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Ryan Gomes will be sitting, not playing, this season at Barclays Center. After an 11-year professional career that saw him play in the NBA, D-League, Spain and Germany, he's moved to the sidelines where he will be a rookie assistant coach for the Long Island Nets who will play their inaugural season in Brooklyn.
"I look back at my career and I am satisfied with what I did as a professional athlete," Gomes told his hometown paper in Waterbury, Connecticut, "at all levels, overseas, the NBA, and the development league."
As Joe Palladino of the Waterbury Republican-American wrote, the pro ladder didn’t have more rungs for Gomes.
"Last year, when I was in Spain, I really didn’t play," he said, "and I didn’t want to walk away from the game that way. If this coaching opportunity came last year, I might have said, ‘I want to play one more time.’
"But now, I walked away from playing the game."
Gomes, always a popular player whether at Providence or the four NBA clubs he played for, will assistant Ronald Nored, the 25-year-old head coach of the L.I. Nets, who spent two years in the Celtics system under his college coach, Brad Stevens. Pat Rafferty, a veteran college coach who was last at Central Wyoming College, will work with the two of them.
Gomes, who turns 34 Thursday, said until the L.I. Nets get some players through the D-League Draft in early November or Brooklyn cuts, he and the other two will be working with the parent club.
"This is my first year. I will be with the Brooklyn Nets during the preseason, in camp, and leading up to our first game. I will be taking notes. I will be checking off the things I want to accomplish. And then in five or six years, who knows."
The L.I. Nets did miss out on one player this week. They drafted 6'8" small forward Akil Mitchell in the D-League expansion draft, but he decided rather than play with Long Island, he will make the trek to New Zealand to play professionally there.