Tom Bialaszweski worked 11 years in the NBA, climbing from a video internship with the Cleveland Cavaliers to an assistant coaching job with the Los Angeles Lakers. As he spent hours and hours sifting through film in various roles, the New Yorker from the Buffalo area repeatedly visited the same thought.
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European basketball provided an untapped resource for NBA teams, an opportunity for coaches and players alike to learn actions, concepts and systems marginally or, sometimes, significantly different from what they knew and practiced in the world’s top league.
The 37-year-old Bialaszewski wants to draw from that well during his time as an assistant coach in Italy with Olimpia Milano and Ettore Messina, the legendary European coach and Gregg Popovich’s former right-hand man in San Antonio. Bialaszewski’s coaching friends and mentors say what he didn’t in a conversation with The Athletic during a team train ride to Pesaro for a league game: His work with the Italian powerhouse has the potential to be an important stop on a path toward a future NBA head coaching gig, much like Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder’s year as Messina’s assistant at CSKA Moscow.
“In anything, it’s good to get different perspectives,” Bialaszewski says. “Being immersed in it is a lot different from observing from afar. You understand, OK, this is why this is done that way. I went to school to be an education major, and they always talked about being a lifelong learner. That’s what I’m doing over here.”
Taking the job in Milan made a lot of sense for Bialaszewski. He picked up lessons at the college level 15 years before, then soaked up as much NBA knowledge as he could from 2005-16, working with the game’s biggest stars, like Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash. His time at the NBA Global Academy in Australia exposed him to the training process for young international prospects. Now in Italy, Bialaszewski is taking on the challenge of scouting scores of teams between Olimpia Milano’s domestic league, Lega Basket Serie A, and the EuroLeague, the continent’s top club competition.
“I know a few players here and there,” Bialaszewski says, “but I’m learning new coaching styles and systems since it’s my first year, and there’s also more players and systems I’m being introduced to. I don’t have that base knowledge and understanding of teams like I did in the NBA,” with its 30 franchises and far less roster attrition.
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But that’s why Messina wanted to hire Bialaszewski, who he first met in LA but kept in touch with over the years. He can help incorporate some NBA principles at Olimpia Milano while also quickly adapting to a new environment.
“He has a brilliant mind,” Messina says. “He’s poised. He has a personality that he’s positive toward the staff and very positive to the players — and that doesn’t mean he is just telling you what you want to hear. Plus, he has experience outside the U.S. You have to have an open mind to go to a foreign country and work in a completely different environment. He has that.”
Bialaszewski’s desire to learn traces back years. He’d already coached junior varsity girls’ basketball as an undergraduate at SUNY-Fredonia when he came to graduate school at the University of Louisville 15 years ago with a hunger to pick up film editing and scouting tips. He approached women’s basketball coach Tom Collen about a support role with the team.
By the next spring, Louisville’s staff respected the volunteer video coordinator for his work ethic and likability. Former assistant Greg Collins, now the head coach at Western Kentucky, still remembers Bialaszewski running a camera, laptop and DVD player (remember those?) at the same time, like a chef working an intricate recipe in the kitchen. Bialaszewski edited film for both individual players and the team and helped put together advance scouting reports on opponents, sometimes working well past midnight with Collins and other staffers.
“He worked his tail off,” Collins says.
Bialaszewski started his NBA run with the Cavs. His CV from there reads like many who grind their way up the NBA ladder: assistant video coordinator in Sacramento; assistant coach/scouting director in Reno; advance scout for New Orleans and other teams; video coordinator, then game plan coordinator, then assistant with the Lakers.
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In working with Bialaszewski in LA, Jordan Clarkson, a rookie at the time, says the young coach guided him through the critical early days of his career. “He’s been around a lot of great minds,” Clarkson says. Former Lakers assistant Larry Lewis adds that players felt comfortable around Bialaszewski, and that the young coach has a genuine interest in the standard at which the game is played. “I don’t think he is a guy who looks at basketball as just basketball,” Lewis says. “He understands what good basketball looks and feels like.”
During his time with the NBA Global Academy, Bialaszewski says he “commuted” to Australia “two months on, two months off” from his Southern California home, where his wife and two kids lived.
“Success usually comes down to personal qualities, and that’s what stands out about him,” says Steve Clifford, the Orlando Magic head coach who worked with Bialaszewski in LA. He repeatedly praised Bialaszewski’s determination, calling him a “tireless worker — I mean, tireless.” Then, he adds, “He’s bright. He goes to work. He loves to be on the floor and coach.”
When Bialaszewski took the job in Milan, fully immersing himself in the experience included bringing his family with him. He and his wife, Keitha, moved with their two young sons. While there, the Bialaszewskis want their boys to soak up as much of the culture and the language as possible.
“That’s part of the appeal of doing this — the life experience,” Bialaszewski says. “It’s for the children, too. Hopefully they can pull from this for the rest of their lives. They can know they lived here. Whether it’s travel, getting out of their comfort zones or taking a chance, the fact that they know they’ve done it will hopefully help them down the line.”
That’s the professional goal, too — that once again taking a leap to learn will pay off down the line for Bialaszewski. The people who worked with him can easily see the path from here, the one that leads him to running a team sometime in the future.
“Now, especially working with Messina, he’s on that path,” Collins says. “He has to keep doing what he’s doing, and at some point, he’ll get a shot. I have no idea what the timeline might be. But with the people he’s around and learning from, he’s on the way.”
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— The Athletic‘s Kelsey Russo interviewed Clarkson in Cleveland and Josh Robbins interviewed Clifford in Orlando for this story.
(Top Photo: Emanuele Cremaschi / Getty Images)
