Leaving Wall Street

Back in the early 1980s, while still in the midst of an eight-year NBA playing career, Mike Dunleavy took a job at Merrill Lynch. In 1984, he hurt his back, retired and went into an MBA training program. He spent the next two years working on Wall Street, enjoying it and having quite a bit of success.

But one night in 1987, after Milwaukee had played the New Jersey Nets, Dunleavy went out to dinner with Bucks coach Don Nelson and was offered an assistant coaching job.

“I tried to prove I could do something other than basketball,” Dunleavy recalled. “Once I did, I was gonna give the coaching world a shot.” Sound familiar? More than 20 years later, Baker was doing well on Wall Street and also had a nice side gig announcing on the Big East Network. He had other offers to join coaching staffs, but balked until Jay Wright called.

“He called me,” Mike remembered, “told me there was an opening at Villanova, and he was gonna take a big pay cut and go do it.”

Dunleavy, Sr. never really thought any of his three sons would get into coaching. Though, admittedly, he never gave it much thought.

“The boys all played, they spent a lot of time with me,” Mike recalled. “They’d be in the office playing, as little kids, while I was watching films. A lot of that sunk in. Along the way, we’d have conversations about everything: strategy, things like that.”

But all along, Baker was soaking it all in: Magic’s leadership, his dad’s spirited conversations with Scottie Pippen in Portland, everything.

“Those are the things, you get a feel for what the NBA is,” said Baker. “When you’re an NBA head coach, it’s not necessarily always telling the guys what to do. You’ve got to sell them on things. I learned that at a really young age. It’s part of the reason while I really like college. You still have to do that, but at the same time, the age range of 18-22 year-olds, they’re there to develop.”

Baker Dunleavy knows there could be some growing pains in his first season as head coach at any level. Two of Quinnipiac’s top three scorers (guards Mikey Dixon and Peter Kiss) have transferred, along with a few other players.

“As far as I’m concerned, everybody’s a new guy. I’m a new guy. So, growing pains? Definitely,” Dunleavy said. “How it reflects in wins and losses, I don’t know. You could look at our record, preseason, and say you won a good amount of games, and there could still be growing pains. It’s part of the process. I don’t think we should shy away from that. In fact, I think we’ve got to embrace it. We can’t judge ourselves off of results early on. We’ve got to establish a foundation.”

Buy this stock now, indeed. The value should only increase.