What does it take to be a basketball coach? Knowledge helps but self-awareness may be more important. Daniel Nelson, head coach of Anorthosis Famagusta, has truly taken the long road. At 41, in his first season leading a team in European competition, he’s hungry for more.
On Wednesday night, Ireland’s women return to competitive play in a EuroBasket Women 2027 qualifier in Dublin. That same night in Spain, an Irish coach will be looking to keep his European dream for this season alive.
Daniel Nelson is the head coach of Anorthosis Famagusta. The Cypriot side is 1-3 in the FIBA Europe Cup and is facing Cademont Zaragoza, one of the tournament favourites, with their hopes of advancement on the line.
Nelson has fought to get every opportunity he has in basketball. Irish professional coaches are few in number. Yet he is thriving and building a reputation along the way. Prior to this season starting, I sat down with Nelson to discuss the journey.
An early focus
Daniel Nelson had a pretty standard beginning for anyone Irish in basketball. It was far from his only sport and his main focus was on playing.
“I was big as a kid, I played Gaelic football with Synge St and then I went to Templeogue for basketball and made it onto a Dublin select team, I wasn’t good enough for the Irish team,” he said.
In his teens however, Nelson’s mind shifted quite quickly. By the time he was a young man, his obsession with coaching overtook his interest in playing. “When I went senior, I worked my way up and played with St Vincent’s but by the time I was about 21, coaching took over my brain. Emotionally, I could take or leave playing but I needed to coach.”
A full 20 years on from then, he is quite aware of what he wasn’t aware of as a youngster. “When you come into coaching you don’t really know what it is for a few years. There are so many different aspects to it.”
Work plays a role
Nelson qualified as a carpenter and that career looked to be where he’d spend his professional life. The economic crash of 2008 however gave him a bump along the way towards treating coaching as a career.
“It was a bit of a motivation but I was always working and then going to basketball at night time, 7 nights a week. I wanted to make my own schedule, so I had two underage teams, a college team, and a men’s team,” he said.
“I was putting parts of it together. With the U16 women’s national team, I was an assistant coach in 2010. I did whatever I could to be around the national programmes, whether that was driving somebody somewhere or picking up water bottles.”
Nelson quickly started picking up trophies with his college and underage sides as a head coach. It was around this point, where he knew he could win, that he recognised the need to focus. He probably didn’t expect his carpentry experience to help.
“That was when I realised that I needed to be full-time with one team. I made a lot of contacts and there was a coach who linked me up with teams in Australia. With the carpentry, I could get a visa,” he said.
“My best friend was there already so I had a place to land. I was sleeping on his couch, working in construction, and started trying to get shots at coaching pro ball.”
Straight to the top
Nelson is the first to say he got about as good a first opportunity as he could have asked for. The Dubliner managed to land with the Perth Wildcats, having met Rob Beveridge. After doing some volunteer work with Beveridge on an outside project, he became part of the Wildcats programme for four years. He worked from development coach to assistant coach, quickly developing a knack for video analysis.
“That’s good advice for anyone trying to get into coaching. You need a skill. Nobody cares if you can coach, they want to know if you can start out with a skill that adds value. It was a huge staff with Perth,” said Nelson.
“This was all before Synergy and analytics blew up. I was lucky to get in at that time and learned so much from scouting. You get into understanding what the other teams do.”
Nelson was part of the NBL championship winning Perth team in 2014 before making the move. to Europe.
Developing on multiple fronts
MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg was the first landing spot for Nelson, who puts the Perth connection down to helping him get on the radar of the Bundesliga club.
“It was all about doing the work with contacts. I was an assistant to John Patrick there. He was in Stanford with Andrew Vlahov, who was a shareholder in the Wildcats. When my CV was going around, maybe Coach Patrick saw it,” he said.
“Europe is the Mecca for me, the Bundesliga is the fifth or sixth best league in Europe. While I was assistant in that, I was the head coach of the NBBL team. It was a huge task but it meant I was experiencing the whole spectrum of coaching, from being an assistant to learning languages to being a head coach, all while doing the video work for both.”
