Three Philly basketball greats bring their expertise to Cristo Rey’s bench

If your cardiovascular system needs a test, check out a basketball practice at Cristo Rey High School.

Within minutes, the intensity on the court should take your ticker for a twirl. It’s almost contagious. In fact, if you played in a previous life you might even be tempted to lace up your sneakers.

A second look at who’s on the court, however, should cause you pause.

The Catholic college prep school in North Philadelphia is building a basketball program with Division I talents who are mentored by assistant coaches that include a playground legend, a former NBA player, and a national champion.

When the architect of the action gets going, trash gets talked, pearls get passed, and games are grown. It is all part of head coach Kyle Sample’s plan to turn Cristo Rey’s program into something transformative.

“I want a top-25 program in the country,” Sample said after a recent practice. “Not one year, not some years, every year.”

“I don’t want to just win a bunch of championships,” he added. “I want to consistently put kids in college.”

With an up-tempo, high-intensity attack on both ends, the Blue Pride (12-5), who crushed last year’s Penn-Jersey league champ Solebury, 81-54, last week, are off to a good start.

Helping Sample, a native of North Philly, are junior varsity head coach Aaron Owens also known as “AO” from the AND1 Mix Tape Tour; former Temple standout, NBA, and international player Dionte Christmas; and former Villanova captain Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree.

“There’s just so much knowledge in the room,” said 6-foot-7 senior forward Josh Wyche, who will play at Lafayette next season. “Every time we’re in practice or in film there’s just so much information being shared.”

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Owens, 48, has traveled the globe so often that it takes five passports to house his stamps.

His first true passport, though, may have been the orange ball that helped transform the North Philly native from a kid playing on milk crates to an iconic figure who helped bring playground basketball to the masses.

“It’s done everything [for me],” Owens said of basketball. “It’s made me a household name around the world. I can’t even say just the city or in America. No, around the world.”

Kids, consult YouTube, while the adults reminisce on Owens wielding the ball like a yo-yo, wobbling defenders like day-old deer, and creating moves later borrowed by NBA players.

These days, Owens hopes a new generation will learn and love the game the way he did growing up near 24th and Somerset Streets, about two miles from where legendary Simon Gratz coach Bill Ellerbee taught him the game.

“I just like it, man,” said Owens, who also played professionally in the CBA, the NBA’s D-League (now the G League), and in Israel. “Most of these kids don’t know basketball at all. They just know what they see on TV. … They really don’t have a passion for it like we did, and I’m just trying to give it back to them. It’s fun. It has its ups and downs, but it’s fun.”

Owens’ current crop didn’t know him as “AO” when he first arrived last year. The internet educated them quickly.

For the still uninitiated, the AND1 tour billed itself as a collection of the country’s best street ballers who competed with local talent at each stop along a nationwide tour. Highlights were sold on DVDs and eventually aired on ESPN. The tour lasted from 1998 to 2008, added global stops, and turned several of its players into stars. Some were known more for their theatricality. Owens, who was a Division II All-American at Henderson State University in Arkansas, was known as a serious basketball player who also played street ball.

Today, basketball business — video games, documentaries, movie cameos, etc. — still exists for Owens, so coaching JV, he says, is a good fit, for now. Before Cristo Rey, he was on former Villanova standout Jason Lawson’s staff at Olney High School for three seasons.

Owens also recently began working as an assistant athletic director at the Shane Victorino Boys and Girls Club in Nicetown. The 1993 Gratz graduate might want his own team if his other ventures permit.

For now, Owens just hopes his current players can experience college basketball.

“At any level,” said Owens, who has known Sample for years. “Because most of these kids don’t realize you might not play another game after high school, ever … [so] you can’t take this for granted.”

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Christmas recently saw former Villanova coach Jay Wright at a high school basketball game. Not long after, Christmas saw his former coach at Temple, Fran Dunphy, who now leads La Salle.

Christmas, now 36, shared with both something he has learned about coaching.

“I told [Wright] I realized why coaches were always so passionate and why their hair turned gray and they were always stressed out,” Christmas said with a laugh, “because it’s so much more intense on the sidelines ...”

Christmas, who joined Cristo Rey’s staff last season, is still the affable, high-energy guy he was at Temple, where he was the Atlantic 10 scoring champ in consecutive seasons.

You might still catch him in a few drills during a Cristo Rey practice. The jumper is still smooth. The smile still recedes quickly, giving way to gums bumping: “Y’all can’t guard me!”

These days, however, he’s more focused on brains than buckets.

“I love [coaching],” said Christmas, who grew up with Sample. “These [coaches] all feel the same way I do about this. They’re all passionate about it.”

“It’s not even just about the basketball part,” he added later. “It’s more about the being a man part.”

That’s what Christmas learned most from one of his early mentors, the late linchpin John Hardnett, who mentored so many young Philly ballers before he died in 2010.

It’s also a lesson Dunphy reinforced recently after seeing Cristo Rey sophomore Devin Booker in action. Booker is an athletic, 6-foot-5 wing who secured his first Division I offer, from Fordham, on Saturday.

“He texted that he looks very well-coached,” Christmas said of Dunphy. “And that was the biggest compliment. It wasn’t about his game. It wasn’t about nothing else. He just said he looked well-coached. That’s the thing I got from John [Hardnett]. Make sure these kids are coachable. Make sure they’re respectful.”

Running workout sessions the way Hardnett once did is what drew Christmas to coaching. Over the years, he explained, kids recognized him at events and on social media and requested assistance.

He provided workouts free of charge and quickly found a new way to love the game that has already given him so much.

After going undrafted in 2009, Christmas played around the world with stops in Greece and Russia among others, plus a stint with the Phoenix Suns in 2013. He last played in Argentina in 2019.

Now, he hopes to sit on an NBA or college bench one day.

“I have no regrets,” Christmas said. “It was fun. I lived my dream. Now, just trying to get some of these guys to do that. Time to give back to the younger guys.”

Cosby-Roundtree never saw himself as a coach until his final season at Villanova. Injuries had hindered much of his college career. His final season was no different.

Yet, he kept an open mind when the opportunity arose to become what amounted to being a player-coach, and a new passion was born.

When his playing career ended, running personal workout sessions sealed the deal.

Then last summer at a funeral, he saw Sample, who was named Cristo Rey’s athletic director in 2020. The pair later talked about coaching. Sample, a longtime administrator within the K-Low Elite AAU program, eventually helped Cosby-Roundtree get a teaching job at Cristo Rey, which promotes itself as a Catholic school for students of all faiths.

Now, Cosby-Roundtree works in academic support while working toward two separate master’s degrees in education and counseling.

“I’m still thankful and grateful that Villanova believed in me and gave me a chance to grow,” he said. “I’m blessed. If the kid at Neumann Goretti could see me now, I think he’d be proud and amazed at what I’ve done.”

Sample is also proud of his team’s progress this season. Just don’t tell the players that, he said. Sample wants chips securely on shoulders as the season closes. Last year, Cristo Rey finished 13-17 under coach Erick Woods, who stepped down after the season for family reasons, Sample said.

Cristo Rey, which also has former West Chester University guard Mike Jolaoso on its coaching staff, joined the Penn-Jersey League in 2018. The school opened in 2012. In 2022, it also joined the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association, which determines the independent schools state champion. Westtown School won the crown last season.

“Every day we’re talking about defending our home court, building our reputation, earning our respect,” Sample said. “We feel like a lot of people still look at us as the little school that nobody knows … so each day is another chance to make somebody know who Cristo Rey is.”