PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS ASSISTANT COACH - DAVID VANTERPOOL - ALL-MET ELITE

PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS

ASSISTANT COACH 

 DAVID VANTERPOOL 

 ALL-MET ELITE

 

MONTGOMERY BLAIR HS.

SILVER SPRING MD.

 

Vanterpool, graduated from St. Bonaventure in 1995, and spent the next twelve years playing professional basketball overseas (interspersed with a brief 22-game stint with the Washington Wizards in 2000-01). After a brief assistant coaching stint with CSKA Moscow, Vanterpool spent two years as the head scout for the Oklahoma City Thunder before joining the Portland Trail Blazers as an assistant coach last August.

 

He's essentially served as Damian Lillard's mentor since joining the Blazers. In an interview prior to last season, Lillard had nothing but glowing things to say about the assistant coach:

"I've been working with coach David a lot," Lillard said. "Even when I first got here we got up every morning to work out before the team workouts and all the lifting. I think we're building a relationship.  

I ride with him to the track to do conditioning. We talk there and back... Me and David, we really hit it off when I first got here... We've been working on a lot of pick-and-rolls, in-between stuff, floaters, pull-up jumpers, keeping it simple."

 

"They say players like coaches who sweat with them," Lillard said. "Every morning, he's out there sweating with me. Working hard with me. He's kind of a younger guy, he knows how we are.

He knows how it is, what we like to do, what we're interested in. To have someone like that who is around, a coach, who isn't afraid to get on you, to tell you what you need to hear, instead of what you want to hear, it's always a good thing."