Coaching brought back the passion for Provenzano

Former Lightning assistant coach Mike Provenzano, who spent two (championship-winning) seasons with London, is now a grad assistant at Michigan State University, one of the top U.S. college programs.

Provenzano (left) celebrates postgame with coach Doug Plumb and Lightning owner Vito Frijia after the London Lightning won the 2022 NBLC championship. (Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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Michael Provenzano needed a change.

He spent a lifetime playing the game – at the amateur, prep, collegiate, and pro levels. He knew the game. He was skilled at the game. He even loved the game.

But that love was fading.

“By the time I was done playing, I wasn’t sure I was going to end up coming back to basketball,” he said. “I had the biggest love-hate relationship with the game at that time. That’s when I took some time away. I wasn’t even really helping out with my dad’s team. I wanted to get away from it all.”

What happened next changed Provenzano’s relationship with the game by opening him up to new challenges and possibilities – no longer on the court, but on the sidelines.

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It’s not a stretch to say the game of basketball is in his blood.

The London born and raised Provenzano played for H.B. Beal Secondary School from 2010-2013, leading his team to a fourth place OFSAA finish in 2012, the second-best showing in history for London AAAA schools. In 2011, he represented the province as a member of the U15 Ontario Team and started at the point for the team at the Canada Summer Games that year.

Provenzano continued his prep hoops career at High Point Christian Academy, an elite prep in North Carolina. In his senior year, he was named to All-Conference and All-State teams in one of the most competitive conferences in the country.

From 2016-20, Provenzano played for Simon Fraser University, Canada’s only NCAA school, where he scored more than 1,000 points and tallied just shy of 500 assists during his career. A four-year starter and three-year captain, he played in every game of his career but two (injury), setting school and conference records for starts and minutes played.

After university, Provenzano signed with CAM Enrique Soler, a pro club in Melilla, Spain (Liga LEB Plata) for the 2020-21 season.

I get it – you might need a breather after reading all that. Now, imagine the energy required to live it for more than a decade. Perhaps that’s why, following his debut pro season, Provenzano needed a break from the game that he had, so far, given his whole life.

“When I love something, I just love it with all my might,” he said. “Since I was little, I’ve always been a bit of an emotional person, a passionate person. It’s easy to take that too far. As a player, I trained hard and worked hard, and I was hard on myself. If I could do things over, I would be a little bit more forgiving, a little bit more patient with myself, and try to enjoy the process more. I did that in my earlier years and in college, and I really enjoyed it. But by the end of my playing career, a little bit of burnout was starting to manifest. I wouldn’t say that I hated the game, but there were times when I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I felt I should.”

When he returned from Spain, Provenzano applied to teachers’ colleges and worked in a before- and after-school program. But slowly, the game called to him. Or, more accurately, London Lightning head coach Doug Plumb called on him to serve as his lead assistant coach.

“I realized quickly that Mike is thorough. He works extremely hard. It only took three or four days for me to see we were kindred spirits; he was a young me,” said Plumb.

“He grew leaps and bounds with us. Obviously, there are going to be some growing pains transitioning from a player to a coach. He was young. He was coaching older players, guys who went to bigger schools, guys who could have easily seen him as ‘a little white guy from London, Ont.’ But Mike never pretended to be something he wasn’t. He put his head down and worked – and worked and worked – behind the scenes. It was a match made in heaven for two years.”

The fit with coaching was almost instantaneous for Provenzano, as well, who was only 26 years old at the time he was hired in London, easily one of the youngest assistant coaches in a major professional basketball league.

“I’m kind of thrown into this fire. I came into coaching in a unique way where I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into,” he said. “But I knew I loved it from the time I started doing it.”

In his seasons as the lead assistant coach for the Lightning (2021-23), Provenzano helped lead the team to back-to-back NBL Canada championships. It was an incredible experience – on and off the court.

“You have to be versatile to survive in that league,” Plumb said of the NBL Canada. “You had to be able to do everything under the sun – and do it fast. We asked a lot of Mike, and every time he showed me he could do something, we added something else onto his plate. He isn’t the kind of guy to say ‘no.’ So, he took the challenges on willingly.”

Plumb also knew Provenzano would get his chance to lead the team – if only for a few quarters at a time.

“I told him, ‘we win a lot here, but I will get ejected at least four games a season, so you need to be prepared to take over,’” Plumb said with a laugh.

The fiery head coach was a man of his word, getting the gate a record number of times during his two seasons with Provenzano at his side.

“Those years with the Lightning were the most I’ve ever learned in such a short period of time,” Provenzano said. “I just had my foot in so many different avenues. I had so many different responsibilities. Seeing the game from the coach’s side instead of the player’s side was interesting; it was different for me. I got to a point where I knew that if I was going to do this (coaching), I wanted to try it at the college level.

“I’ve always felt like my personality was well suited to the college level. I liked the pro level, but I’ve just been around the college game since I was a little kid. I’ve been drawn to it.”

Provenzano celebrates a second Lightning championship with his players. (Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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There are both challenges and advantages of being ‘the young guy’ on a coaching staff.

London was an excellent training ground for a young coach, as the roster was spread out equally with players younger, the same age, or older than Provenzano.

