An NBA coach and referee were once college teammates. But in the playoffs, it's 'professional'

Atlantic76ersCelticsKnicksNetsRaptorsCentralBucksBullsCavaliersPacersPistonsSoutheastHawksHeatHornetsMagicWizardsSouthwestGrizzliesMavericksPelicansRocketsSpursNorthwestJazzNuggetsThunderTimberwolvesTrail BlazersPacificClippersKingsLakersSunsWarriorsScores & ScheduleStandingsThe Bounce NewsletterNBA DraftPodcastsFantasyNBA OddsNBA PicksMeet KAT's Biggest FanHollinger's Top Draft ProspectsLottery Reform Is OverdueWhat Makes Up Championship DNA?NBA Playoffs Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson and NBA referee Curtis Blair were teammates on the Richmond Spiders from 1988-1990. Abbie Parr / Getty Images Share articleCLEVELAND — Everyone, it seemed, was talking to Curtis Blair during Thursday’s Game 2 of the Cavs-Pistons series. Everyone, that is, except Kenny Atkinson. Cleveland star James Harden held a side chat with the barrel-chested referee at the end of the first quarter. Detroit coach J.B. Bickerstaff gave Blair an earful more than once. And Blair just sort of … let him go. But Atkinson, the Cavaliers head coach, largely steered clear. In the fourth quarter with the game on the line, Blair called a loose-ball foul on the Cavs and Atkinson hated the call, but rather than scream or dart toward the official, Atkinson just sort of stood near his bench, staring at Blair and shaking his head. There’s history here, and not the usual kind between a coach and a referee. A lifetime ago, Atkinson and Blair played on the same college basketball team. That and $6.85 would be enough to buy Atkinson a grande vanilla latte at Starbucks in Detroit, but not much else. “You know, listen, there’s no, like, friends, right? We’re competing,” Atkinson told The Athletic in a phone call Saturday after his team’s 116-109 Game 3 win. “There is no, I’m not going to say anything to Curtis because we went to school together. There’s none of that. I would say it’s like super professional, our interactions. But we both know we have this shared history.” Atkinson, 58, has been on an NBA sideline as an assistant or head coach since 2008. Blair, 55, is in his 18th season as an NBA official, which means they broke into the league at roughly the same time. And yes, from 1988 to 1990, they were teammates for the “giant killer” Richmond Spiders teams of the era, forming a tantalizing backcourt when Atkinson was a senior and Blair a sophomore and the two led the team in scoring. They are not the only former teammates to participate in the same NBA games as coach (or player) and referee. Leon Wood, for example, played in the NBA before becoming an official in 1996, meaning he worked games involving former teammates, coaches and opponents — including Michael Jordan, who laughed the first time Wood officiated a Chicago Bulls game. Former NBA players Haywoode Workman and Bernie Fryer also made the same transition. It is not a secret that Atkinson and Blair have a shared past — Richmond alums are beyond proud two of their favorite sons have carved such great careers for themselves in the NBA, and anyone could look into the Richmond archives and find those two names on rosters and stat sheets. But it is little known in NBA circles that they were once teammates. Blair has officiated uncounted Atkinson-coached games, including three games in the 2026 playoffs so far (the Cavs are 1-2 in those games, losing Game 3 against Toronto in the first round and to Detroit in Game 2, but beating the Raptors handily in Game 7). Atkinson said he and Blair have never sat down over coffee or a bottle of red to rehash the past, how they got to where they are now, or how to navigate the two. Those who knew them when say neither of them brings it up in phone conversations, either. Kenny coaches. Curtis refs. “We’re never like, ‘Hey, Curt, remember when you hit the buzzer-beater against American University to put us in the finals of the CAA tournament?’ We don’t reminisce,” Atkinson said. “We’re not joking about (their Richmond coach) Dick Tarrant. What I’d love to do when this is all said and done is spend a week with Curtis and his family and hear about our journeys, you know, but we’ve definitely kind of, you know, haven’t kept it in touch.” The NBA declined to make Blair available for this story, citing its policy that referees are not permitted to talk publicly about the players and coaches they officiate. Atkinson said he and Blair had lost touch after their Richmond days. Atkinson had played in U.S. minor leagues and overseas for years; Blair, after being drafted in the second round by the Rockets in 1992 but never playing for them, also played professionally in Europe. Atkinson said they had lost touch, and he remembers sitting on the bench his rookie season as an NBA assistant for Mike D’Antoni’s New York Knicks, and looking up and seeing No. 74 roaming the floor with a whistle in his mouth. “I’m like, Curtis Blair’s an NBA referee?” Atkinson said. “So I didn’t even, I was like shocked because my vision of Curtis is player and he was a hell of a player.” Atkinson and Blair — both members of Richmond’s Athletics Hall of Fame — were teammates for two seasons together. The year before Blair arrived, Atkinson led the Spiders to upsets of defending-NCAA champion Indiana and Georgia Tech to reach the Sweet 16. In Atkinson’s final season in Richmond, he was the conference tournament MVP and averaged 18.9 points for the year. He left having scored 1,549 points, still good for ninth in school history. Blair was the Spiders’ second-leading scorer during Atkinson’s senior year, and their top man during Blair’s final two seasons. As a junior, Blair and his Richmond teammates made history, becoming the first No. 15 seed to beat a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, knocking off Syracuse. Blair was conference Player of the Year as a senior, two-time first-team All-Conference honoree, and left with 1,630 career points – seventh in school history. Their former teammates remember Atkinson and Blair as “fire and ice,” with Atkinson providing the heat. “Oh yeah,” Atkinson said in agreement. “That’s why Curt’s a referee and I’m a coach. We couldn’t be reversed. Curt was like, calm Curt and I was the Dennis Schröder, kind of tweaking people and competing, crazy.” It was the 1988-89 season, and Atkinson, a junior in school, was the face of the program, the point guard of the team that had gone to the Sweet 16 the year before, and one of the most competitive people anyone around the program had ever seen. Blair, a freshman, was the local kid and prized recruit. Perhaps a bit understated, compared to the team’s alpha, Atkinson. The coach of the team, Tarrant, an irascible, former Marine, allowed outsiders to come watch practice. “They were tough, physical, salty practices,” said Bob Black, who is still the primary broadcaster for the Spiders and has been on the job since 1983. “And as long as you could handle that, (Tarrant) didn’t care if you sat in the stands and watched.” Black and a friend went to one of Tarrant’s practices during Blair’s freshman year. The guards were doing an on-ball defense drill, and Black remembered Atkinson and Blair going at it. He said it was like the Sweet 16 all over again, only it was between the two teammates in an otherwise empty gym. Atkinson was chirping at Blair, which Black said was common (for Atkinson to be chirping at anyone), and there was a lot of contact. “At one point, Kenny just whirled around and clocked Curtis,” Black said, with a laugh. “Like literally hit him across the jaw, and my buddy and I just kind of shrunk in our seats in the arena. We’re like, ‘How do we get out of here, I’m not so sure we should have just seen that?’ I think everybody in the gym kind of had that moment to see what was going to happen next.’” Benjy Taylor, now the coach at Tuskegee University, was a senior for Richmond that season and recalled the same basic event. Later that night at dinner, Taylor told Blair, “Man, you can’t let nobody do that to you.” The following spring, Taylor, then a graduate assistant, remembered Atkinson and Blair “getting into a real scrap” at an open gym and afterward Blair looked at Taylor and said: “Well, you told me not to let him get away with that.” “Their relationship was forged in fire,” he said, with a mixture of laughter and conviction. Atkinson’s memory of these precise altercations is a bit hazy, but he doesn’t dispute them. “I got into it with a lot of guys.” “That was just my personality,” Atkinson said. “I was a 5-10 point guard. And I was fighting for my life. Like fighting, like I had, it was almost my, that was the way I was gonna make it. I was just a psychopath competitor. Rick Barnes once told me, he came to visit when I was working for Mike D’Antoni, and he said, ‘You weren’t normal when you competed.’ “He was right, because it wasn’t normal.” Eric English, another former teammate who played one season when both Atkinson and Blair were on the team, has a favorite story that had nothing to do with Blair. One night after practice — the gym was long closed for the evening — Atkinson got into an argument with teammate Jimmy Glover, a 6-foot-6 forward, over who was the better player. Atkinson, much smaller than Glover at 5-10 but playing way more than Glover, couldn’t let the argument go. Players pulled their cars around the parking lot and turned on their headlights so the two could play one-on-one outside. “It was the craziest thing when you think back at it,” English said, laughing at the memory. English said Blair was calmer and more athletic, but just as competitive. He said they both “hated to lose more than they loved winning.” “Curtis was not going to be bullied or pushed over either,” English said. Black said the two were “junkyard dogs,” and meant it as a term of endearment. He said Richmond doesn’t get many players like them. “Kenny was the more outgoing guy, kind of played with a little bit of a swag to him, even back in those days, maybe before swag was cool,” Black said. “Curtis was quieter, smoother, maybe a little more understated. But both of them were just competitors. They hated to lose. They were the kind of guards who made life miserable for people.” Tarrant, 95, who coached Richmond from 1981 to 1993, said in an email: “While here with me they were just good teammates — never dreaming they would once again meet under these circumstances. All of us here are very proud of them both.” Atkinson played professionally in lower leagues (the defunct Continental Basketball Association and United States Basketball League) and overseas, and is in his second head-coaching job, having taken over the Cavs prior to the start of last season. “Kenny was always a coach,” Taylor said. “Even when he was playing, he was coaching. He was always talking, always directing guys, always telling guys where to be. That’s just who he was.” It is not immediately clear how Blair made the transition from player to referee. According to available biographical information about him, he worked as an official for college games in the Atlantic 10 and ACC, and also worked in the G League. He has more than 1,000 NBA games under his belt, first worked the NBA All-Star Game in 2019, but is still waiting for his first NBA Finals assignment (he’s been an alternate in the finals, but never set foot between the lines as an official for a finals game). “He had such a great demeanor, like you need that in this league,” Atkinson said. “Ask any other coach in this league, Curt is steady Curt. He’s steady, he’s calm, he rarely gets into it with anybody.” Atkinson has, by his own admission, occasionally let his competitive streak get the best of him with referees — though he has been noticeably calmer this season. He has been ejected five times in his two stints as an NBA coach, including on April 10 of last year from a regular-season game against Indiana in which Blair was on the officiating crew (but was not the one who tossed Atkinson). Atkinson said he couldn’t remember if Blair had ever hit him with a technical. There was a Friday night in the middle of March last year in Memphis when Blair would’ve been well within his rights to do it. In the first quarter, Isaac Okoro was whistled for a reach-in foul. Atkinson hated the call, asked Okoro if he thought he had committed the foul and then got the attention of Blair. “Curt, come on man, that’s a flop,” Atkinson yelled. “Isaac said he never touched him.” Blair was quick with his response: “Of course he said that.” On the next possession, Atkinson was hit with a technical by one of Blair’s partners, Matt Kallio, who reacted to Atkinson screaming at the refs: “Call the foul!” After controlling the game throughout, the Cavs appeared on the verge of letting the Grizzlies back into it in the fourth quarter. Memphis had cut its deficit to 13, and Atkinson, who called timeout, felt the Grizzlies had gotten away with too much physicality in making the score close. As the players headed to their benches and the officials took their customary walks to the scorer’s table for the time out, Atkinson scrunched his face, stuck out his hands, and mockingly clapped toward Blair — who ignored the obvious taunt. When Black, the Richmond announcer who still speaks to both Atkinson and Blair, heard the one about Atkinson mock-clapping at Blair in Memphis, he cackled. “That,” he said, “is vintage Atkinson and Blair right there.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms