Dennis Gates made Missouri basketball relevant right away, and hes still got big plans

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Dennis Gates could have been anything.

After graduating from Cal in three years, he took the GRE, the MCAT and the LSAT. He was accepted into law schools and graduate programs. But Gates dreamed of being a basketball coach.

When Charlton “C.Y.” Young, then an assistant at Northeastern, showed up to recruit him at Whitney Young High School in Chicago, a counselor stopped him and asked who he was there to see. “They were loaded,” Young says. “(Future lottery pick) Quentin Richardson and all these dudes. I said, ‘I’m here to recruit Dennis Gates.’ She said, ‘Ohhhh. The Sheriff. He’s the one that’s really coaching the team and keeping these boys in line.'”

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“Some dudes born to play,” Young says now. “Some dudes born to coach.”

Gates was a high-major assistant at 24. He got his first head coaching job at 39 at Cleveland State. He was hired there in late July, which is the worst time to take a job because the recruiting cycle is over. Friends told him it was a bad job. He was committing career suicide. In his second year at Cleveland State, Gates won the Horizon League and made the NCAA Tournament. In Year 3, the Vikings won their first back-to-back league title in 36 years.

Gates practically had his pick of SEC jobs this past offseason. He choose Missouri because he believed he could achieve his grandiose aspirations there. He wants to win a national championship and be a Hall of Famer. These are things he says casually, like he believes it’s in his future.

“Dennis is not always right, and he’ll tell you he’s not always right,” Ben Braun, his college coach at Cal, says. “But you know what? He’s always sure. He’s always confident. He’s always convicted. And when you have that conviction, and you feel confident, you get other people to believe in you too.”

He’s done that quickly at Missouri, a program that had been in hibernation. The Tigers, who were picked to finish 11th in the SEC, are 19-6 after Saturday’s buzzer-beating win at Tennessee. They have been ranked as high as 20th nationally and should make the NCAA Tournament for just the third time since 2013.

Gates does this thing at practice when it’s time for the Tigers to huddle. If the enthusiasm and noise level isn’t to his liking as they come together, he’ll wave them back to do it over. He’s going to make sure his program has a certain look and feel. There’s a reason it feels like this guy knows nothing but success.

It’s a Thursday night in early January, and Gates is hanging out in his office two days before a home game against Vanderbilt. Jazz music plays as his guests enter. In the back corner is a standing desk, because Gates doesn’t want to sit all day. That can ruin your posture. A walking treadmill that will go right up against the desk is on the way. He likes to be on the move. When Gates was at Florida State as an assistant for eight seasons, coach Leonard Hamilton would regularly call out, “Where’s Gates?” Probably where you’d least expect him. Maybe football or soccer practice, watching other coaches hone their craft.

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“He’s a thinker,” Hamilton says. “He’s interested in learning how different people do things so that he can be better at who he is.”

Music never plays in Gates’ car. Always books on tape or podcasts or Ted Talks or graduation speeches. During road trips at Cleveland State, he would drive himself and follow the bus.

“It was my educational vessel,” he says. “ I think that’s the opportunity to learn. It’s like a shelter that allows you to focus, and then once you get out of it, it’s the real world, right?”

This is how Gates speaks. Always asking for affirmation at the end of every thought. It’s a way to keep his listener engaged. After beating Vanderbilt, he goes around the locker room and has every coach and player give their thoughts on the game. He’s always open to new ideas. On the day before the game, as his starters scrimmaged the scout team, he stopped practice to go over how they would guard a flare screen. The plan was to switch the action. Senior Tre Gomillion, who followed him to Columbia from Cleveland State, suggests they don’t switch and go over the top. They play it out one more possession with the switch, and then Gates decides to go with Gomillion’s idea.

“He wants you to ask questions, because he doesn’t think any questions are dumb questions,” Gomillion says. “He’d rather that than you be confused.”

Earlier this season, Gomillion lost two close family friends within a two-week span. He couldn’t sleep and shot Gates a text at 4 a.m. “I ain’t asking for no pity party,” Gomillion says he told him, “but I’m just letting you know this is where my head is at. And if I slip up … just pick me up.”

