{"id":852609,"date":"2026-08-10T05:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/852609\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T05:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:18:13","slug":"hall-of-fame-class-of-2026-mark-few-took-a-small-school-and-turned-it-into-his-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/852609\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Fame Class of 2026: Mark Few took a small school and turned it into his legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mark Few\u2019s coached many current and former NBA players and coaches.<\/p>\n

One can measure Gonzaga University men\u2019s basketball coach Mark Few\u2019s Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame career with a basic resum\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Two NCAA Final Fours.
\nTwenty-seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
\nTwenty-seven consecutive seasons with at least 23 victories, including 37 wins in 2016-17, the year the Bulldogs lost to North Carolina in the national championship game.
\nNearly three dozen players who played in the NBA, including seven lottery picks, multiple All-Stars and 11 players who were on NBA rosters at the start of the 2025-26 season.
\nTwo-time National Association of Basketball Coaches and Naismith coach of the year.
\nFew\u2019s overall record is 773-156, a .832 winning percentage.<\/p>\n

He took the basketball program at Gonzaga, a small, private Catholic school with 5,200 undergraduate students in Spokane, Washington, from mid-major to major-major \u2013 a perennial power for nearly three decades.<\/p>\n

Few was elected to the Hall in April and will be inducted Saturday in Springfield, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I come from, a little tiny town (Creswell) in Oregon, it wasn\u2019t a dream come true. You couldn\u2019t even possibly dream about something like this happening,\u201d Few said. \u201cBut the biggest emotion and feeling that I\u2019ve had is just this incredible, overwhelming flush of just gratitude for everybody, every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s one way to measure Few\u2019s impact on basketball. Another way is to listen to NBA coaches Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors and Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat \u2013 two of the best in the game.<\/p>\n

Kerr was the head coach of the United States\u2019 2023 FIBA World Cup team and 2024 Paris Olympics team<\/a>, and Spoelstra and Few were assistants.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy kind of guy. He just gets it,\u201d Kerr said at the Paris Olympics. \u201cHe\u2019s passionate about the game, passionate about life, passionate about his family. Humble enough to know that he doesn\u2019t have all the answers, but driven and smart enough to seek the answers. And above all, he loves being part of the staff. And so, the dinners and the coaches\u2019 meetings, there\u2019s great humor and joy. He\u2019s just somebody I want to be around every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spoelstra has known about Few for almost 40 years \u2013 Spoelstra played at the University of Portland in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Few was an assistant at Gonzaga.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been a fan of his and rooted for him and rooted for the program,\u201d Spoelstra said.<\/p>\n

Spoelstra will coach the U.S. at the 2027 FIBA World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and Few will be an assistant for those teams, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with the success that they\u2019ve had, he is one of the most underrated coaches in all of basketball,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cHe\u2019s a first ballot Hall of Famer. And he\u2019s so humble and understated. He doesn\u2019t want any of the credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few began his coaching career as an unpaid assistant at Creswell High School in 1986 and joined Gonzaga as a graduate assistant in 1989. He was promoted to full-time assistant coach in 1990 and took over as head coach in 1999. He has had chances to leave for other jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad (Norm) in that little, tiny town of Creswell was 54 years a Presbyterian minister at this little, tiny church,\u201d Few said. \u201cAnd usually ministers move every five years or eight years or whatever. The congregation gets tired of them. It\u2019s 54 years. Probably when I was younger \u2013 I would never admit it \u2013 but as you get older, you\u2019re like, \u2018You know what, we tend to mimic who we admire.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Few stayed and stayed some more, building one of the top programs in college hoops and coaching players such as Adam Morrison, Kelly Olynyk, Domantas Sabonis, Rui Hachimura<\/a>, Jalen Suggs, Andrew and Ryan Nembhard and Chet Holmgren.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust feeling just so blessed to just have so many awesome, awesome players that came through this program,\u201d he said on the Mark Few Show. \u201cThey not only were awesome players on the floor, talented and so easy to coach and competitive, but just awesome people. Any coach will tell you, at the end of the day, it\u2019s all about your players, and we\u2019ve just had an amazing run. And then also, I mean, just so lucky and so fortunate to have just crazy talented and hardworking assistant coaches over the years who have helped so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had nothing but great basketball minds who also really understand how to deal with people and just became great friends too. It\u2019s just been a joy, but never, ever, ever would\u2019ve ever thought I\u2019d even be considered for such a thing. It\u2019s extremely, extremely humbling and a huge, huge honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Few\u2019s coached many current and former NBA players and coaches. One can measure Gonzaga University men\u2019s basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,296509,459,82],"class_list":["post-852609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-hall-of-fame-mark-few","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}