South Carolina basketball hires former college basketball star as assistant coach
By David Wasson
Published:
Sam Dekker is headed back to college.
The former Wisconsin standout who played both in the NBA and professionally overseas, has landed his first coaching job as an assistant on Lamont Paris’ staff at South Carolina.
Dekker and Paris are already familiar, as Dekker played three seasons with Paris at Wisconsin from 2012-15 while Paris was an assistant. Dekker was selected in the first round by the Houston Rockets in 2015 and recorded NBA stints with the Los Angeles Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers, Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors.
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Wisconsin’s Mr. Basketball out of Sheboygan, Wisc., Dekker won an FIBA Europe Cup championship in 2022 and was a part of British Basketball league-winning teams in 2023-24.
Paris just finished his fourth season as South Carolina and is 62-69 overall (23-49 SEC) in his tenure in Columbia. The Gamecocks went 13-19 overall last season (4-14 SEC) to tie for 14th in the 16-team league. In his nine seasons as a college head coach, Paris sports a 149-140 overall record.
The Gamecocks will return two players from last season’s squad (Grant Polk and Hayden Assemian) and welcome in at least six players from the transfer portal (Kory Mincy, Shane Blakeney, Jakub Necas, Camden Heide, Aleksas Bieliauskas and Davion Hannah).
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
