would say not many people outside of Worcester Academy would know the answer to that,” Malone said Wednesday before Denver played the Celtics at the Garden.
Celtics coach Brad Stevens didn’t know it.
“No way,” Stevens said. “I knew Rick went there, but I didn’t realize Mike went there. That’s so cool. It’s amazing. I’ve been to Worcester, I’ve recruited at Worcester before and I remember seeing Rick’s picture in the hallways. But it’s pretty amazing when you think about it. Just 30 jobs and two guys came from the same school.”
Carlisle and Malone both played for legendary WA coach Tom Blackburn.
Blackburn, 84, is retired and lives in Harwich Port with his wife, Peg, but they drove to Worcester Academy Wednesday so he could attend a Varsity Club committee meeting at the school.
Blackburn also coached Donnie Nelson, a former NBA assistant coach and the current Mavs general manager and president of basketball operations, as well as Mike Wilhelm, a longtime Bulls assistant coach who received WA’s Varsity Club award two years ago.
“I always marvel,” Blackburn said, “that four coaches in the NBA are from the same little school on the hill with a wall around it. I’m obviously thrilled by that.”
What makes the accomplishment even more remarkable is that WA isn’t known as a basketball powerhouse.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Carlisle, whose Mavs lost to the Celtics at the Garden last week. “Worcester Academy was a powerhouse back in the day and it will be again. Mike Malone and I have one thing in common. We both have a great love and respect for the game. We both learned an awful lot from Coach Tom Blackburn.”
Blackburn was WA’s athletic director and head basketball head coach from 1973-1999 and led the school to 395 victories and seven New England Class A Prep School championships.
Malone played varsity as a sophomore for Bishop Hendricken High in Rhode Island, while his father, Brendan, coached at the University of Rhode Island in the mid-1980s. Malone was an assistant coach at Providence College in the 1990s before beginning his NBA career as a Knicks assistant in 2001. He’s been a head coach since 2013 for Sacramento and Denver.
“He would think along the same lines that I would,” Blackburn said, “but he was on the floor and I wasn’t. He was a coach’s son, he had been in the locker room, he had heard it all. He was a vocal leader on the floor.”
And off the floor, too. Blackburn remembers blasting his players at halftime for their poor play against Maine Central Institute and leaving his players behind in the locker room to mull over his lashing. As the locker room door closed, Blackburn heard Malone give his own inspirational speech to the team. WA rallied to win the game, but not before Malone got into a fight with MCI’s Sam Cassell, who went on to win two NBA titles with Houston and one with Boston.
Blackburn was a tough, demanding coach just like Malone’s father, currently an assistant coach with Detroit.
“Coach Blackburn is an old school guy who valued toughness,” Malone said, “who valued work ethic, mental toughness. He was hard, he was a tough coach to play for, but those were the coaches that I thrived playing under because he pushed you to be the best every single day and I was never afraid of that. I embraced it.”
Blackburn remembers that during his recruiting visit, Carlisle told him that even though he was 6-foot-5, he wanted to play point guard.
“I said, ‘Well, I haven’t really had one of those. Let’s see how that works out,’” Blackburn said. “Sure enough, he was a point guard and leader. Very quiet guy, but so steady. There was no question he was going somewhere.”
Carlisle, who began his NBA playing career with the Celtics, has coached in the league since 1989 and been a head coach since 2001 with Detroit, Indiana and Dallas. In 2011, he coached the Mavs to the NBA championship.
Blackburn has never met Stevens, but he likes what he’s seen of him from watching the games on television.
“I’m amazed he’s such a package of a mature coach,” he said, “when he looks like he’s maybe 17 or 18. But he’s got it. What a great grab for the Celtics.”
After the Kings fired Malone, Carlisle offered him an assistant job with the Mavs, but he took the head coaching job with Denver instead.
“He’s a good friend,” Carlisle said. “I have great respect for him as a basketball guy and we go back a long way.”
Knicks guard Jarrett Jack, the only WA graduate playing in the NBA today, starred for coach Mo Cassara at WA in 2001-02.