Former Bobcat Grant grows as Rouge et Or coach

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This article was published 28/12/2022 (630 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — Nathan Grant couldn’t tie his shoes.

Back spasms due to a loose sacroiliac (SI) joint made it tough to get out of bed, let alone walk to the Brandon University gymnasium for men’s basketball practice. But with a few other guys out, the Bobcats needed him.

The Montreal native couldn’t tie his shoes but a teammate would, and then he’d play two hours of the toughest defence he could on Yul Michel, the team’s starting point guard.

“He’d go and guard Yul the entire practice so he could prepare to play, knowing full well that would limit his ability to play Friday night. He was a thankless teammate that would do anything to help the group,” said then Bobcats coach Mike Raimbault, now the bench boss of the Winnipeg Wesmen.

“It’s pretty rare, especially with young people. It takes a special guy to care that much about the team, to put the group ahead of himself. For me, that’s a story I share with my team pretty much every year.”

That work ethic helped Brandon go 40-4 over two seasons and reach a national final.

Grant is the textbook example of taking whatever role you get and running with it. He’s a coach’s dream with a relentless drive to make a team better than the sum of its parts.

So it makes sense why he’s the head coach of the Laval Rouge et Or, now in his fourth season at the helm.

He played his former team for the first time on Wednesday, falling 73-68 to Brandon. Laval is back in action on the consolation side against Algoma today at 2 p.m. Brandon takes on Winnipeg at 6 o’clock in the semifinals.

BOBCAT TENURE

Grant was never a star in Brandon. He transferred from Vanier College in 2005 — following a pipeline of Quebecois talent that is still flowing today — and was a career backup point guard through 2011. His former teammates will attest, however, that he impacted the team immensely in immeasurable ways.

“He brought a certain level of intensity every single day … there was so much fire in our practices because we just loved playing, loved competing and loved going at each other,” said Adam Hartman, a Canada West second-team all-star during two of Grant’s seasons.

“If (the second string) would go on a run … he would just be in your ear, trying to drive us crazy because we were losing.

“Man did it motivate us to come back.”

Grant’s first season in blue and gold was unremarkable as BU went 10-10 in conference play, but was the foundation for a terrific run in 2006-07. The Bobcats had the same coach, Barnaby Craddock, for consecutive seasons for the first time since 2003.

They thrived.

Brandon went 20-2 and secured home-court advantage through the Canada West playoffs. It swept Regina in the quarterfinals, then crushed Victoria 93-79 in the semifinals to secure a nationals berth.

“Everyone loved going to practice, everyone loved competing and everyone loved battling … I give Nathan so much credit for that,” Hartman said. “He was able to bring a confidence to his group, he was able to bring a swag to his group and just instil to his group that they needed to beat us every day.”

“Your best effort isn’t to derail the guy ahead of you, that’s never the goal,” Grant added. “Your best effort is to show that ‘I can play. When you call my number, I’ll be ready to play.’ If my best makes the all-Canadian, the Canada West all-star ahead of me even better, that’s a chance for us to be better as a basketball team.”

The Bobcats lost 76-73 to UBC in the Canada West final, then beat Windsor and St. Mary’s en route to the national title game.

By then, the roster that played in the 2001 gold-medal game had all moved on, leaving a dearth of big-game experience. Grant said the team was never focused on being ranked No. 1, rather just loved getting together and enjoyed playing good, fun basketball.

Their uptempo, high-scoring game powered by all-Canadian Dany Charlery sputtered under the bright national-final lights. The four-time defending champion Carleton Ravens gutted out the lowest-scoring final in history, 52-49.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Grant said. “Before you know it we’re in a game, Carleton’s been in it four straight times. They’re grabbing, they’re pulling, throwing elbows, they’re doing it all and we’re not used to that stuff. They’re having their way with us.

“… We averaged 88 points a game and whenever I tell that story that we scored 49, to this day no one can believe it.”

Brandon went 20-2 again after Craddock left for his current job at Alberta. Charlery and Yul Michel, the U Sports defensive player of the year, manned the backcourt for one more year together under head coach Mike Raimbault, the Brandonite who worked under Craddock the year before.

But a non-conference loss to Acadia exactly 15 years ago today proved massive down the road. The Bobcats edged the Regina Cougars 2-1 in the best-of-three quarterfinals and were upset by Craddock’s Golden Bears in the semis. While Brandon beat Calgary for third, it was at the mercy of a panel selecting one wildcard.

They picked Acadia.

BU opted not to bring Raimbault back. It hasn’t returned to nationals since.

Grant’s next two years under coach Keith Vassell were mired by back injuries that nearly kept him from moving to Manitoba in the first place. He had a loose sacroiliac (SI) joint in his back that led to spasms, sometimes too severe to get out of bed, let alone play ball.

He returned for a final season, current BU coach Gil Cheung’s first on the job, and averaged 15 minutes per game.

“There was often painkillers involved,” said Grant, who still didn’t doubt his decision to play through the pain.

“It was fun. Being with those guys, playing with those guys in that atmosphere, in the locker room, on the floor, it was fun. It was fun to compete and everybody was there trying to compete, there was very little ego that showed up in that group.

“To this day I still talk to several of those guys on a consistent basis.”

COACHING CAREER

Grant graduated with a bachelor of business administration, minoring in psychology, and jumped right into coaching. He was armed with knowledge from dozens of coaches, including five head coaches in post-secondary ball alone.

He coached in the Sun Youth system, which helped him as a player, for three years while assisting at Vanier. Grant scored his first Team Quebec head coaching gig in 2016, earning an under-15 national silver medal before joining the U Sports ranks as an assistant at Concordia.

Grant also led the U17 squad to bronze at the 2017 Canada Games in Winnipeg.

In the meantime, he stuck his foot in Canada Basketball’s door one-week-long camp at a time.

How?

It’s simple. No one handed out pinnies better than Grant.

No coach was going to throw a better pass than him, either. And they sure as hell weren’t going to work harder than him defending a player for a drill.

“If you want to be a champion, you got to be a champion in everything you do,” Grant said.

“… If they asked me to wash towels, I would have been a national championship towel washer. That’s my attitude.”

Grant showed up at a junior national team camp eager to learn and grow as a coach, then stayed for another and another until he was labelled a “special coach” in 2017, and carved out a role as an assistant over the years.

He helped Canada through FIBA World Cup qualifiers last summer and travels to Hungary for the 2023 event in Hungary next summer.

The biggest thing he’s learned about coaching is the importance of relationships.

“I think Mike and Barnaby were really good at that. The more you coach this game, the more you realize how much that impacts winning and losing,” Grant said.

“Any coach can draw stuff up and talk defences until they’re blue in the face but if your guys don’t want to compete, they don’t want to play for whatever reason, that impacts winning and losing the most.

“It’s how those guys treated me, it’s how they treated my teammates, it’s how we could talk and laugh as players and coaches. There’s a line you never want to pass but you have to be able to relate, you have to be one of the guys and step back, take off the coach’s hat and not be that guy that thinks he’s the boss at all times.”

He secured the Laval job in 2019 and navigated the 2020-21 season lost to COVID-19. His team is 2-4 in RSEQ play but went into this week 8-5 overall.

Grant realized the job is far bigger than simply coaching. It’s also recruiting, administration, mentoring and more.

“People think coaches coach from September until March, eight, nine hours a day … when you’re a coach, you’re always on the clock because your brain is always clocked in,” Grant said.

“It’s a 24/7 gig and you don’t realize that until you’re actually in it.”

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