The next day a reporter asks a question about Gomillion and DeAndre Gholston coaching their teammates in the huddle and whether that started at Cleveland State. This triggers Gomillion’s emotions, thinking about how Gates had taught him so much off the court and empowered him to have a voice. He covers his face as he answers the question, and Gates puts his arm around him, asking Gholston to help answer. A minute later, as Gholston is answering another question, Gates looks over to Gomillion and makes sure he’s OK.

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Gates can get to Mizzou Arena immediately if his players need him. He purposefully bought a house down the street within walking distance. Outside of his desk in the corner, the rest of Gates’ office is designed like a living room. He’s got a sectional couch and two chairs surrounding a coffee table with a top that’s a basketball court on a white board. He wants his players to feel at home there. In the spring after he arrived, the three holdover Mizzou players — Kobe Brown, Kaleb Brown and Ronnie DeGray — spent hours in his office talking one night. “Probably four or five hours,” Brown says. “And it wasn’t even about basketball.”

Brown was undecided whether he’d stay or transfer when he first met his new coach. Gates told Brown that if he wasn’t invited to Brown’s wedding one day, then he didn’t do his job. But a clever line can be forgotten. Brown was won over when he went home after their meeting and Gates kept calling, working on getting to know him.

Gomillion was Gates’ first recruit at Cleveland State. The first time Gates talked to Gomillion, they spent eight hours on the phone, and Gates also talked to his dad, mom, brother and high school coach. “The other coaches recruiting me barely talked to me,” Gomillion says. “Even now he wants to know everything. If he’s recruiting near my family, he goes to see them. He doesn’t even tell me. He just calls them.”

“He is a relationship collector,” Missouri assistant coach Dickey Nutt says. “It’s amazing. He never forgets anyone. He meets people and three years later, he’ll walk by and say, ‘Hey, Bill, how you doing?’”

Omar Wilkes, the head of basketball at Klutch Sports Group, played at Cal from 2005-07 when Gates was an assistant there. “He’s the coach I stay in contact with the most from my playing days,” Wilkes says, adding that it’s usually not about basketball but family. Wilkes has twin boys who just turned 4. “He’s already started recruiting them,” Wilkes says. “Wherever he is in 14 years, they’re his.”

When Gates was at Cal, he’d go back home in the summers to Chicago and volunteer to rebound for Tim Grover, best known as Michael Jordan’s trainer. Grover also worked out NBA prospects, and NBA front-office people were constantly coming through his gym. Grover encouraged Gates to start making connections. He also told him to wear a suit. So one day after a workout, Gates quickly showered, put on his Sunday best and started introducing himself.

“That was so intimidating,” he says. “But you only get past that if you do it. You can say you’re not scared. But to be able to break that barrier, man, and shake somebody’s hand that you don’t know, and they look at you like you’re crazy. Like, who are you? Right? That is something that you have to face, to be comfortable turning a stranger into a friend.”

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Gates kept putting himself in the right spots. Every summer, he’d also work Jordan’s camp in Santa Barbara, Calif. It was there that he sought out George Raveling, the former college coach and Nike executive. He told Raveling he wanted to be just like him. He’d have the same conversation a few years later when he was a graduate assistant at Florida State, a job he got because of his connection to Raveling.

“It became George Raveling and Leonard Hamilton’s dream to see my dream come true,” Gates says. “And that is more powerful than anything.”

Raveling also introduced Gates to Kevin Eastman, who was training NBA players at the time, and Gates would rebound during those workouts. When Gates tore ligaments in his left ankle during his final NBA Draft workout with the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2002, he went to Los Angeles to rebound for NBA players in town, including his childhood friend and high school teammate Quentin Richardson, who was two years into his NBA career with the Los Angeles Clippers.

After seeing him at the gym several times, Clippers coach Alvin Gentry and then-assistant Dennis Johnson pulled Gates aside and offered to create an unpaid internship for him to work with the team. He accepted and did anything he could to help — sweeping the floor every day, filling up waters, rebounding, going to get donuts.

“I was a glorified manager,” he says.

Gates got by thanks to Richardson, who let him live at his house, and the other Clippers helped him out by giving him their per diems on the road. Gates also earned the respect of the coaches. He begged Johnson to let him help with scouting reports. His coaching wheels started spinning. He’d be at dinner with Richardson drawing on napkins, diagramming plays.

