Hibernian Hoops: From City Gyms to the World Stage
When the National Basketball Association (NBA) tipped off its 2024-2025 season in Abu Dhabi, the world saw a team with close ties to Roscommon, Clare, and one of America’s great Irish cities.
Then there was the other team – the Boston Celtics.
Most people don’t think of the Irish when considering Denver, Colorado.
And yet, Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone is one of several prominent NBA figures with ties to Ireland.
So, when millions of Americans gather around their TV sets on Christmas Day to watch some holiday hoops, they should also celebrate the Irish Americans who’ve helped move the game from asphalt playgrounds to the world stage.
Malone’s Champs
The global appeal of basketball now gives soccer a run for its money.
Forbes’ latest annual list of best-paid athletes features American hoopsters LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Giannis Antetokounmpo alongside big-time footballers like Ronaldo, Messi, and Mbappe.
That’s one reason the NBA opened its season with a much-hyped weekend of events in Abu Dhabi.
The main event was a matchup between last year’s NBA champion Celtics and Mike Malone’s 2023 title-winners, led by Serbian superstar Nikola Jokic.
Abu Dhabi might seem worlds away from the days when immigrant priests and nuns presided over overcrowded Irish parishes in Boston or Brooklyn.
That’s where Brendan McCann grew up.
One of seven children, McCann became a star at St. Bonaventure University, serving as team captain in 1957, earning an A.P. All-American Honorable Mention.
He was also a first-round draft pick for the New York Knicks, where he played for two seasons.
McCann died this past November at 89, and it’s tempting to think his sepia-toned generation is no longer contributing to the game.
However, McCann also had a long post-Knicks career as a coach and educator.
He was just one of many 20th-century gym rats and playground stars whose legacy is in the middle of basketball’s push for global domination.
Let’s start in Denver.
Harlem and Jersey City
Head coach Mike Malone’s father grew up in New York, the son of immigrants from Roscommon and Clare. He attended Harlem’s Rice High School, run by Irish Christian Brothers, before playing for the Gaels of Iona College.
The elder Malone – who died in 2023 at 88 – began his coaching career at another Christian Brothers school, Power Memorial. It counts NBA legends like Kareen Abdul Jabbar and Irish American Chris Mullin among its alums.
Meanwhile, alongside coach Mike Malone, Nuggets team president Tim Connelly – raised in Baltimore with brothers Kevin, Pat, Dan, and Joe, all of whom are also basketball professionals – is widely credited with drafting the great Nikola Jokic, who nearly led his native country to a summer 2024 Olympics victory over the U.S. squad.
And it was LeBron’s L.A. Lakers who earlier this year offered what ESPN called a “massive long-term” coaching contract to Danny Hurley – another Irish American product of “the city game.”
Hurley opted instead for a $50 million deal from the University of Connecticut, which he guided to a national championship last year.
Second Generation
Hurley – like Mike Malone – is a second-generation basketball lifer.
Danny, and his brother Bobby, played high school ball at powerhouse St. Anthony’s Catholic in Jersey City, where their legendary father – Robert Emmet “Bob” Hurley – was one of America’s top amateur coaches for nearly 50 years.
And none of these 21st-century NBA movers and shakers would have a global stage to step upon without earlier Irish American legends like Pat Riley or Jack McCloskey.
McCloskey’s daughter Molly – a longtime Sligo resident – just published a touching memoir of her father’s basketball days.
“I grew up the youngest of six, all of us obsessed with basketball,” Molly McKloskey wrote in The New Yorker. “There was a feeling of fun, of constant tumult, in our house, but my father could be a hard-ass, too. He’d grown up in eastern Pennsylvania – his father and grandfather were coal miners.”
Jack McCloskey went on to help build the great Detroit Pistons teams of the late 1980s.
New Riley Statue
The Irish-American Godfather to all of these figures is legendary player and coach Pat Riley, whose many accomplishments include winning five NBA titles as a coach and, most recently, having a statue in his honor erected outside of the L.A. Lakers home arena.
“I’m just a kid from Schenectady, New York, and here I am going to have a statue with the Lakers. My god,” Riley said.
So, if you watch Mike Malone and the Denver Nuggets on Christmas Day, you might see a lumbering Serb on his left and the long shadow of the Irish diaspora on his right.
Tom Coughlin’s Long Journey
Coaching legend Tom Coughlin may finally be inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame in 2025.
But even if the complicated voting system doesn’t quite work out for the legendary New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars coach, Coughlin has added a new chapter to his illustrious career – as an advocate for families taking care of terminally ill loved ones.
As 2024 drew to a close, more and more big-time sports names were lobbying to get Coughlin elected into the NFL Hall of Fame, possibly alongside fellow Irish American Super Bowl winner Mike Shanahan.
“There is no doubt in my mind that you belong in the Hall of Fame,” fellow Giants legend Michael Strahan wrote in People magazine. “But … please know you are already a Hall of Famer to so many you’ve touched on and off the field.”
That now includes many people who know nothing about football, but a lot about what it’s like to care for – and even lose – a loved one to long-term illness.
Coughlin’s wife, Judy, died in 2022 after a long fight against progressive supranuclear palsy.
The famously-no-nonsense Coughlin has since spoken candidly about the physical and emotional challenges of serving as her primary caregiver.
These experiences were just as crucial as various Super Bowl wins in a recent book Coughlin published entitled A Giant Win.
Meanwhile, a new generation of Irish American coaches are vying for their shots at a Super Bowl win – and maybe even NFL immortality.
They include head coaches such as Dan Quinn (Washington Commanders), Sean McDermott (Buffalo Bills), Sean Peyton (Denver Broncos), Brian Callahan (Tennessee Titans), Kyle Shanahan (Mike’s son, San Francisco 49ers), and Mike McCarthy, whose contract with the Dallas Cowboys is up at the of the year.
Midway through the 2024-2025 NFL season, the Minnesota Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell had been getting the most praise.
“The Minnesota Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell is [my] midseason choice for Coach of the Year,” Mike Sando wrote in the New York Times. “We tend to focus on coaches perceived to be doing more with less in a given season. O’Connell fits that profile. …The Vikings have [succeeded] after losing their starting quarterback to a season-ending injury during preseason.”
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