Jordan Bachynski’s path to becoming an NBA coach

If you arrived early to a Boston Celtics game this season, chances are you saw the Celtics’ 6-foot-10 center Enes Kantar playing one-on-one. And, every time, a lengthy 7-foot-2 Canadian -- who wore similarly green and white attire and looked to be about Kantar’s same age -- would battle him.

That was Jordan Bachynski.

Since assuming the post as the Celtics’ Player Enhancement Coach at the start of the now-halted NBA season, being the large-framed in-house defender for Boston’s players has evolved into just one of his seemingly ever-growing roles.

At the moment he spoke with Devils Digest, Bachynski was creating a scouting report of an opposing player, watching video on his previous 250 shots and filing a report to the Celtics’ coaches on the player’s tendencies and ways to stop him.

Specific assignments differ, the overlying task oftentimes remains intact for Bachynski. Most days, and most waking hours of those days, his eyes are focused on basketball. He estimated he watched “at least” two NBA games per day during the regular season. He, like the other video guys, was assigned a specific group of opposing teams to edit film of. So watching a play really means dissecting it, figuring out what play they ran, then tagging it so the assistant coaches can find it.

It’s a lot of time, about six-to-seven hours a day, he said. But he knows there is no better situation to set him up for his future.

“It’s great coaches who I’m learning from, so I can be an assistant and head coach one day. It’s video guys showing me the ropes so I can get my foot in the door. It’s players who tell me how I can be better on the court,” Bachynski said. “It’s a great organization to be a part of.”

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Bachynski wonders how great of a player he may have become knowing what he knows now. Most retired players will tell you that, but he quickly ponders it over the phone. There’s just so much he’s picked up on, little nuances of the game that seemingly can only be wired into your brain by consuming more basketball than seems healthy.

And, so, he ponders. What would his career look like knowing everything he’s learned in Boston? His four years at Arizona State likely wouldn’t be the pinnacle of his hardwood career. And then, perhaps, his career in Europe, in the G-League, it would have been more fruitful.

“It would have made my career a lot different,” he said. “

Track Bachynski’s basketball career post-college, and it feels like he was trying to live out the plot of “Around the World in 80 Days.” He goes from Tempe to Charlotte to Turkey to New York to Orlando to Toronto to Detroit back to New York then to Japan, Spain and Southeast Asia. That’s all in a half-decade. There’s a lot of movement. A lot of short contracts. A lot of new experiences.

But, for his playing days at least, he’ll be remembered most as a Sun Devil.

After a four-year career in the desert, the 7-foot-2 center from Calgary finished as the Pac-12's all-time leader in blocked shots (314); he won the conference's defensive player of the year award recorded ASU's first-ever triple-double and helped lead the Sun Devils to the NCAA Tournament his senior season.

"I joked around and called him 'The Great Wall of Canada,'" said Larry Greer, an ASU assistant for Bachynski's final two years and now an assistant coach for the Phoenix Suns. "Defensively, he gave us protection at the rim and it allowed us to do things defensively that I thought we're pretty good for that team.

"As it got closer to the end, I think he put more and more time into it."

Though Bachynski only recorded more than 10 points his senior season, he was like a windmill in the paint. Opponents always thought they could slip the ball through his propellers. They rarely succeeded.

And when it counted the most, he came through.

Even now, even in the replays that play every year, Bachynski seems to come out of nowhere, to hang in the air as he swats a T.J. McConnell runner. You know the rest. Jahii Carson sprints down the court and dunks the ball as time in the second overtime. ASU knocks off No. 2 Arizona. Sun Devil fans storm the court. Jermaine Marshall, who hit the game-winning layup on the previous possession, and Bachynski became a part of ASU basketball lore.

“In the last timeout, we were all saying our defense was what was going to win us that game, and I took that to heart,” Bachynski said. “I saw McConnell coming right down the gut, and I knew it was my time to step up. I jumped high enough and got it.”

“Arizona, those teams, those guys are pros. I see them all the time,” Greer added. “Jordan and Jahii didn’t get enough credit -- obviously, they didn’t have the pro careers like the guys at U of A -- but for that day they were better.”

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For Bachynski, though, his position seemingly has him on the fast track towards an assistant coach job. Landing a job in Boston was perhaps his best-case scenario when he reached out to Celtics’ Assistant General Manager Austin Ainge about a year and a half ago about coaching vacancies.

The pair had formed a relationship when Ainge was a coach for Southern Utah in the late-2000’s. He tried to recruit Bachynski to Cedar City but left to be a scout for his father -- Celtics’ President of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge -- before Bachynski made his decision.

And so, Ainge sent the Canadian’s film to ASU’s coaches. A few months later, Bachynski was a Sun Devil. The two stayed in touch. But while Bachynski’s playing career was ending, Ainge’s life as an executive was soaring. He reached out once more to inquire about any coaching openings around the league.

Ainge mentioned the Celtics had a spring intern position open. Bachynski jumped on it, ingraining himself with Boston during their playoff run and then nabbing a full-time position in the offseason.

“I think because I had been in the thick of it, working so hard trying to make my career work, I forgot how much I loved basketball. Not having it reignited my love for it and I wanted to be a coach,” Bachynski said.

“The Celtics are a great place to start, to learn from, and I feel super blessed that I have my job and career ahead of me.”

Bachynski’s situation seems too good, too high up for his age, for his experience level. Greer was a bit surprised when he learned of it. Heck, it took him more than two decades to become an NBA assistant. But he knows Bachynski’s basketball resume, his personality, and his work ethic, all the things working for him to spring up the ladder.

In a business defined by relationships, Bachynski has a chance to stand out -- like Greer once did. He goes into the story of how he got his first assistant job. While an advance scout for the Portland Trailblazers and their coach Nate McMillan, Greer watched one game where New Jersey Nets head coach Lawrence Frank ran a last-second lob play for his star, Vince Carter. It worked to perfection. Greer jotted it down, knowing there would be a time to bring it to McMillan.

“I brought it up to the staff when the time was right without being pushy and Nate McMillan loved the play,” Greer said. “(On the road one night), I got a call from one of the assistant coaches who said, ‘Nate used your play.’ Nate respected what I could bring … and because of my experience with him, he moved me up (to assistant coach the next season).”

And that’s the path Bachynski hopes to follow.

“There are a good number of NBA head coaches who started off as video guys,” Bachynski said. “I am going to work as hard as I can to impress as many people as I can so that I can become a coach as soon as possible. But, I’m under no illusions, it’s not an easy thing … I made a major first step getting my foot in the door. But my work is far from over.”