Former Portland Trail Blazers guard Brandon Roy retired prematurely from the NBA after three all-star appearances and six seasons plagued by injury! After this he could not stand to be around the sport!

This past December he told the Portland Tribune “I didn’t go to any NBA games. You just miss it. It’s like you see your girlfriend, and she’s walking around with this new guy. It wasn’t anything anybody had done to me. I just felt it was hard to be around the game.”

However, he was enticed back into the sport this winter as he went for an interview as the head coaching job at Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School. The team were losers, plain and clear, finishing 3-18 last season! They had five coached in five years, something wasn’t right!

Compared to his $82.9 million as an NBA player the $6,000 salary wasn’t the drawing factor. Maybe it was the challenge!

Yahoo Sports reported:

Within months of his hiring, seven players transferred to Hale, headlined by the nation’s top-ranked player, Michael Porter Jr., and younger brothers Jontay and Corban, whose father accepted an assistant coaching job at Roy’s alma mater, University of Washington, where Michael and Jontay are committed.

The influx of talent, including four more local prep stars, led to questions about whether or not Roy orchestrated the entire process, but he insisted he never spoke with any of them before their transfers, and they all maintain they just wanted the chance to learn the game from a local legend.

“We weren’t considering Nathan Hale at all when we first moved to Seattle,” Porter told the Seattle Times. “Then we heard (Brandon) might be coaching at the school and thought, ‘Wow, that would be a unique experience.’ We can go into this together and try to make something great happen.”
And learn, they did.

Playing hard-nosed defense and up-tempo offense, Hale has started 22-0, and it’s no cupcake schedule. The Raiders play in Seattle’s Metro League, one of the country’s most consistently tough conferences, producing Jamal Crawford, Jason Terry and Nate Robinson, among other notable names, and finishing with the top three teams in Washington’s Class 3A state tournament last season.

In December, Hale swept through the prestigious Les Schwab Invitational in Portland, knocking off the country’s top-ranked team, California’s Sierra Canyon School, in the final. A couple weeks later, they edged defending national champion Oak Hill Academy at the Hoophall Classic in Springfield, Mass.

What a story! Read more in Yahoo Sports here.

Watch Coach give an awesome post-game speech below!