The coaching rise of Mahmoud Abdelfattah

Mahmoud Abdelfattah is preparing to take the reins of one of the most notable international basketball programs in the world – the Sydney Kings – in NBL24, and the young coach’s arrival in Sydney is the latest stop in what’s been a meteoric rise for the NBA G-League title winner.

It was barely a decade ago that Abdelfattah was assistant-coaching high school basketball in his hometown of Chicago. From there he earned a position on the coaching staff of his alma mater – NCAA Division II side St. Cloud University – before making his name in the professional scene with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and Houston Rockets.

There seems to be a trend emerging in the world of basketball, in that there is a shift towards hiring career coaches. No longer is a playing career at the top level a necessity for those looking to take charge at a high-level professional basketball club.

Abdelfattah has joined fellow head coaches Jacob Jackomas, Mody Maor, Justin Schueller and Adam Forde among the ranks of NBL head coaches who didn’t play professionally. Even seven-time NBL championship winning coach (three as head coach, four as assistant) Dean Vickerman played just 16 games at a professional level for the Melbourne Tigers in the early 1990s.

Being from the United States, Abdelfattah cut his teeth as a collegiate player before turning to the coaching ranks.

“The college coach I played for at St. Cloud State University – it was a learning experience for me. When I transferred from Wilbur Wright Junior College I was an All-American there, and when I got to St. Cloud State I had expectations on my playing time and my role,” Abdelfattah told NBL Media.

“I learned a lot from my college coach Kevin Schlagel. When he wasn’t playing me I realised I wanted to be the guy I wanted to play for, and I felt at that point in time coach had his guys, but I feel that everyone should be given an opportunity to play.

“Coach gave me my first job. I learned a ton from him and that was the starting point. I knew I wasn’t good enough to make it to the NBA, and if you can’t make it to the NBA the next thing is to coach, so I was very fortunate to be at St. Cloud State, and I’m very fortunate to have head coach Kevin Schlagel who gave me the opportunity to start in coaching at the collegiate level.”

That first opportunity to coach came during Abdelfattah’s final year in Minnesota, where he was completing a Masters in Education and Administrational Leadership following his Bachelor of Education, Physical Education Teaching and Coaching.

His playing eligibility had expired following his collegiate career at Wilbur Wright, and then St. Cloud – and so he joined the coaching staff as a student assistant.

“I went back there for two different stints,” he said. “I was done playing in 2010 but I needed another year to get my degree – so I became a student assistant. That year, by far, was harder because everybody that was still on the team that were the juniors and seniors were a year younger than me on the final four team we had.

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“When I would be in the drills or presenting a scouting report you could see them making comments or faces – similar to what we would do when we were on the bench as teammates – which helped me become the best coach I could be.

“You have to turn that page, and my roommates at the time were still on the team and they’d ask what we were talking about in the coaches meetings, how we thought they’d been playing, and that gave me the strength in what I think is one of the best parts of who I am – loyalty.

“I would never say anything to any of them. That was a difficult one, but two years later after going back and coaching high school Coach offered me a position as a second assistant. He knew I wanted to gain experience, and I had the AAU and high school connections for recruits and it just went from there. The second stint was a lot easier than the first stint, because I didn’t have as many old teammates still there.”

It was following that second collegiate stint that Abdelfattah cracked the door open to his position in the big time. He’d now ticked off stints in both high school and college, and the G-League came calling.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">11th Grade D1 National Champions Team NLP <a href="http://t.co/4sywseAiBD">pic.twitter.com/4sywseAiBD</a></p>&mdash; AAU Basketball (@AAU_Basketball) <a href="https://twitter.com/AAU_Basketball/status/361932455978078208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“That’s my guy, I’m so happy for him,” Houston Rockets Basketball Operations Coordinator and Rio Grande Valley Vipers General Manager Travis Stockbridge said when asked about Abdelfattah.

The respect and high regard Sydney’s newest coach is held in by his former organisation is sparklingly clear to see from the get go.

“I’ve worked with him for five or six years now and I’ve had a million conversations with him and half of them have been about basketball. Everybody knows there’s more to coaching and building relationships than talking about what’s on the court, but there are certain people who can actually truly understand it and show they value it, and I think he’s one of them,” Stockbridge, who was named the 2021-2022 NBA G-League Executive of the Year, said.