Considering how often things can go wrong in pro sports, especially basketball, Nelson has managed to rarely be stuck for work.
“I’ve been 15 years fully professional and I’ve only been out of work twice. That’s pretty lucky, particularly in Europe.”
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The switch-up
Giants Nördlingen, then of Germany’s Pro B (third tier) presented a special opportunity to Nelson. In the summer of 2016, he landed his first head coaching job with a professional team.
“It was a tiny town of about 25,000 people with a team that kept punching above its weight. They loved basketball there,” said Nelson.
“I was wearing many hats. I was covering the strength programme, the video, regenerating the tactics, everything. We ended up being competitive but losing a lot. We were fighting relegation but the club went into liquidation.”
That has been a factor more than once. His next gig with Leeds Force went along similar lines, with that club also going under. That wasn’t the last time he was employed by a side that later went bust, it comes with the territory in Europe, but Nelson has a simple approach to keeping those distractions at bay.
“My approach is that I have an obligation. When I sign a contract, I do what I say I’m going to do.”
Networking really does matter
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of coaches in a similar situation to Daniel Nelson every season. Success or failure goes beyond the sheer ability to coach but also to understand how the job market works.
Making friends along the way matters and Nikolajs Mazurs is one of his closest. The two met at the 2010 FIBA World Cup. It was through Mazurs that he landed his next gig, an assistant to Mazurs, with Parma in the VTB League. His side was regularly playing against talents like Kyle Hines, Sergio Rodriguez, and Alexey Shved.
“It was a different world. We were on nice flights and stayed in beautiful hotels,” said Nelson, remembering the rare comforts fondly.
“My confidence is always high but I needed those reps, I still needed to learn. Being an assistant coach of a VTB team with one of my best friends as head coach, it was great and an amazing experience.”
That thing we all try to forget
Things took an interesting turn then. He signed with Hawke’s Bay, a team in the New Zealand league, flying over in January to prepare his side for a season beginning in March. The thing is that particular January was January of 2020.
“We were a couple of days away from the start of the season, we’d put together a great roster but, of course, it was March of 2020. We were all in the video room watching scouting reports when the GM walked into the room,” said Nelson.
“They whispered into my ear. I knew there was a chance so I spoke to the lads. I knew it was an anxious time for the players and staff, I told them they’d get through it and there’d be other opportunities.”
The season was, of course, cancelled.
“I was on my own in my accommodation trying to figure out whether to repatriate or not. In the end I did. I think I got the last flight out of New Zealand that I could have. The club was great throughout, they furloughed me so that was 80 per cent of the contract while I was there.”
Back to Europe
After repatriating to Ireland, Nelson’s focus switched back to working on the continent. Aside from being home to most of the sport’s top leagues, it’s also got more places to hone your craft as a coach working your way up. He eventually got a Pro B gig in Karlsruhe for the 2020/21 season
“Pro B is a great league, it’s also a Synergy league which meant I could keep up with my video analysis,” said Nelson.
“It was a great year, we finished fourth with the lowest budget in the league and lost to the eventual champions by 2 points in the playoffs. “
That was the first place he worked with Seán Flood as a pro, the Ireland captain who Nelson first coached as an 8 year old. The good job at Karlsruhe landed him his first gig in Cyprus, with Omonia Nicosia
“It was plug and play repeat. Seán came with me, we had the lowest budget in Cyprus but finished fifth of 12 teams, losing in the playoffs on the road in overtime in Game 3 in the playoffs,” he said.
“I got offered a job in Romania from that, which is about the 14th or 15th best league in Europe. That only lasted six games. We were under-resourced but that’s no excuse, I’m a big lad and I know my job.”
Rebuilding
The experience in Romania was the first time it was an on court situation that didn’t go the way Nelson would have liked. Things turned around quickly.
