Mike Longabardi, a longtime NBA assistant, faces head-coaching challenge with Delaware Blue Coats: ‘You want to see if you can do it’

WILMINGTON — More than a decade ago, Nick Nurse and Mike Longabardi took a walk in Venice. There may even have been a boat ride through the Italian city’s iconic canals.

They needed a break while working the Adidas Eurocamp, where about a half-dozen NBA assistant coaches helped prospects being scouted for the upcoming draft. Yet even while immersed in such a pristine setting, the conversation between Nurse and Longabardi still kept shifting back to basketball.

“Obviously, totally invested in his craft, in his profession,” Nurse recently told The Inquirer, when asked to reflect on spending time with Longabardi at that camp. “Wants to talk hoops any time you want to talk it, that’s for sure. Really a kind of a hoops junkie, and devoted his life to the game.”

Those two men have reunited under the 76ers’ organizational umbrella, with Longabardi in his second season as head coach of a Delaware Blue Coats team that took a 5-2 regular-season record into Friday’s game at the Mexico City Capitanes. After more than two decades as an NBA assistant coach — including winning two championships — Longabardi is infusing his vast array of experiences, his own ideas, and his fiery personality into his first full-time head-coaching job.

» READ MORE: ‘It’s all love’: Ryan Arcidiacono, the original ’Nova Knick, has no hard feelings about missing out on their NBA rise

It is a position he coveted while looking for his next opportunity in the summer of 2023. But why was he so intrigued by moving from an NBA bench to hold that lead title in the G League, which some outsiders would perceive as a step down?

“At the end of the day, you want to see if you can do it,” Longabardi told The Inquirer from the Blue Coats’ facility last month. “That’s the bottom line. Everybody wants a challenge.”

When Longabardi, who turns 52 next month, reached out to Nurse after his hiring as Sixers head coach, Nurse instantly recognized his former walking companion’s strong interest in making what he called a “gutsy move”. Since then, Longabardi has been tasked with managing a two-pronged goal: maintain the Blue Coats’ standard that won a 2023 G League championship as part of four consecutive playoff berths, and collaborate with the Sixers’ staff to develop young players. Rookies Adem Bona and Justin Edwards, for example, have gotten rotation minutes with the Sixers in recent days, following stints with Delaware.

Before last season, Longabardi had brief dips into being a head coach. In his first job in the mid-1990s at Pfeiffer University, a Division III school in North Carolina, he was in charge of the junior varsity team that played approximately 10 games. He was an NBA summer league head coach twice, with the Boston Celtics in 2009 and Phoenix Suns in 2014. And he led teams during scrimmages at the draft combine, or at that Eurocamp, or when bosses periodically turned portions of practice over to him.

“Those are all reps,” he said.

Longabardi, a Brooklyn native, first joined an NBA staff on Jeff Van Gundy’s Houston Rockets, in 2003. While working his way up from assistant video coordinator, Longabardi said he absorbed Van Gundy’s “high-work, low-maintenance” approach, along with a defensive philosophy from a group that also included then-assistant “grinders” Tom Thibodeau and Steve Clifford.

Those were the first names on a now-lengthy list of notable former bosses and colleagues — and lessons learned along the way. Longabardi remains struck by the offensive creativity of former Sixers coach Doc Rivers, while part of the Celtics’ staff that won the 2008 championship. Or the “Jack-of-All-Trades” nature of Ty Lue, who hired Longabardi entering the season when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 title. Longabardi also worked for Jeff Hornacek with the Suns, Scott Brooks with the Washigton Wizards, Luke Walton with the Sacramento Kings, and Nate McMillan with the Atlanta Hawks.

Yet Longabardi’s desire to become a head coach was partially rooted in demonstrating he was more than a defensive coordinator, and could flip his expertise on that end of the floor into devising hard-to-guard offensive schemes. Nurse’s “totally biased” viewpoint, as a coach who came up through the G League, saw the value in Longabardi becoming a team’s lead decision-maker. Sixers assistants Matt Brase, Bryan Gates, Bobby Jackson, and Coby Karl are also former G League head coaches, giving Longabardi plenty of brains to pick.

“Once you’ve been in the G, you’re kind of in a fraternity,” Longabardi said.

Still, the transition has come with a learning curve.

Substitution patterns are the “hardest part of my job,” Longabardi said, from managing individual player minutes to creating the right personnel combinations on a game-by-game basis. That gets even trickier when rosters are seemingly ever-changing, as players receive call-ups from the Sixers and other NBA teams on two-way, 10-day, or standard contracts. Nurse’s reputation for outside-the-box thinking, Longabardi said, has inspired him to swiftly pivot in this job.

“He’s not afraid,” Longabardi said of Nurse. “I’m trying to incorporate that, piece-by-piece. … But I have to be who I am and my personality, because everybody’s different. I think the one thing is you try to be as authentic as you can.”

Authentic to Longabardi? An outwardly competitive persona while spearheading a team that moved from a clunky 8-7 start through last month’s G League Winter Showcase, to this strong stretch since records reset.

» READ MORE: Hayden Laufgraben survived leukemia. Now he lives out his dream as Temple’s basketball manager.

Edwards said he recently thought to himself, “Yo, Longo, we’re OK” as his coach turned animated during the Blue Coats’ final game of the Showcase, when the Birmingham Squadron went on a brief scoring run to cut into Delaware’s lead. Veteran Pat McCaw, who was part of NBA title-winning teams with the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors, could not pinpoint one example of Longabardi’s fiery nature — because “it’s 24/7.”

“That’s who he is every single day, from practice, to film, to shootaround,” McCaw said. " … You know he just truly cares about his players and winning and just the game itself. It makes it easier playing for a guy like that.”

All while guiding the Blue Coats through the infamously unglamorous aspects of G League life. A textbook example arrived during last spring’s playoffs, when an April snowstorm during their matchup at the Maine Celtics came with an early-morning flight to beat the weather, a swerving overnight bus ride to Boston after their season-ending loss, and then a train back to Wilmington.

But the success stories make the chaotic lifestyle worthwhile, Longabardi said. Six Blue Coats received NBA opportunities during the 2023-24 season, including Ricky Council IV’s two-way contract getting converted to a standard deal with the Sixers. More could arrive soon, as the NBA’s 10-day contract period for this season opened last weekend. Staff members have also moved up, such as former assistant God Shammgod Jr. becoming a player-development coach for the Boston Celtics, or Danielle Lyons and Brandon Seguinot being promoted to Sixers basketball operations.

“Those are fulfilling, for sure,” Longabardi said.

They also represent the prove-it nature of the G League, which Longabardi can now apply to himself. His two decades as an NBA assistant took him from the canals of Venice, to championship-winning staffs. Now he is generating results in the position he coveted, because he was eager to finally become a head coach.

“I’ve seen a lot,” Longabardi said. “But the one thing I do have is my passion. … I still feel like I have a lot more left in the tank, and I’m going to just do whatever I can to help our guys reach their potential.”