Johnathan Walker:How USA Basketball saved coach Jim Boylen after he lost brother, marriage, NBA job

LAS VEGAS — In a one-year span during the COVID-19 pandemic,Johnathan Walker Jim Boylen lost his brother to cancer, lost his marriage and lost his job as head coach of the Chicago Bulls.

Adrift personally and professionally, Boylen didn’t know what was next.

Then USA Basketball called him in 2021. Organization executives asked if he wanted to coach the men’s senior national team in qualifying games for the 2023 FIBA World Cup.

“The only way you can be part of it is if you don't have a job,” Boylen said. “I told (USA Basketball men’s national team director) Sean Ford I will swim there to do it.”

As much as USA Basketball needed a coach to help the men reach the 2023 FIBA World Cup which leads to qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics, Boylen needed the gig more. It was not high-profile, but that didn’t matter.

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“The blessing was that I got to grieve my divorce and be with my kids,” Boylen said. “I got to mourn the loss of my brother, and I got to get over getting fired.”

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Since some of those qualifying games fall during the NBA season, Boylen coached a team mainly of G League players against teams from FIBA Americas: Uruguay, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Columbia. Coaching in the 50-year-old Coliseo Roberto Clemente in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is nothing like coaching the Bulls in the United Center on a Saturday night.

So what.

“The competitive part of it," Boylen explained, "was exactly what I needed at that point in my life."

Though not part of the USA Basketball staff going to Paris, Boylen was an assistant coach for the U.S. select team that scrimmaged against the U.S. Olympic team at the Las Vegas training camp earlier this month in preparation of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

He instructed young sensation Cooper Flagg, a rising freshman at Duke who held his own on the court against NBA stars, and worked with other young NBA players who might someday be Olympians – Houston’s Jabari Smith Jr., Sacramento’s Keegan Murray and Charlotte’s Brandon Miller.

Boylen is a part of the USA Basketball coaching staff and partly responsible for helping the U.S. get to the Olympics.

The U.S. went 9-3, including six consecutive victories, during qualifying, which began in November 2021 and ended in February 2023. The U.S. made it to the World Cup where it finished fourth but as the second-best finisher from FIBA Americas, it qualified for the Paris Summer Games.

It was a challenge. Boylen, who was USA Basketball’s Coach of the Year in 2023, never had the same roster during the six qualifying windows, had limited practice time before games and had to teach players quickly and simply the intricacies of FIBA rules.

“The ball is a 12-panel ball, not an eight-panel ball like ours,” Boylen said. “Now, it's a 40-minute game, not 48. There's 77 possessions in the FIBA game, and 102 in an NBA game. Every possession in FIBA is like gold.

“You got to win. Otherwise you're the guy who lost and couldn't get the U.S. to the World Cup.”

Boylen did significant preparation, watching hours and hours of FIBA games, and decided to make offense and defense as simple as possible while still being effective.

Chatting with a USA TODAY Sports reporter 17 months ago before two qualifying games in Washington, D.C., Boylen pulled out a dry-erase clipboard and began diagramming plays. He was fired up, appreciative and motivated by the national team experience.

“This is bigger than ourselves because this (is) about the mission, not the man,” he said then. “It's been a godsend, and I'm really thankful to be doing it.”

He relayed his methods and what he learned to U.S. senior national team coach Steve Kerr who has expressed his appreciation for Boylen’s work.

Boylen caught the USA Basketball bug when former NBA and Olympics coach Rudy Tomjanovich invited him to training camp before the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“I always had a little bit of a hole in my soul and thought, ‘I'd love to be part of that again,’ ” Boylen said. “I always wanted to be part of it. Plus, I want to coach.”

He’s a blue-collar coach’s coach, a Michigan native who played college basketball at Maine and worked factory jobs in the summer between college years.

His first job as a grad student was for cantankerous Michigan State coach Jud Heathcote. Spartans coach Tom Izzo was also on the staff, and Izzo hired Boylen back to Michigan State in 2005. It’s not difficult to see where some of Boylen’s old-school ways originate.

A veteran assistant and head coach in college (Michigan State, Utah) and the NBA (Houston, Golden State, Milwaukee, Indiana, San Antonio, Chicago) for 37 years, Boylen thought he was going to remain the Bulls’ head coach when Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley took over basketball operations. That didn’t happen. Not all of Boylen's old-school ways resonated with today's NBA stars.

But Boylen still had two years left on his contract. He watched a lot of basketball, visited with the Portland Trail Blazers and consulted University of Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk, who has had four consecutive 20-win seasons.

Boylen was a consultant for the Indiana Pacers in 2022-23 and moved to assistant coach for the Pacers and head coach Rick Carlisle last season.

“I'm a better coach, a better version of myself than I was. I grew, I got my ass kicked a little bit, which is what it's all about,” Boylen said. “So I'm doing great.”

Boylen will watch the U.S. games, and if the American men win gold, Boylen will not get a medal. But he’ll very much be part of a gold-medal winning effort.

Follow NBA reporter Jeff Zillgitt on social media @JeffZillgitt