“Where we initially brought him in was a player development/video type position. What we try to do is find people that have the work ethic and the knowledge where you can see this ball of clay, where if things work really well they can learn and grow and become a really high level coach in your own system - which he did.

“Mahmoud got on our radar, we had a few phone interviews, he had a few strong recommendations from people that knew him, and we ended up deciding to bring him in because we felt he’d be good in that player development sphere at that initial point. Then it took off from there.

“He started as an intern with us, and he learned a lot of the video after he got to us. Once you have somebody like that in your system you realise how special they can be, and he moved up quickly from there.

“We probably interviewed 20 or 30 people for that position, but once you talk to him and start to figure out what he’s about with his approach and attitude and we felt that would fit into the challenges of the G-League.”

Once he became embedded in the RGV organisation, Abdelfattah rose through the ranks remarkably quickly.

A title-winning season in his first season on the staff saw him take over the side permanently in 2019.

The Covid affected 2019-20 season was cancelled while the team held a 15-27 record. They then made the leap into the playoffs the following season.

In Abdelfattah’s third campaign in charge, he reached the pinnacle of G-League basketball once again – this time as the head coach – as the Vipers took home the championship with a side that included the likes of rising European star Usman Garuba and NBA veteran Gerald Green.

“We can armchair coach all day in terms of ‘this substitution should have been sooner’ or ‘that play should have been drawn up differently’, but the more you’re around a staff or a group of players, the guys that are truly special are the ones that people want to be around, and that’s coaching,” Stockbridge said.

Abdelfattah and his Rio Grande Valley head coach predecessor - Joseph Blair - pose with the 2019 NBA G-Legaue Western Conference title.

“Coaching is not just the x’s and o’s. It’s the relationships, it’s the ability to lead a group of people who all have different goals and backgrounds and get them to work towards one goal for the team. I think you can have all the knowledge and experience you want, but if you can’t communicate that or get that message across then what are we doing?

“With Mahmoud, people gravitate towards him, he’s got that personality, when he walks into a room people are going to know he’s there and he’s going to make sure of that. The biggest thing I would say off of that is the players truly get the understanding that he cares about them whether it’s their personal life, future, career, whatever. It’s not fake.

“He’s someone that’s real.”

“When we won the G-League championship when I was an assistant coach, we had 28 different players on the roster. The NBA may have three or four new guys through trades, 10-day contracts, stuff like that. Europe may have one or two different roster players and cut an import – similar to Australia – but primarily it’s not going to get above 17-18 guys that you’re going to see through the entire year,” Abdelfattah said.

“In the G-League you have to be able to adapt. In shootaround you might have your starting five, and then two hours before the game your entire five gets called up to the NBA and you’ve got to have a whole different game plan. It helped me prepare, going into every practice I would always have backup drills if we ran out of guys or had different NBA assignment guys come down.

“We’ve had it where guys are supposed to get to practice at 11 and their plane gets delayed, so they come mid-practice. Being able to adjust to all of those things allows you to play man-to-man or zone – because whether you like it or not you have to do that if you only have seven guys on your roster. You can’t play man-to-man for 48 minutes.

“That’s why I think the G-League is the best league to develop in as a coach.”

Abdelfattah has come to Sydney off the back of a season as an assistant coach with the Vipers’ NBA affiliate, the Houston Rockets.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Coach Mahmoud Abdelfattah has been called up to Houston Rockets ? <br><br>Thank you, Coach! ???<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RGVVipers?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RGVVipers</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VipersNation?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VipersNation</a> <a href="https://t.co/Z75F1VuLn7">pic.twitter.com/Z75F1VuLn7</a></p>&mdash; RGV Vipers (@RGVVipers) <a href="https://twitter.com/RGVVipers/status/1544400993374322688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 5, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

His rise through the ranks of that organisation was both planned and perfect. In the space of half a decade he had gone from a G-League player development intern to an assistant coach within the NBA program.

