It’s not like Rex Kalamian hasn’t worked with teams before they were established. Think of, say, Oklahoma City when superstars Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden were just embarking on their careers.
This week Kalamian, an NBA assistant coach for the past quarter-century, is back in L.A. where he grew up, leading another team on the upswing, relatively speaking.
This one features Anto Balian and Avand Dorian, teens known locally for their recent exploits at Pilibos Armenian School in Los Angeles and Armenian General Benevolent Union in Canoga Park.
And no, you don’t have to go to the monitor to spot the difference between those situations.
But you can come get a peek when the Armenian national basketball team takes on France on Friday (7 p.m.) and Saturday (5 p.m.) at Cal State Northridge.
It’ll be something of a David-vs.-Goliath tussle, these games against the Olympic silver medalist in 2021 and world’s No. 5-ranked team now.
But it’ll also be an important exercise in show-and-tell, an early checkpoint on a long road.
When Kalamian took over as head coach last year, Armenia was ranked 93rd of 161 teams. It’s climbed a few rungs since, to 87th. He’s using the same blueprint as has in any of his NBA stops – “That’s all I know,” he insists – including recent posts where his clean-shaven head made him a recognizable figure on the sideline for the Thunder, Clippers, Toronto Raptors, Sacramento Kings and Detroit Pistons.
The same terminology, same practice and shootaround scheduling, same floor-spreading style of play. The same intensity, same certitude.
Within that NBA-inspired system, youngsters like Balian and Dorian will be important contributors to any progress the Armenian team makes. So too will be a veteran like 27-year-old Andre Mkrtchyan-Spight, who had no prospect of playing for Armenia as a kid growing up in Burbank, because his mom’s country didn’t have a basketball team then.
Armenia’s got one now. And a goal: Make it to the Olympics.
Eventually. It might be a basketball lifetime before it happens for the resilient nation of 3 million nestled between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Turkey. “Like asking a 5-year-old what do you want to do one day?” Kalamian said, “And him saying, ‘I want to play in the NBA.”
Kalamian, the son of Armenian-American parents, says he’s motivated by his grandmother’s life story. She survived the Armenian genocide before arriving at Ellis Island: “If I’m having a bad day sometimes, I think about Yevkine Maghakian and I say, ‘You know what? I can’t have a worse day than this woman saw.’ And to me, internally, she provides inspiration. What my grandmother had to endure to be able to have a life here, just to land at Ellis Island? A minor miracle.”
And so Kalamian is proud, he said, to have the responsibility of steering this basketball program through all the inevitable challenges that it’s faced since being founded in 2016 – including the little matter of Armenians’ physical stature.
Let’s just say there just aren’t a lot of 7-foot-4 folks wandering around Yerevan. “Or even 6-4!” laughed Mkrtchyan-Spight, via Zoom.
Armenian men are, on average, 5-8, though there are three players listed 6-8 or taller on the team that will take the court Friday: Ryan Kiachian, a 6-10 center who plays for Cornell; Davit Khachatryan, a 6-9 center who plays in Armenia and Zach Tavitian, a 6-8 forward who plays in Spain.
Mkrtchyan-Spight is a 6-3 guard with a game that reminds Kalamian of Lou Williams’. Mkrtchyan-Spight appreciated the comparison: “I love it. I love it, I love it,” he said with a grin and a sly addendum. “But, you know, I’m not a Sixth Man, so.”
With more than 200,000 people of Armenian descent living in L.A. County, these are home-away-from-home games for Kalamian and crew. And they’re important.
Armenia’s first basketball action in the United States is an opportunity to impress.
“All these kids that are coming to this game already have the mindset of, ‘I want to be on the national team,’” said Mkrtchyan-Spight, who’s played professionally in Spain, France, Finland and Poland, and, as a kid, for the Homenetmen Glendale Ararat Chapter and at Burbank and Pasadena highs.
“So now they get to actually see it up close. That’s really special and that’s definitely gonna drive them even more, because now they can see it’s possible. It’s not like they’re just watching it on YouTube; they’re seeing it here, live. And hopefully someday we can have two teams, multiple teams, like the French do.”
It’d help if they could inspire some benefactors to drop some dimes, or some dollars.
“If you look at the top five – Spain, USA, Australia, Argentina, France – they’re all well funded and they have a foundation of so many years of national exposure,” said Kalamian, who was a captain at East Los Angeles College before beginning his coaching career.
“They have corporate sponsors. That’s what we’re trying to get. We have a lot of successful Armenian businesses throughout the world, and I would like to get our team some sort of exposure where those businesses feel like, ‘We want to back this team – not only because this team is good, but because it represents Armenia.’ ”
The contingent represented the country well last July. Kalamian’s team – made up of players from Armenia and eligible U.S.-based talents with Armenian background like Mkrtchyan-Spight – won the 2022 FIBA European Championship for Small Countries.
They rallied after falling behind 13-0 to beat host Malta, 84-68, in a championship played before a raucous home crowd in a sweltering gym. They were buoyed by a brilliant bit of bravado – and 41 points – from Chris Jones, the team’s one allotted naturalized player. (He’ll play this week against France.)
Armenia shot an NBA volume of 3-pointers – making 39.4% of 39 attempts from deep per game – and averaged a tournament-high 88.8 points, going 4-0 and winning its games by a margin of 23 points.
France will surely provide a tougher test, even if Les Bleus won’t have their full complement (don’t expect to see Victor Wembanyama).
“It’s sort of like we have a G League team, and we’re pulling guys from there and we’re saying, ‘Go compete against this fifth-ranked team in the world,’” Kalamian said. “But we’ll get there. We may need to take some hits along the way, and that’s OK … one of the core values of being Armenian is being resilient.
“And having gone (to Armenia) last year, you could see how popular the sport is there, so what I’m trying to do now is show these boys and girls, you may not make it to the NBA or to the WNBA, and that’s OK. There is another thing to aspire to, and that may be to play high school or college and maybe overseas.
“And eventually, maybe for the national basketball team for Armenia.”