Richardson gave him grief for that — “Mannnn, you’ve been trying to coach me since high school” — but Richardson also encouraged him to pursue a career in the profession. “When you have friends in your life that protect your dreams no matter what they are, that means you surrounded yourself with good people,” Gates says.

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Gates kept adding people to his corner at every stop. He’d find the best coaches wherever he was — no matter the sport — and go watch their practices. “I was just curious,” he says. “I was always curious.” He’d eventually ask those coaches about leadership or strategy. The stuff he liked he’d end up putting in his toolbox. The other coaches never felt bothered, because the interest was genuine.

“I think that the best thing I can say about Dennis, and I feel this way about all real leaders, is it didn’t matter what the environment was where we see each other, he treated you like you’re the most important guy in that room,” says Mark Krikorian, the former Florida State women’s soccer coach. “And it could have been myself or Bobby Bowden or Jimbo Fisher or whomever. When he was speaking with you, he was as equally engaged with you as he was everyone else.

“That was one of the qualities I really believe probably helped with recruiting. I heard he was a magnificent recruiter and always engaged, always listening, always open and he was present. He was in the moment.”

One of Gates’ most important recruits, when he got the Mizzou job, was Young, whom he’d worked alongside at Florida State for eight years. One year, after Florida State beat Duke, Gates told Young that the first one of them to get a high-major head coaching job would hire the other as lead assistant. When Mizzou hired Gates, he called Young (with Hamilton’s blessing) and told him, “It’s time. Please. I need you.”

Gates needed Young to be his accountability partner. At the end of every month, Gates sits on Young’s couch and asks for honest feedback. In October, Young told Gates he’d been “pretty damn good,” except for one thing. He’d been using the wrong pronoun when barking out orders. He kept saying “my team.” This is my way.

“You can lose your team in one sentence in this generation,” Young told him. “ You got to say our team.”

The next day Gates immediately addressed it with his players. “Hey, fellas. I’m sorry. This is our team, our program, and if I slip up, I need y’all to tell me.”

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Young says everyone feels like they have ownership in the program, because everyone has a say. One example: Mizzou categorizes shots as gold, silver or bronze. Gold is a shot at the rim; silver is a kick-out 3 and bronze is a mid-range pull-up jumper. Who came up with that? Perin Foote, the 25-year-old player development coordinator.

“That’s the beauty of Dennis Gates,” Young says. “He wants suggestions. He wants to be challenged.” Young brings back up the October meeting. “You think I’m telling Tom Izzo that? You think I’m telling (John) Calipari that? That’s where Dennis is different.”

Missouri’s first opportunity this season to get a signature win came at Wichita State on Nov. 29. It was the first road game and at one of the loudest venues in the sport. The Shockers may be a middling AAC team but were at their best that night and led by 10 with just over five minutes left.

“The crowd noise startled us a little bit,” Gomillion says.

At the under-four media timeout, Gates told his players, “Put your blinders on.”

“Don’t look at this clock,” he said. “I’ll look at the clock for you. You play one play at a time. I’ll let you know what the score is. Don’t worry about that.”

The Tigers scored on their next five possessions, forcing overtime and winning 88-84.

That night, Gates employed a strategy he learned four years earlier at an NCAA Champions forum: pause practice. Before he addresses his team in timeouts or whenever he’s in a pressure-packed situation, he makes sure to pause and think clearly before acting.

“I was a ferocious player, right? If I coached exactly on the sidelines how I played, I would get tech after tech,” he says. “But I’ve developed into that image that Coach Ham has helped me develop into. There’s no way I’m able to be as cerebral and make (clear) decisions without controlling my own pulse, right? I think that’s a talent, but also a skill of composure that ultimately impacts your team too.”

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This is one of the many gifts Hamilton gave him. Gates worships his mentor, who taught him how to run a successful program. But great students take lessons from multiple teachers and places, and that’s what Gates has done.

His system is not an exact replica of the Seminoles. Defensively, the Tigers may resemble them eventually because, like Hamilton, Gates loves length and athleticism and prioritizes that in recruiting. Mizzou’s 2023 class has a 7-footer, a 6-8 forward and a 6-3 point guard.

“The best skill he has is he’s an unbelievable evaluator,” Hamilton says. “He can see what players will become as opposed to what they are at the moment.”

