Alex Samara: how a 30-year-old Englishman became an WNBA head coach | WNBA

AAs an aspiring basketball coach in his teens and early 20s, Alex Sarama was often greeted with snickers when he talked about the game he loved. For British-born Sarama, who was named head coach of the WNBA’s new expansion team, the Portland Fire, on Oct. 28, people doubted him before he even said two sentences.

“There was a lot of skepticism,” he tells the Guardian. “A lot of coaches heard the accent and they immediately said that this Alex doesn’t know how to coach!”

Sarama, however, is not deterred.

“So, it’s been great!” he said laughing. “It’s given me a real edge to go the extra mile and make sure I know my stuff meticulously. Because at the end of the day, the players don’t care. The players just respect you if you’re competent, if you make them better.”

All joking aside, it’s true. It’s not every day you see a British basketball coach succeed in the United States. But that’s exactly what Sarama achieved. Although his native country was never known as a basketball hotbed, he made a name for himself.

However, growing up, Sarama played soccer and tennis. Although basketball is a religion for many in the United States, it has never been more important in the United Kingdom. Yet as he grew older, the game attracted Sarama.

“I think the fact that basketball wasn’t as popular made me even more determined,” he says. “Even when all my friends were playing other sports.”

Indeed, when we want, we can.

“I think the fact that basketball is less developed in the UK has given me more unique opportunities to accelerate my coaching career,” says the 30-year-old, reflecting on his journey. “When I was 15, I knew I would never be good enough to become a professional player. But I thought coaching would be the best way to have a career at the highest level.”

Needing an outlet, Sarama was in his mid-teens when he started his own basketball club, the Guildford Goldhawks. In just a few years he has turned them into one of the biggest youth teams in the UK. “We actually won the national championship in the under-14 girls,” he said. “It was my first experience coaching women’s basketball.”

In her early twenties, Sarama continued her education at the University of Nottingham, studying history. He was also a coach – some players were almost twice his age. He gained significant experience. “If I were in [a bigger basketball market like] “Serbia, Spain or Lithuania, I would never have had this chance to coach,” he says.

From there, he managed to make the big leap to the highest level of basketball: the NBA. He worked in the league’s international office, first in London, before moving to Madrid and Antwerp. When he arrived in America, he worked in player development with Rip City Remix of the G-League, then got a job with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“The resources are very different in the UK,” says Sarama. “Universities are not professionalized like in the United States. For many universities, it is more about participation than elite performance.”

The Fire’s new head coach, however, says Britain has plenty of potential when it comes to hoops. He goes so far as to describe the country as a “sleeping giant” when it comes to basketball. “I think there’s so much potential with players,” he says, “and with really good coaches who have good intentions. We just need to, as a country, prioritize a lot more coaching education and development.”

Sarama says, however, that he remains hopeful that the sport will grow there.

“I think there’s no reason why England shouldn’t be a great basketball country,” he says. “It’s going to take a lot of intentional work to move things in the right direction. One day, I would love to be a part of it and really initiate positive transformations.”

As for his work with Fire, he certainly has his work cut out for him. Building an expansion team is not for the faint of heart. Sarama, the author of the book Transforming Basketball, is going to have to help build a franchise from square one in a league that is growing and evolving faster than anyone can predict. To do this, he will use unique methods.

“We are going to have each “I’m a coach that deals with player development,” says Sarama, “with a common methodology and a common framework of playing principles and individual development plans that we have for each athlete. So a strength coach won’t just do weight room and warm-up. They’ll be in all the training and participating in real basketball activities.

Sarama says he keeps three things in mind in his new job: courage, confidence and humility. He believes he’s working in the most exciting time in WNBA history. “I feel very privileged to come at this time,” he says. “Just the chance to have a growing team – it’s so unique. I could coach the rest of my life and never find myself in this situation. A lot of times in an organization you have to unlearn previous processes.”

Sarama says he will institute a slew of new “standard operating procedures.”

“We’re going to document absolutely everything in the organization,” he says. “That includes checklists in everything from how we build culture to how we build an offense, how we run film sessions, how we give feedback to players, what we do during a timeout. There will be a checklist for everything.”

One thing he’ll definitely keep track of is his team’s rivalry with the team a few hours north of Portland – the Seattle Storm, who are one of the most successful teams in league history, with four championships under their belt.

“It’s the match I’m looking forward to the most, I can say that,” Sarama said. “It’s going to be a high-profile game, one that I’m looking forward to…I watch a lot of basketball – leagues from all over the world. And I really want to try to bring to the Fire the best ideas that I’ve been lucky enough to learn in all these different places.”