Shaker grad Ben Diamond goes from Siena manager to walk-on

By Sam Blum LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. » The guards were lining up for post-up drills in the paint. That meant bodying up a team manager who would be hitting them with a puffy plastic mat. Everyone on the team had gone through them. The big men, the bigger guards, the smaller guards.

Then there was the smallest. There was Ben Diamond, the relatively short (5-foot-8), small (145 pounds) walk-on. As soon as he got passed the ball, all the guards were intently watching.

“C’mon shouted.

The manager on the other side of the plastic mat got a big grin on his face. He was enjoying the moment. He played to the crowd as Diamond muscled his way to the basket, the manager falling to the floor and the other players howling in excitement.

Diamond, a sophomore, doesn’t look like a DivisionI player. But the former Siena fan turned Siena manager is finally a Siena player too. And even if he won’t play much, he’s soaking in the experience.

“I did everything I could to make myself as visible as possible,” Diamond said. “Just from a personal standpoint, if (the other players) see me working hard knowing most likely I’m not going to play, I’m not going to get any minutes — if they see me in the gym, there’s really no excuse for them not to be in the gym.”

Diamond was one of the better players for Shaker before he graduated in 2016. Heck, he even had some looks at Division III Benny,” some schools. Playing college basketball, though, became less likely after he fractured his wrist in the second game of the season.

Diamond ended up taking a different route. One that’s allowed him to suit up for the team where he sat in section 121 row F of the Times-Union Center as a kid.

Once Jimmy Merrill graduated as Siena’s walkon of the last four years, Diamond saw an opportunity. He asked head coach Jimmy Patsos before the spring workouts what it would take to earn a roster spot. He told him just to show up to everything. Show up to the workouts. Show up to the team lifts. Then they’d re-visit it at the end of the spring.

It came as a surprise to Diamond, when, at the sports banquet at the end of the school year, Patsos announced that Diamond was the team’s newest addition.

“We take the guys from the mailroom,” Patsos said. “Not everyone comes from Northwestern. Sometimes the dudes that grind their way through get jobs. He’s grinding his way though.”

Diamond knows he won’t play much. When he gets on the court, his goal is to not turn it over and to hold his own against DivisionI players. On the bench, he’ll be as vocal as he can. In practice, he thinks the best way he can help out his teammates is by being a good shooter. It’s his biggest strength.

The whole experience a big step up for a high school graduate that had the old strength and conditioning coach pull strings to get him a managerial spot.

Said Diamond: “Coach Patsos really hooked me up.”