MADISON – Sam Dekker just turned 32 years old. He’s not ready for this level of respect from the younger generation.
“I see guys coming up and they see me and they call me Mr. Dekker,” he said. “I’m like, ‘No. I’m Sam’.”
The former University of Wisconsin basketball star is 11 years removed from his days playing with the Badgers and five months past his final game as a pro.
The recent retiree is at a crossroads and as he moves into a new sector of his life, here comes another title for a guy who isn’t very interested in them.
Coach.
Last month Dekker was hired as an assistant coach at South Carolina. The move reunites the Sheboygan native with former UW assistant Lamont Paris, who is entering his fifth season as the Gamecocks’ coach.
For someone whose father spent 37 years as a high school coach, joining the coaching ranks was the next natural progression for Dekker’s life in basketball.
Giving up the game, however, wasn’t easy. After five-plus years in the NBA, he finished his career overseas. He spent the past three years with Joventut Badalona in Spain.
“I still think about it all the time, but I don’t have time to dwell right now,” Dekker said. “I have a job to do and I have to do that to the best of my ability. I think in your core and in your heart you’ll always be a player and that is what I want to instill in other guys, that the game is forever in you and it’s always going to be in you.”
On May 28, Dekker was one of 12 former Badger athletes announced as inductees in the University of Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame. After the ceremony, he re-lived some of his days in the Cardinal and White and looked ahead to the challenge of a new job.
Coaching opportunitiy was one Dekker couldn’t pass up
At South Carolina, Dekker will not only work with Paris but also former Badger Tanner Bronson, who has been Paris’ assistant since their days at Chatanooga.
Dekker will have a role in all facets of coaching with a focus on on-court development.
“When the offer officially came, it was something me and my wife didn’t really have to think too much about,” Dekker said. “We had the hard conversation, but it was an opportunity you really can’t pass up, at that level with a staff like that. We’re extremely grateful and couldn’t be more excited.”
Dekker played for Wisconsin for three seasons and finished his career with 1,363 points. In 2014-15, his final season, he earned second-team all-Big Ten distinction and was the NCAA West Region Most Outstanding Player after helping the Badgers make their second straight Final Four.
During his final NCAA Tournament run, he averaged 19.2 points and shot 41.7% from 3-point range to help Wisconsin reach the NCAA Final.
Dekker pointed to that postseason run as a top highlight of his UW career.
“We had been speaking of it so much and if we didn’t reach that goal after all that talking that whole year it would have felt funny, so those games in L.A. to get us to the Final Four are memories that are hard to forget because people remind you so much about them,” Dekker said. “But there are so many. I could sit here and talk to you for hours about games.”
Dekker’s official induction into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame comes Sept. 18-19. Members of the class will be honored during the Badgers’ game against Eastern Michigan.
“I grew up a Badger fan,” Dekker said. “I think back looking at the guys I used to watch as a Wisconsin sports fan growing up and now to be mentioned with those names is a pinch-yourself moment. It was people you looked up to and wanted to resemble and be like and now to be one of them is pretty surreal.”
Sam Dekker, Lamont Paris built bond during UW days
Dekker is the second player of those UW Final Four teams to make it into the UW Athletic Hall of Fame. Frank Kaminsky was inducted last year.
Dekker’s time in the program came right in the middle of Paris’ six-year stint at Wisconsin as an assistant coach.
“Me and Coach Paris have kept contact since the day I left school,” Dekker said. “I was actually at dinner in Phoenix at the Final Four in (2017) with Coach Ryan and Coach Paris the night he got the Chattanooga job. We were at dinner and the athletic director from Chattanooga pulled him away and he came back and said he was the head coach at Chattanooga.
“It feels like for some reason our basketball journey is always intertwined.”
South Carolina announced Dekker’s hire on May 15. Since then, he has done some onboarding work with the program and is going through the process of introducing himself to the players.
When it comes to role models in the profession, he doesn’t need to look far. His father, Todd, was the head coach at Sheboygan Lutheran High School for 27 years and, with the help of a last-second shot by Dekker, led that program to a state championship in 2012.
“He was my first coach and he always instilled the little things and never skipping steps,” Dekker said. “At the time those are things you don’t want to hear, but it leads up to amazing things.
“I had a great coach here (Bo Ryan) that always taught those little wins, those little victories, doing the little things really well adds up to one big good thing. Those are the things I feel have been instilled in me that I can pass to the next group.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Coach Sam Dekker? Wisconsin legend explains what he hopes to bring in new role
Reporting by Mark Stewart, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