But Gates, more so than his old boss, puts a premium on shooting. That’s because he runs a system that caters to where the game has gone: position-less, uptempo and spaced.

As he starts rattling off his inspirations, it’s like a history lesson. The strategy of the game always fascinated him. As a child he’d watch his hometown Chicago Bulls run Tex Winter’s triangle offense, and he’d diagram the movements on paper. His offense has a lot of Princeton actions. “I saw Princeton moving in the same systematic way, and I was intrigued by it,” he says.

Mizzou is not a Princeton replica. Gates has put his own spin on it. Most Princeton offenses at the college level work deep into the shot clock. Gates always knew he wanted to play fast once he became a head coach. It’s why he would visit Jim Crutchfield, a NAIA coach at Nova Southeastern. Crutchfield is known for coaching a fast-paced, efficient offense, and Brad Stevens and Erik Spoelstra have consulted with him. Gates had sought Crutchfield out years earlier and even considered hiring his assistant coach.

Gates knows playing fast is not simply playing with freedom; it has to be taught. He puts in constraints during the preseason, such as four-second backcourt violations and not taking the ball out of bounds after a made basket.

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The Tigers rank second nationally in transition points per game, per Synergy. They shoot 3s — early in the shot clock and often. Gates has a reason for every strategical element to his attack. And often it’s psychological as much as what he sees as the best practice.

“I grew up in an era where dunking — Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Dominique Wilkins — was the dagger,” he says. “The 3-pointer is the dagger now.”

And pushing the pace?

“Usually when you are empowered,” he says, “you’re less likely to abuse your freedom.”

Yes, it looks like his players play with a ton of freedom, but it’s mapped out for them. It’s a read-and-react offense in which the defensive response will trigger an action. The Tigers speak in codes, a language that sounds foreign to a visitor, and, more importantly, to opponents.

Not every quick shot is applauded either. During a practice last month, one player posting up on the right block, spins baseline, gets slightly off balance and has a reverse layup fail to draw iron. Once the action stops, Gates tells him: “Down there, that’s not acceptable offense. I want you to be aggressive, but be aggressive on things we’ve been doing since June-July.”

Getting the very best shot is a priority. When Gomillion drives baseline and then  kicks the ball out for a 3-pointer, Gates points out that he’s “gotta see the 45 cut.” Against Vandy, Gomillion finds Aidan Shaw on that very cut for an and-one.

Gates uses imagery that’s easy to remember. To Gholston, when his defender is guarding him closely and he’s about to come off a screen, he says, “I want you to win the hand war like an offensive lineman.”

His delivery is mostly calm. Never angry. The Tigers work efficiently but never hurried. As the regulars go live against the scout team, walk-on Jackson Francois jab steps baseline and Noah Carter reacts, dropping back his left foot. “Hell, no,” Gates says. “Who is that?”

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Francois is playing the part of Vanderbilt sharpshooter Myles Stute, who was compared to Klay Thompson in the scouting report. Gates makes Francois jab step again, and Carter instinctively reacts again. He emphasizes the importance of staying pressed up against Stute. He makes Francois repeat the move until Carter no longer moves and then two more times for emphasis. Stute scored two points and attempted only five shots the next day.

Coaches who have worked with Gates call him “the chosen one.”

“These kind of guys don’t come along very often,” Hamilton says. “Dennis has that it factor that sometimes you can’t put a finger on, very similar to Bill Self when I hired him. You could just tell these guys were born to coach.” 

It already feels like he’s succeeded in his first year at Missouri. But it’s not lost on him that this can flip quickly. He says 47 different teams were ranked last season. Ten of those didn’t make the tournament.

That knowledge makes it hard for him to enjoy any of this in the moment. “This is when my mentors say, enjoy the little things,” he says.

No matter what happens from here, though, this season is a success. Because we’re talking about Mizzou again. People there care.

After the Vandy win, the first thing Gates says to his players in the locker room is, “I ask you all to give me one thing, your very what?”

“Best,” they shout back.

“At all times,” he says.

Gates will put up blinders to everything else for his players, and he’ll keep searching for answers wherever he can find them.

Odds are, it’s going to work out for the guy.

(Top photo of Sean East II and Dennis Gates: Wade Payne / AP)

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