Former NBA player and UConn head coach Kevin Ollie has been hired as the head coach and director of player development for the Overtime Elite basketball league, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
As we relayed last month, Overtime Elite is a newly-former basketball league that will feature up to 30 players who are between 16 and 18 years old. These high-school-age prospects will lose their college basketball eligibility, but will be offered salaries worth at least $100K and will have the opportunity to compete against prep school and international teams, writes Wojnarowski.
The Overtime Elite league will also offer an academic tutoring component, as well as scholarship money for any player who opts not to ultimately pursue a professional basketball career.
Ollie, who appeared in a total of 662 regular season NBA games and 42 playoff contests for 11 teams during his 13-year NBA career, joined UConn as an assistant in 2010 following his retirement as a player. He was promoted to the head coaching job in 2012 and held it until 2018, when he was let go due to a handful of NCAA violations. He won a national title with the Huskies in 2014.
Ollie has penned an article for The Athletic discussing his time at UConn and explaining why the Overtime Elite role appeals to him.
According to Wojnarowski, Ollie will work with Brandon Williams – a former Kings executive who is Overtime Elite’s new executive VP and head of basketball operations – to assemble a staff of approximately 40 individuals, including coaches, trainers, counselors, and sports science and performance staffers.
Veteran college assistant Tim Fuller has also been hired by Overtime Elite as its director of scouting and recruiting, tweets Jeff Goodman of Stadium.
It remains to be seen how successful the Overtime Elite league will be in siphoning off talent that would otherwise be headed to major college programs, but hiring leaders who have plenty of NBA and NCAA experience represents a promising start.
I really get the feeling that this league is going to do more harm than good.
When I see “former Kings executive” I immediately assume whatever it is is screwed or doomed.
I’m optimistic. I want the US to specialize job training earlier like Europe does with its leagues.
Soccer in Europe has many more paying levels of competition than BBall does in the US. So I don’t think a model based on European soccer would translate well into US BBall.
“… penned an article explaining why the OE role appeals to him…”
Because he can’t get another coaching job and prefers not working at the ymca.
Reading his Wiki, he’s apparently not allowed to get another NCAA job until 2022, unless I’m reading it wrong. I doubt he’ll have trouble finding a job at that point. His NCAA violations seem pretty silly to me, even for the NCAA.
The thing about him is he won the title with a team he pretty much inherited IIRC and UConn was his alma mater so with violations and a lack of long track record I don’t see where he goes.
The percentage of these players that will be broke, unemployed, and unskilled in 10 years, 100%.
16 year old making $100K should have no problem paying for a college education if things fall through but we all know that they $ will not be saved for that purpose. This is taking the idea of college aged kids playing in a pay to play league and extending it into high school.
Who is making the money off of this idea and how are they making it? Do they end up representing the kids who eventually go pro?