PrintRock Chalk Barstow
Settling on a place to sit in the Barstow School’s weight room, Billy Thomas is still trying to fully comprehend the magnitude of what happened 10 days earlier.
While the NBA slogs through a lockout, Kansas basketball players of yesteryear gathered for the Legends of the Phog alumni game at a sold-out Allen Fieldhouse in late September. Among those suiting up was Thomas, Barstow’s head boys’ basketball coach, who played for the Jayhawks from 1994-98. One of Thomas’ old teammates, Paul Pierce, and Mario Chalmers, also cemented in KU lore, exchanged three-point baskets to end the game in a 111-111 tie.
“We all thought it was going to be something cool and we’d have fun. But it ended up being special,” Thomas says. “We all consider playing at the University of Kansas as a special thing, but it’s unparalleled to anything that we’ve experienced.”
And Thomas has played in more than a few contests since his college days. After playing in the NBA, the NBA’s Development League and overseas for 12 years, alongside LeBron James for one of them, he’s since turned in his uniform for a black Barstow Knights shirt as he readies his players for his second season.
Coming from a tough neighborhood in Shreveport, La., Billy Thomas would beg his older cousin to take him to the park and play basketball. Later on a family friend also saw his potential, allowed him to play with the older guys and fostered his belief that he could get the most out of basketball.
Thomas then starred for Loyola Prep High School in Shreveport, and you could almost thank Reginald Poole as much as anyone for changing the course of Billy Thomas’ life. The coaching staff at Kansas was watching film from a game with Loyola and Poole’s cross-town team, Fair Park High School. Attention was quickly diverted from Poole to a kid with unlimited three-point shooting range.
“In fact, he made a couple shots in the tape that you see the ball go in the basket, but he’s so far out that he’s not even in the picture frame,” says Roy Williams, who coached Thomas all four years at KU and is in his ninth season at North Carolina. “I just felt like there was something special about Billy, and that he was going to be a survivor. And I think that’s what he’s been.”
With assistant coach Matt Doherty taking the lead on the recruiting trail, Thomas committed to the Jayhawks. Though it was a daunting transition for him from high school, joining a stacked roster with Jacque Vaughn, Jerod Haase and Raef LaFrentz, his maturity and toughness soared by the year, contributing to big wins. Especially on Dec. 3, 1995, when KU stormed back from a 15-point halftime deficit to steamroll defending national champ UCLA 85-70. One of Thomas’ three-pointers sent the 16,300 fans into orbit.
“Any time I think of a game in the Fieldhouse, automatically that game comes to mind out of all the games I played,” Thomas recalls. “Because of being down 15, and me making the shot that put us back in the lead. I still can hear the crowd. I still can see how excited all my teammates were and how excited I was. I still can see Jacque no-looking me the ball in the corner and understanding that was where I was all the time.”
Thomas credits his D-League coach, Tree Rollins, toward cultivating his leadership role after college. He crisscrossed the country, making rosters with the New Jersey Nets, Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers, playing on D-League teams in the Dakotas, Maine and Greenville, South Carolina, where he won a championship with Rollins. He also had international experience in Greece, the Philippines and Serbia.
When he realized he was done playing basketball professionally and returned to Johnson County, Thomas felt basketball tugging at him once again, this time through coaching. He learned that Jeff Boschee, who eclipsed Thomas as KU’s all-time leading three-point shooter, would leave Barstow after revitalizing the program with three consecutive 20-win seasons. Boschee, now an assistant with Missouri Southern in Joplin, believed Thomas would be the right candidate to replace him. One Jayhawk making way for another.
“You can tell he really wanted a chance to do what his coaches in high school did for him, which was be a part of these kids’ lives and coach them,” says Barstow athletic director Don Stelting. “It’s huge for us. I think it’s great for our kids because it brings some more notoriety to our basketball program.”
Thomas’ college coaches agree. “It’s a grind coaching,” says Doherty, now the head coach at SMU. “But I think you realize as you get older, okay, I love the game. And I know something about the game. I could see Billy really be a good coach, because I imagine he can relate to a lot of kids.”
Thomas trusts in what he learned at Kansas, as many of the Roy Williams offensive sets and practice philosophies that Boschee used closely mirror what Thomas teaches. And the Barstow players responded well to his calm competitiveness. Last year in his first season, Thomas guided the Knights to a 19-6 record.
Even in high school basketball, there’s no time to lounge around in honeymoon periods. The road back to a similar win total in 2011-12 is a little more onerous with the overall youth of the team and the transfer of starting guard Devin Newsome to Shawnee Mission South. But Barstow has a Division I prospect in Lawrence Brown and Thomas relishes the underdog status.
“I’m ecstatic about starting the season and preparing us to shock everybody once we take the floor,” Thomas says. “And I try to tell them, man, you have to dream big. You have to dream about your team winning the state championship. If you don’t want to be a part of that, then I really would suggest you not come here. Because that’s the level of work we’re going to put in.”
And Thomas’ coaching extends beyond high school. Last year was the first for the Billy Thomas Hoops Academy, where absolute beginners or more advanced kids with that dream can learn individually from someone brimming with experience. He’s known to get many kids between third and sixth grades, which was foreign to him at first, but he loves seeing improvement and budding confidence at any age.
There’s one thing, though, that he doesn’t teach explicitly to any young player.
“Kids will come in and because they know I’m a three-point shooter, everybody comes in thinking that I’m going to teach them how to be a three-point shooter. That’s not what I do,” Thomas says. “I teach you how to be a basketball player. I can teach you how to shoot better, but I’m not going to teach you how to shoot better from three. You’re not strong enough, you don’t have the fundamentals yet. So we’re going to start in close and work out to that spot.”
The teaching aspect undeniably captivates Thomas. He’s a self-professed basketball junkie who watches anything from WNBA to men’s and women’s college hoops to middle schoolers. Because the academy is still new, there isn’t a building with a gym that has Thomas’ name on it yet, but he’s working toward it. It’s his goal to teach the right way to play basketball, the right way to conduct yourself on and off the floor, and he attributes that reservoir of knowledge to playing for Williams.
“He taught us about always preparing yourself, taught us about being punctual, taught us about always working your hardest,” Thomas says. “That translated for me. That was one of the best things about playing on a legitimate team. He was one of the greatest influences not only for basketball, but also just in my life. I feel like growing as a young man and into the man that I’ve become has a lot to do with him.”
And Thomas has grown appreciably, from the rough patches of childhood to now being a husband, a father of two, a coach for many kids to come—and a Legend of the Phog.
“When I think of Billy Thomas,” Williams says from his Chapel Hill office, “a smile comes on my face. That would be a pretty good legacy for everybody to have. And that’s what Billy has with me. The good news is I hope I’ll live long enough to have that smile on my face for another 30 years or so, because he’ll be able to put it on there.”
For more information on the Billy Thomas Hoops Academy, visit www.bthoops.com.
