Chris Brickley isn’t just a basketball trainer. He’s the basketball trainer.
Brickley’s clientele list is a who’s who of NBA and WNBA superstars, some of whom he’s helped develop from the grassroots level. Brickley has worked with the game’s biggest names, including LeBron James and Kevin Durant. He’s been training players like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd before most of the country knew who they were.
Brickley has become so synonymous with training NBA talent that he’s even a staple in the NBA 2K games, where his role isn’t so unlike the one he occupies in real life. A one-stop shop where you hone your skills and participate in open runs with other players. In the real world, Brickley’s infamous “Black Ops” open runs have become a sensation. The infamous “Hoodie Melo” runs in 2017 were a product of that environment. Which was fitting, since Carmelo Anthony was the first NBA superstar Brickley ever trained as an employee of the New York Knicks in the early 2010s.
This past weekend, Brickley wore a different hat. He partnered with Bose to host the third annual Chris Brickley Invitational in Chicago, one of many postseason high school All-American games that populate the schedule this time of year. Brickley sat down with Ballislife to talk about this year’s Invitational on Wednesday.
Q: When you started the Chris Brickley Invitational, what was your biggest goal for the event?
Chris Brickley: For it to be the biggest All-American game in the country. For sure. That’s definitely the goal.
Q: That leads into my next question. What’s your long-term vision for the Invitational? You obviously see it becoming a staple on the postseason calendar, alongside the McDonald’s All-American Game and the Jordan Brand Classic?
CB: For sure. I’ve always looked up to the McDonald’s game as being the premier event, the Jordan one too, but I think the McDonald’s one has that prestige. I didn’t want to copy the exact model of the McDonald’s one by doing all seniors, so I kind of did my own twist by adding freshmen, sophomores and juniors. I place a big emphasis on the workouts. So yeah, I kind of had my own twist to it, but that goal is to be that top All-American game one day.
Q: Why was Bose the right partner for this event, and how does their brand align with the culture you’re building around the Invitational?
CB: Everything about Bose. I mean, if you’re just looking at their social page, their ambassadors, the energy. I feel like it matches up with what I’m trying to do with the Invitational. It’s 40 of the top girls and boys in the country, and it’s kids that have a lot of positive energy and are very successful. When I think of Bose, in my opinion, it’s the best headphones out. It’s the best speakers out. It’s obviously high energy, and I feel like it aligns really well.
Q: The Invitational features a girls’ game, this year it was coached by Azzi and Katie Fudd. Why has that been such an important addition to the event and how do you see it evolving in the future?
CB: Azzi being here, coming off being the MOP of March Madness was really cool. I’ve been working with her since high school. To see that her go through some of these traumatic injuries, surgery, and then to come back as good as she’s ever been. We’ve developed a very, very close relationship. Katie Fudd is almost like a mother to me. We’ve developed a really good relationship, along with Tim, her father.
When I was deciding, I was like ‘Okay, we did the boys game, I want to add a girls game.’ There’s no one else that’s more tapped in than Katie Fudd. From a development standpoint, she the one who taught Azzi how to shoot. She’s the one who trained Paige and Azzi growing up. She’s a basketball genius.
Q: During the Invitational, are you able to step back and evaluate the talent on the floor, or are you more locked into the logistics and behind-the-scenes demands of running the event?
CB: I’m on the floor. Super involved. Running every workout, every drill. Even the game, on the bench. Me and Katie coached one of the teams this past year, my first time doing that, and it just made me super involved. I definitely want to be hands on. I want the kids to feel me. When the weekend’s done, I want to have a relationship with all of the players.
Q: What player(s) would you say really stood out at the event this year, especially someone who may not have been one of the top-ranked names?
CB: I guess I have two answers for that. Players that stood out— I would definitely say Chris Cenac (Houston), Maleek Thomas (Arkansas) and Milek Brown Jr. (Louisville) are three guys that stood, but that’s not a surprise, right? They’re projected to be like one and done type players.
I think my sleeper is Luca Foster. He’s a junior, Class of 2026, out of Pennsylvania. He has a pretty cool story. He was ranked 88th, maybe a few months ago, and then he shot up to No. 33 and then to, like, No. 16. I think he just wasn’t really seen. he’s like 6’5, 6’6, really good handle. Shoots it really well. I think he’s gonna end up being, in my opinion, a McDonald’s All-American at this pace.
Q: You’ve trained some of the biggest names in the NBA. What qualities do you look for when identifying a young player who could eventually reach that level? What are some common traits among young players who eventually became stars?
CB: You need a motor. You need urgency. So, obviously, I hand-picked every player that played in the game. I’m not going to say any names, but over the last two years, there have been maybe two players that come to mind that just didn’t have a motor. I had to go up to them and say, like, ‘Let’s go, game speed. ’
Then I look back at a guy like Cooper Flagg, his motor was insane. Or Chris Cenac. We do individual workouts, some guys started the individual workout and they’re not loose. They get loose as the workout starts. But then that upper echelon guy, the second they step onto the court to work out with me, they’re already loose. They’ve already done the work. Little stuff like that shows that someone has a motor and it shows their urgency to get better.
Q: You’ve been around the game for a minute now. What’s something you’ve learned about your craft, especially evaluating and developing talent at the NBA level, that you may not have known when you first started training?
CB: Man, I don’t know anything. Literally. Just evolve, you have to evolve. Every year, every month, every week, there are new trends in the league. There are new drills I could be doing. Just having an open mind that I don’t know it all, and that there are coaches, trainers and players out there that keep the game evolving. It’s my job to stay on top of that.
Q: You played at Louisville under the legendary Rick Pitino. How did that experience shape you both as a man and as a trainer?
CB: It changed my life completely. As a man and as a trainer and coach. His hours, you know, I witnessed him get to the office at five in the morning and stay until 11 at night. His work ethic is unmatched. While he was doing that, he’d be working out and watching film too. That kind of showed me, like, this is how you can be special. You have to dedicate and sacrifice a big portion of your life.
I learned this through Phil Jackson and Rick Pitino, equally, how important it is to get on a personal level with the players. You need to know what makes the players tick. Once you know that, it gets easier to learn about them and develop them.
Q: Looking back at everything you’ve built, from training pros to launching the Invitational, what’s been the most rewarding part of your journey so far?
CB: The most rewarding part is honestly opening my DMs on the daily and getting messages, whether it be a 50-year-old or a 12-year-old. The fact that I can help push someone to keep going. Just understanding that what I’m doing is big in basketball and it’s touching people from all over the world.