Yes, he felt a connection to his younger players. That’s to be expected. When you’re closer in age, you’re from the same generation, you listen to similar music, watch similar movies, have similar tastes in fashion … the list goes on. But he learned ways of communicating with vets was equally important.

“London helped me understand that you can’t treat everybody the same. This world will tell you that you need to. That’s the difficult part. But you just can’t as a coach, because everybody’s different,” Provenzano explained. “Everyone has different needs. I couldn’t talk to (Lightning centre) Amir Williams the same way I could talk to (Lightning guards) Mike Nuga or Marcus Ottey. I had great relationships with all of those guys. But I had to coach them differently. I had to treat them differently. I think I got more out of them because I took that approach.”

Figuring out how to relate to the players was, in a way, the biggest lesson from London for Provenzano.

“Coaching this game is all about relationships – 80-90% of what coaches focus on is building strong relationships with the players,” he said. “After that, they can get into the X’s and O’s. That’s not to say the great coaches don’t focus on X’s and O’s; they do it at the highest of levels. But it speaks volumes when you have some of the best basketball minds in the country, people who are so smart and understand this game so well, and they’re telling you that relationships are number one.”

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As many know, basketball is the family business for the Provenzanos.

Michael’s parents, Angelo and Judy, oversee the London Basketball Academy. Judy is owner and director of operations; Angelo is head coach. Michael has served as the off-season development coach since its beginnings in 2015.

When Provenzano started to hunt for his next step during his second year with the Lightning, one destination had a particular pull – Michigan State University.

And why wouldn’t it be? East Lansing was almost a second home to the family.

Angelo is a Michigan State alumnus, earning a Master of Arts (Coaching) in 1988. Because of that connection, Provenzano grew up in the MSU summer hoops camps. Then, when he became too old, he helped his dad coach the camps.

“We have bled green for a long time. As long as I can really remember.”

When it came time for his next step, then, Provenzano hoped it would be back in Michigan. That hope didn’t make a deal with the Spartans a certainty, of course. And weeks passed; other options were explored. But when he got an offer to become a graduate assistant (GA) coach with the Spartans, it was a perfect moment for Provenzano – and his whole family.

“I never envisioned myself gong back to grad school. But this is an incredible opportunity,” said Provenzano, who is working on a Masters of Science (Kinesiology) with a concentration in strength and conditioning.

(Photo courtesy Mike Provenzano).

“Everyone in my family was pretty excited. But there was another level to it with our family, just because everyone knew I always wanted to be here, with the history of my dad. It was special. So, my dad is really fired up.”

In the NCAA, a graduate assistant is a student who works as an assistant coach for their college or university while working on the completion of their post-graduate education. These are competitive, coveted positions, as they are incredible learning experiences. And, so, Provenzano is once again learning from one of the game’s best: legendary Spartans head coach Tom Izzo.

Now in his 29th season as Michigan State coach, Izzo is a portrait of consistency. With 25 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, his team is coming off its 15th Sweet 16 appearance under his leadership. Izzo’s Michigan State teams have had 22 players selected in the NBA Draft – half of whom were first rounders.

Michigan State enters the 2023-24 NCAA basketball season with its usual high expectations.

For the second consecutive year, the Spartans didn’t introduce any first-year transfers into the mix. Returning four of its five starters from last season, the squad will rely on seasoned vets like Tyson Walker and A.J. Hoggard, as well as five-star recruit Xavier Booker, a 6-foot-11 center. It’s a team most experts see as challenging Purdue for the Big Ten title and landing a high seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Michigan State is a fast-paced program, a massive operation with so many moving pieces.

“With the Lightning, it was a few people doing a whole lot of things,” said Provenzano. “With the Spartans, it’s a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of things.”

As a GA coach, his work centres on being in the gym with the players, helping in practice, assisting with workouts, overseeing extra workouts, encouraging players, and scouting future opponents in the film room.

Working alongside Plumb in the NBLC, Provenzano gained a real appreciation for film study. That will come in handy over the border, as his role will eventually include that prep.

“We watched a whole lot of film in London” the coach said. “There’s no better way to learn the game. It’s something I did as a player, but I wish I did a lot more of it; it’s something I talk to people about all the time. I’ve watched more film in the last two years than I have my entire life. That’s part of why I grew so much as a coach (with the Lightning). I’ve just gotten so much better at seeing the game, understanding the game, and then translating that into something that, hopefully, can be understood by players, by the staff, and whomever I’m presenting it to.”

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Thanks to his time in London, the 27-year-old coach is heading into his new opportunity with an incredible perspective and a level of  empathy for his players and their experience that could only have grown out of having been in their shoes.

He admits that he’s an older GA coach in the college ranks, but that experience he sees as helping him in fully rekindling his love affair with the game.

“I’ve gotten to a point where I’m able to use my perspective to help others,” Provenzano said. “It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race. Everybody at the high school level wants to get a scholarship. Everybody at the college level wants to go pro. Everybody at the pro level wants to go to a higher level and make more money. It’s difficult sometimes to just take a step back and enjoy the process and what you’re really doing.

“My experience as a player has helped me enjoy the moment and be more present as a coach. It’s funny, that feeling that I had towards the end of my playing career … I’ve never felt that at all in what I’ve been doing in my work with the Lightning, or my work here at Michigan State. It has been awesome.”