“The best way to think about it is everything we do in RGV with the Vipers is an extension of everything we do in Houston with the Rockets," Stockbridge said. “I work in our scouting department in Houston, I live in Houston, I go into the office everyday but I oversee everything to do with RGV.

“For us, it starts with Mahmoud being part of our training camps in Houston, then our Summer League program, he was around the staff and the players so it’s more than a five, six month job where you’re here and then you’re gone. He was able to build and grow through that.

“I don’t want to speak for him, but when you truly do have that extension in your program with both teams it’s easy to build and foster that relationship and move up. That’s the cut and dry version.

“The more specific to him version is he killed it in every opportunity we gave him.

“He did a really good job as an intern, so he moved into a full-time assistant role and won a championship there. The head coach went on to bigger and better, so he was in the mix to interview for the head coaching job. People believed in him and then he won a championship himself in RGV and we knew this was someone we wanted to continue to develop in our organisation.”

So now Abdelfattah finds himself in Australia – where he only landed for the first time ever last week – preparing to take over a title-fancy side, in a country he’d never been to, and a league he’s never experienced.

His hiring follows template the Kings have established for themselves over the past few years with Will Weaver and Chase Buford. Former Wildcats coach Scott Morrison also arrived in Perth after a similar development path ahead of NBL22.

Abdelfattah believes there are strong parallels to be drawn between the current growth phase of the NBL and the current landscape of the G-League.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">??? ??? ?? ???-?????? ?<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeTheKings?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WeTheKings</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL24?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL24</a> <a href="https://t.co/iRR5Y6IDiA">pic.twitter.com/iRR5Y6IDiA</a></p>&mdash; Sydney Kings (@SydneyKings) <a href="https://twitter.com/SydneyKings/status/1685921664541106177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“When I got into the G-League six years ago there were around 20 teams and now there’s 31 including the G-League Ignite, Mexico City, and Portland’s new team – if I’m not mistaken – so it’s just the growth,” he said.

“The NBL has gone from eight to ten teams in the past couple of years, and I can see growth in the next couple of years potentially adding two, four more teams.

“Then the rules they play by and the roster make-up. Having the Next Stars is very similar to the NBA G-League having NBA assignments and two-way contracts. Development of players and having the veterans is a similar mesh to what the NBA is.

“Coming over here to Australia, it’s just seeing Will Weaver, Chase Buford, Scott Morrison come through, and also the talent level of the league – there are going to be a number of first round picks in the NBL this year and I just wanted to be a part of it and learn.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Our new head coach <a href="https://twitter.com/MahmoudFattah30?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MahmoudFattah30</a> has arrived in Sydney ?<br><br>Get your ?? now ? <a href="https://t.co/k9K5FVO8v6">https://t.co/k9K5FVO8v6</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeTheKings?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WeTheKings</a> <a href="https://t.co/ouLaQTTU00">pic.twitter.com/ouLaQTTU00</a></p>&mdash; Sydney Kings (@SydneyKings) <a href="https://twitter.com/SydneyKings/status/1684772712357806080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 28, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Where it used to be almost a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for international coaches coming to our shores, Stockbridge says that’s not the case anymore – and that there will be plenty of international eyes on Abdelfattah and his Kings this season.

“Something that’s in the back of people’s minds is ‘am I going to go somewhere where people forget about me and where I disappear?’ ... there are some places that can happen, but it’s not going to happen in Australia,” he said.

“From a basketball perspective as G-League and NBA teams, we keep an eye on Australia very closely. There are players coming out of there to the NBA, so it’s a really fertile talent ground and a really fertile scouting ground where there are a lot of NBA eyes.

“It’s super competitive, you’ve got former NBA players, future NBA players, future NBA coaches – you go down the list from our perspective it’s as a good a domestic league there is outside of the NBA.

“It’s super-competitive, super-physical, it’s a brand of basketball that’s a little bit freer flowing than Europe – speaking generally – but all those things are appealing from a basketball situation, and I think there’s a lot to like about it and you’ll only see the trend continue.”

The first competitive look at Mahmoud Abdelfattah’s new-look Sydney Kings will come during the pre-season NBL Blitz. For more information on the Blitz, click here.

The Kings will then open their NBL24 season against local rivals Illawarra on Saturday, September 30.