For a guy with such a textbook shot, Mark Price’s path to college coaching followed anything but form.
The former Georgia Tech point guard and NBA star who rarely bothered with the rim had to settle for a circuitous route to his first head coaching job with the Charlotte 49ers. At age 51 he is atop a Division I program and he shed the “shot doctor” title he picked up in multiple consulting and assistant coaching jobs in the NBA.
“I took a little bit different path, but I’m finally here,” Price said, from a couch in his new office, a 49ers warmup jacket on, smile on his face.
Behind every sharpshooter is a killer instinct, and Price’s desire is what ultimately got him where he wants to go.
“They thought Mark was too small to play in the ACC,” said former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins, whose recruitment of Price (listed as 6-foot by Tech) changed the face of that program. “They thought he was too small to play in the NBA. He’s a tough little guy. He’ll go to church every Sunday but come game time, he’ll knock your head off.”
For Judy Rose, it was more like her proverbial socks. Charlotte’s athletic director started her search in March, when it was clear the school and former coach Alan Major would part ways. Price’s name was not in the folder she always kept in her drawer. But it was on a list one of her senior advisors made after she’d asked for 5-10 names of potential coaches.
“He said, ‘Here’s an out-of-the-box one,’” Rose said.
She had read a series of articles in the Charlotte Observer about the work Price had done with Hornets forward Michael Kidd Gilchrist, the No. 2 draft pick from Kentucky with the horrendous jump shot. She was intrigued.
Price was “out of the box” because when typical candidates were college assistants, Price was playing in the NBA, including nine years with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He spent only one season as an assistant college coach, at Tech under Cremins in 1999-2000. His only head coaching experience came at the high school level (Duluth and Whitefield Academy) and a brief stint in Australia in 2006.
But Rose remembered him as a player.
“That resonated with me, that passion he had for the game and the will to win,” Rose said. “And he’s got huge credibility — off the charts credibility. That one stuck out to me of all the names we brought forward.”
She reached out to Price through former Hornets executive Carl Sheer and invited him to a meeting at her Lake Norman home. In an hour and 45-minute conversation, “it just clicked.” Rose, who started the 49ers women’s basketball program, once coached as a graduate assistant under Pat Summitt at Tennessee. She appreciated Price’s grasp of the game and was impressed by his plan.
Price sealed the deal in a phone call a week or so later. News of other candidates Rose was pursuing broke in the Observer while Price was on an eight-game West Coast trip with the Hornets. Price’s wife, Laura, was home to read it in the paper. He called Rose from the road. She was meeting with a booster at the time and couldn’t answer the phone, but she has saved his voice mail message.
“He said, ‘I know you’re talking to some other people,’” Rose said. “‘I just want you to know I want to be your coach, and I want to work with you. I want us to build something special at Charlotte.’”
Driving back to campus, she pumped her fist in the air. An offer and a five-year $2.5 million contract were soon to follow.
Growing up the son of a basketball coach in Enid, Okla., Price always focused on playing. He didn’t give coaching much thought. And when he retired from the NBA at age 34, after so much time away from Laura and their four children, he wanted to be at home for a while.
He did some broadcasting with the Cavaliers and Hawks and dabbled in real-estate development. It wasn’t until 2000 when his dad died of a heart attack that Price realized how much he wanted to coach.
Mark and his brothers, Brent and Matt, were in Oklahoma for a rare visit with the entire family when Brent, still playing in the NBA, asked Mark to go for a pickup game at the Y. Matt and their father, Denny, wanted to come, too.
“My dad was sitting on the side, and you could tell he couldn’t stand it,” Price said. “Finally, he got out there with us and the second time up the court, he just dropped.”
As he leaned against a wall and watched his dad undergo CPR, Price said he knew he was gone. He’d had quadruple-bypass surgery 10 years before.
“It was just one of those surreal moments,” Price said. “We had such a great week as a family together and here he was, out with his boys doing his favorite thing, and he ends up passing away in that setting.”
The experience never swayed Price from getting back into basketball. If anything, he said, it crystallized it.
“You think, ‘What would your dad want you to do here?’” Price said. “He wants you to live your life and live it to the fullest. That’s the way he lived his. There was never any hesitation about it. In some ways it might have drawn me more towards (coaching). Basketball was such a part of who I was.”
Price interviewed at Tech after Paul Hewitt was fired in 2011. He was passed over for Brian Gregory. He thought he might have a better shot at an NBA job and interviewed with the Cavaliers in 2014 before they hired David Blatt.
“A lot of (Tech) people felt like he did not have experience, and they were scared to go with a coach who had never been a head coach,” Cremins said. “They might have mishandled him a little bit because he really got excited about that. But it all works out for a reason. And now he’s a head coach, he’s got his own program, and he’s started a whole new life. I’m really happy for him to get this opportunity, and he really wants to make the most of it.”
Charlotte was down to five scholarship players shortly after Price took over. Among those who transferred out was Conference USA freshman of the year Torin Dorn.
“If we end up being good, I’ll have a lot of good stories to tell with our recruiting class this year,” Price said.
He signed eight players, including point guard Jon Davis from Hargrave Military Academy and Curran Scott from Edmond, Okla., whom he’d never seen play in person. Scott’s father was recruited by Denny Price to play at Phillips University.
Mark’s son Hudson Price, a 6-7 forward, transferred from TCU and will sit out this season. “His mama gets the credit for that recruit right there,” Price said.
The Prices sold their Duluth home and bought one in Charlotte’s picturesque Myers Park neighborhood. Their youngest son Josh is a sophomore at Charlotte Christian. Price’s only regret is that his dad can’t be a part of it.
“He’d have been in here, sitting in on the meetings and having a blast,” Price said. “We’d really be enjoying each other as I went through this process.”
Price talks about his dad a lot. He’s using his father’s words when he says, “We don’t have time for excuses, find ways to fix the problem,” or “You might not be the biggest, fastest, tallest guy, but you can do one thing better than anybody else: work harder.”
That’s what he’s doing, trying to build Charlotte’s program like he did as a player at Tech.
Laura got a text message recently from 49ers assistant AD Darin Spease, saying: “I’m watching your husband at practice. I just want you to know he was born to do this.”
“I thought that was really nice,” she said. “And probably true. … Everything happened the way it was supposed to happen.”
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