I was at a low point: How the Pistons Summer League coach grinded his way up

The duties bound with life in the shadows of an NBA organization were starting to wear on Jordan Brink.

Sunset was transitioning into sunrise before Brink’s head could touch his pillow. The stimulation from hours of staring at a computer screen, clipping various sets, actions and tendencies of rival teams wouldn’t allow his mind to shut basketball off. The anxiety that comes with pleasing your superiors — which, in this case, are NBA coaches with a lot on the line — regularly bubbled.

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Last year, Brink, who has been part of the Detroit Pistons organization in various roles since 2014, needed to take a step back. He was burnt out. Family events often took place with him tuning in via FaceTime. He had to hear about the memories his friends created secondhand. It’s often the cost of choosing such a profession, which comes with a 24/7 lifestyle that outsiders struggle to comprehend.

One day, Brink enjoyed what he was doing. Loved it. The next, he wondered if it was time to finally put his business degree to use. The light at the end of the tunnel constantly fluttered.

Brink had a decision to make.

“I think anytime you’re pursuing a dream there are high and lows, as well as moments of clarity where you feel like this is what you should be doing and moments when you have doubt and realize you’re sacrificing so much and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Brink told The Athletic. “I have a unique route because, last season, my last season of being a head video guy, I reached burnout. I hit the wall. I thought I was going to get out of basketball.”

After years in the Pistons’ video room, working for two different Detroit head coaches, the 30-year-old Brink has spent the last year in his new role as player-development coach, a job he cherishes. He’s tasked with preparing the Pistons’ young core for success on and off the court. This summer, Casey added an additional role for Brink: coach of Detroit’s Summer League team.

The Pistons aren’t taking their stint in Las Vegas lightly. Last year’s No. 1 pick Cade Cunningham is on the roster. Third-year players Saddiq Bey, Isaiah Stewart and Killian Hayes, too. Potentially three starters once the NBA regular season begins will be taking part in NBA Summer League. The rebuilding franchise is in the midst of, arguably, its most critical summer in recent history. The development of its young talent will determine the organization’s success over the next decade. Casey enlisted Brink to help set the tone for the next year, a season resembling a college-like atmosphere for the Pistons’ young core, filled with an emphasis on individual development and team bonding as the organization tries to climb its way back to relevancy.

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For Brink, this opportunity is a far cry from where he was just a year ago.

“It definitely was special to me (to be named Summer League coach) because of where I was a year and a half ago,” Brink said. “I was at a very low point. For me, it’s more a culmination of all my experiences and relationships I’ve made over the last six, seven years in the NBA. It’s a full-circle moment. Honestly, for me, it’s a big honor because of the people, players and coaches we have with the Pistons … they’re all hard-working and high character. To be able to represent our organization and this group of people, it’s special to me. We have high-character people and players. To be asked to represent that, it’s the biggest honor.”

The role of player-development coach is what Brink always envisioned himself doing if he were to ever get into coaching.

Throughout high school, the South Holland, Ill., native would make the 30-minute trek north to Chicago every day in the summers to volunteer at ATTACK Athletics, a gym founded by famous basketball trainer Tim Grover, who trained the likes of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. There, Brink helped work out NBA and college players all while still focusing on his goal of playing college basketball. Even at this time, though, despite being surrounded by numerous current NBA assistant coaches and other basketball big shots, Brink still didn’t aspire to be a coach. Basketball was just what he loved to do. He consumed it. The opportunity with Grover not only allowed him to be around some of the game’s greatest minds, but also enabled him to use the gym in the mornings to get a workout in himself. A win-win situation.

After high school, Brink went on to play collegiately at Calvin University (2010-15), a Division III school in Grand Rapids, Mich. It was at Calvin that he started to consider getting into coaching. During his senior year, Brink took 12 credits in the fall and just one credit in the spring to remain eligible to play. That same year, the Springfield Armor of the NBA G League had been purchased by the SSJ Group and was relocated to Grand Rapids and re-branded as the Grand Rapids Drive. The Pistons made the Drive their minor-league affiliate. The pro basketball team was practicing at Calvin University that first season while Brink was finishing up his collegiate career. While doing that, Brink volunteered to help out for the Drive during practices. His duties were things like running the shot clock, scrubbing sweat off the floor and being an extra body in drills.

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The gruntiest of grunt work.

“I treated it as a job,” Brink said.

He did not escape the Pistons’ notice. Front office members at the time — Pat Garrity, Andrew Loomis and Jeff Bower — regularly visited Grand Rapids to keep an eye on some of the young prospects in Detroit’s organization. Brink’s hard work and playing background caught their eye on these visits. After graduating, Brink was offered a summer internship in the Pistons’ front office by Garrity.

“He’s never been afraid of putting the work in, even if there’s no glory,” Brink’s college coach, Kevin Vande Streek, told The Athletic. “And he got plenty of glory. He was a great player in college, an All-American. He hit many game-winning shots that people will never forget. However, he put the work in when people weren’t there. No one saw it. All the behind-the-scenes stuff with his teammates. Him embracing the grind isn’t surprising to me. If he has a goal in mind, he’s willing to do what it takes to get there.”

By the end of the summer of 2015, after months of helping the Pistons prepare for the draft, participating in workouts and taking on other responsibilities, Brink was presented another opportunity by Detroit. Head coach and team president Stan Van Gundy took a liking to the 23-year-old’s work ethic and offered him a position as a video intern for the following NBA season. Brink had a decision to make, as he was also sitting on an offer to go to Michigan State’s basketball program to work as a graduate assistant under Tom Izzo. The appeal of the NBA game interested Brink more.

