The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Dunleavy following in father’s footsteps
Quinnipiac’s Dunleavy following a familiar path
HAMDEN » Baker Dunleavy’s earliest basketball memories are vivid, and fairly typical of a coach’s son.
He’d accompany his dad to practices, stay up late nights while dad watched film, even served as a ball boy during games.
Typical, indeed — until you realize his dad is Mike Dunleavy, Sr., who was head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers at the time. And the players at those practices were guys like Sam Perkins, Byron Scott, James Worthy and a certain 6-foot-9 point guard named Magic Johnson.
Dunleavy remembers Magic’s leadership skills, and how helpful he was to his father, who was in his first season as a head coach at any level.
“I do remember thinking to myself, ‘This guy’s got it under control,’” Dunleavy said. “It made my dad’s transition easier. If Magic chose to, he could have made life really hard on my dad. He could have said, ‘You’re not Pat Riley, you’re not my guy.’ But he embraced him.”
Mike Dunleavy, Sr. wound up coaching four different NBA teams over 17 years. Not all of Baker’s memories of those years were positive.
During some lean years in Milwaukee, fans and media were often critical, and Baker remembers how tough it was for his mom, Emily, and recalls “my dad’s continued perseverance and hard-working nature, and our family needing
FROM PAGE 1 to push through all the criticism. It was hard.”
Baker wound up playing four years at Villanova, helping the Wildcats to the Elite Eight as a senior in 2006. After graduating, he spent a year playing overseas. Here he was, from the ultimate basketball family (older brother, Mike, Jr., won a national title at Duke and was in the midst of an NBA career himself; younger brother James played at USC and is now an NBA agent). Yet in 2008, Baker Dunleavy was looking to move out of his “comfort zone” of basketball and try something a little different.
So he took a job on Wall Street with Merrill Lynch.
“I just felt like it was a natural fit for me, almost to the point where I didn’t feel like I would ever get a chance to put my degree to work,” Dunleavy recalled. “I was like, ‘Let’s just see if you can do this, enjoy it, be fulfilled by it, so that when it comes time to be in your 30’s and 40’s, and you’re having a family, you can have a somewhat normal life.’”
“And,” he added, with a smile, “I did not follow through on that.”
No, the basketball bug was too much for Dunleavy to shake, and by 2010 he was back at Villanova, on Jay Wright’s staff as director of baseball operations. He quickly made his way up the ranks, first as an assistant, then as associate head coach, a position he held in 2016 when the Wildcats won their second national championship.
Now, Dunleavy is embarking on his first journey as a head coach, after being named Quinnipiac’s seventh head coach in its 67-year history on March 28.
It’s a journey that will involve highs and lows, successes and failures, praise and criticism. And, if Dunleavy is as successful here as many in college basketball believe he’ll be, it’s a journey that certainly won’t end at Quinnipiac and ultimately lead to bigger, more high-profile jobs.
“If he was a stock, I’d be buying him,” said his father, with more than a tinge of irony. “He’s gonna have a great future.”
Of course, that will also mean a break from the stability and “somewhat normal life” Baker Dunleavy was thinking about when he took that job on Wall Street nearly a decade ago. In fact, his first three months on the job have been largely away from his young family, which had still been living in the Philadelphia area. That changed on Friday, when Dunleavy’s wife, Chrissi, and daughters Rosie, 3, and Caroline Claire, who was born just a couple of weeks before Dunleavy was hired, moved into the family’s newly-purchased home in Fairfield County.
Few would be more prepared for life in a basketball family than Baker Dunleavy.
“Obviously, when you talk purely basketball, you can’t get much more fortunate than to attend NBA practices growing up,” Baker said. “That’s kinda like your Saturday with your dad: go to work, and instead of going to an office, you’re going to a practice facility or to a game or on a road trip. So, that part of it is so unique. But, really, off the court, during good times and bad, seeing how (my parents) handled the life of a coach ... my dad never brought home any anger or frustration, disappointment. You could see it, and it was natural, but he handled it so well.”
“And for my mom, she really just handled the moves from city to city incredibly gracefully. And also helping us adapt to new cities and meet new people. That’s probably the toughest part of being a coach’s kid. There are so many great things that come along with it, but you’ve got to be able to have thick skin, and you’ve got to be able to adapt. I’m sure there were so many times that were hard on their relationship, but they never let it show to us. They gave us great strength in that way.”