In the NBA world, life as a video intern is as grueling as it gets. It comes with enormous responsibility, late nights and early hours. There’s seclusion. Attention to detail must be sharp. Imposter’s Syndrome, naturally, kicks in. Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is the most famous NBA head coach to rise from the lowly ranks of the video room. Sacramento Kings head coach Mike Brown and Milwaukee Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer are two other current head coaches who took this route. There aren’t many. It takes a certain type of dedication to see a journey with this starting point through.

As video intern, Brink had duties such as chopping up opposing teams’ game film for coaches to scout. While the Pistons were playing at home, Brink was somewhere in the hallways of an NBA arena watching a different team on Detroit’s upcoming schedule in preparation. When Detroit was on the road, he was back at the offices doing the same duties. If the opponent was playing on the west coast or was a Western Conference team, Brink wouldn’t get done gathering his clips until about 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. At 8 a.m., he had to be back at Detroit’s practice facility to give the coaching staff his findings.

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“You’re working the night shift, but you’re also responsible for the day shift,” Brink said.

At the end of the 2016 season, Brink was bumped up to assistant video coordinator. The duties are similarly grueling to his previous title, but now he was asked to travel with the team. Brink held that role for two seasons, and it was at the end of the 2017-18 campaign when he experienced his first scare in the business. After Detroit missed the playoffs and finished with a 39-43 record, Van Gundy and the Pistons parted ways. Brink assumed that meant he needed to find another job. The guy who brought him in was heading out of town.

“I was very nervous,” Brink said. “When you get into this business, you always hear about how the job security is a concern. When a new coach came in, I assumed I wouldn’t be brought back because he’d just bring in people that he knew already.”

Brink began to job search.  He called around with every intention of leaving. He eventually got an offer from another NBA team to be in their video room and was preparing to move. Then, shortly after Casey was hired in 2018, the two sat down to discuss Brink’s future.

“I talked to a lot of people on Stan’s staff, which is what you normally do,” Casey said. “Jordan was very impressive in that. He’s grown as a coach each year. He’s gone from video coordinator to development coach. Now, he’s doing a good job with the X’s and O’s. He’s growing as a coach. He’s got a really bright future.”

As is the case in most professions, and for those chasing the dream, whatever it may be, doubt met Brink on his journey. Even with a new role and a new coach believing in him, Brink started to question what the future held.

Four years after joining Detroit’s organization, Brink had yet to make it out of the video room, the initiation space for many NBA outsiders trying to break into the prestigious club. He couldn’t picture an exit, either. Brink wasn’t even sure what it exactly was that he wanted next. He just knew that those responsibilities, long nights and stagnation were starting to overwhelm him.

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“I had started to look into other opportunities, career-wise,” Brink said. “I’ve got a degree in business.”

Brink said he was grateful for every opportunity given to him up to that point, but that he would be lying if he said it all didn’t start to weigh on him.

“If you count the G League season, which I was grinding like crazy, working late nights, from 2014-15 all the way until 2021, it took a toll,” Brink said. “I was missing a wedding for a friend, family events. I had a period in my life where I wondered if it was worth it. There were times I didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

The head video coordinator is, essentially, the head coach’s right-hand man. Brink had to make sure Casey had everything he needed on his computer, from a preparation standpoint and from a practice organization standpoint. His job was to make sure that film was precise, the details were nuanced and that the coaching staff could come right in and begin working without any hiccups.

It’s a lot of responsibility. A screw-up can cause a practice to be delayed; a game to be lost. Instructions need to be precise.

For two seasons (from 2018-20), Brink held this role. At the end of the 2020 season, Brink had officially reached his breaking point. He sat down with Casey and told him he needed to briefly figure out what he wanted.

“I had to take a step away and take care of myself,” Brink said. “I expressed that to (Dwane Casey), that I was going through things off the court. He was receptive to that. I ended up being able to stay with Detroit and he promoted me after that season.”

Brink is entering Year 2 as a player development coach, and his passion for the game has come back. He works night and day with the Pistons’ young players, putting them through workouts, studying film with them and, most importantly, forming relationships that he hopes leads to their future success. Brink has worked closely with No. 5 pick Jaden Ivey since his arrival in Detroit. They have spent the last two weeks working out on the court, and Brink is helping him get acclimated to life in Detroit.

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“He’s taken me in,” Ivey, the No. 5 pick, said. “He’s picking me up from my hotel at 7 a.m. in the morning and working out with me. I thank him for getting up early and helping me work on my game.

Brink, finally, is living his dream.

“I didn’t grow up wanting to be a coach from an X’s and O’s standpoint,” Brink said. “The thing about coaching, for me, is the relationship aspect, getting players to buy in and work together for a common goal. I love this part of the job, the player development one. It’s relationship based. The better relationship you have with a player, the more he’s likely to let you coach him hard and take advice when you have teaching points for him.”

Brink is out of the shadows and, in Las Vegas, will be at the forefront. He doesn’t care about that, though. The opportunity to represent an organization that has continuously believed in him even when he didn’t is where the excitement for this opportunity stems from.

Being hands-on is important to Brink. Aiding in making players better to serve the common collective is what he lives for. It’s something that’s always been in him. It took him a little bit to find it, but those close to him always knew he would.

“Jordan is what I would call a ‘behind the scenes’ leader,” Vande Streek said. “He’s not General Patton, out there screaming at people. He gets to know people, so when he asks something of people, they don’t want to let him down because they appreciate him so much. I thought he would end up going the general manager route. Maybe he still will. To me, evaluation, getting to know people … that’s what he likes. He’s grown a lot in his time with the Pistons. He’s smart, a bright guy. He can do anything he wants.”

(Top photo credit of Jordan Brink: Photo courtesy of the Pistons)

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