In Kosovo, he once again landed in a similar situation Rahoveci where they managed to take the scalp of the top club Peja in the cup during Nelson’s tenure. That would eventually lead to Peja offering him a gig last season but in-between he had a detour to the BNXT league with Den Helder Suns.
That proved another tough season. Even though he was re-united with Flood, who put up stellar numbers, the Suns had a 5-23 record on the season. While he hates losing, Nelson is aware that most of the jobs he has landed so far were about trying to do more with fewer resources than other clubs in the same league.
“You’re not always there to win. You’re often there to develop players. I’m always trying to win. My first obligation is to the team, the president and the board with whatever their key performance indicators are.”
This season marks Nelson’s first time first time coaching a side in a pan-European competition as he leads Anorthosis Famagusta in the FIBA Europe Cup. (Pic FIBA)
Having support always helps
Considering he has barely managed to live in the same place for more than 5 minutes over the last 15 years, it’s quite remarkable that Nelson has found time to get married. It probably helps that his wife is also heavily career driven.
“She’s been wonderful. She’s so supportive while having her own goals and drive. Our home base now is Cyprus,” said Nelson.
“She loves sport and is very driven as well. I support her fully in her work as a lawyer and her ambition. With FIBA, there are windows and times we can travel to each other. Being in Cyprus and signing for Anorthosis wasn’t about that but, obviously, it’s great.”
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Rebuilding and evolving
The second time Nelson was jobless was the summer of 2024. It wasn’t exactly an extended period of unemployment. That call from Peja came quickly with the team struggling.
“It was late enough, October, when I took that job. When I arrived, they were 2-7 and had been knocked out of the FIBA Europe Cup. We then went 14-14 for the season,” he said.
“The people in Kosovo, they are wonderful and enriched in basketball.”
That cultural aspect heavily appeals to him. There are plenty of basketball people in Ireland but you don’t expect a stranger in a bar to know about it the way they probably would football or rugby. It also required a shift in mindset from Nelson.
An Irish coach or a coach that’s Irish?
Nelson began his coaching journey in the Irish system and naturally has a love for the country. Remembering where you’re from is one thing but he had to not let it overwhelm him.
“At the start it was about representing my country and taking it as far as possible. I quickly realised that winning games isn’t about what your passport is. Whether or not you can do the job doesn’t depend on your patriotism or pride,” he said.
“It’s about whether you can get the job done. Nobody cares where I’m from, they just want to know if I can do it.”
That being said, he has one go-to Irish remedy for when the job gets a bit too stressful. “A cup of tea and a good sense of humour keeps you young”
Continuing the climb
At 41, Nelson is at an age where he wants to accelerate his development. Europe is where he wants to make an impact in the long-term.
“For me it’s about the degree of difficulty of the basketball. That’s my criteria. I’ve been to the highest levels as a video analyst and assistant. European basketball is my basketball, I started my head coach journey in 2015,” he said.
“I want to keep experiencing an increasing degree of difficulty. I want everything to get harder. This season, on 24 September, was my first game in a pan-European competition. That was a big goal.”
Nelson really loves European basketball, like to a degree that you only get from Anglophones who have consumed oodles of it. He has his goals but he knows the challenge that comes with every day.
“It’s hard to describe how difficult it is to coach professional basketball in Europe. You’re a dispensable asset in a flooded marketplace but I want to win and do the best I can for my employer,” he said.
“Obviously the pinnacle is Euroleague. Things could change in the future but right now that’s the target and that’s another world.”
The near-term
Choosing to go back to Cyprus as a coach wasn’t a matter of lifestyle for Nelson, he may have his home there but his priority with work remains the best job available.
“When Anorthosis came around, it was a good option. I knew them for a long time. They are back in the top flight five years and in Europe for three years. They remembered me from Omonia,” he said. “For me it was exactly the perfect fit.”
The FIBA Europe Cup campaign for Anorthosis is currently on the ropes. Nelson’s side is 1-3 with two group games remaining, including Wednesday at Cademont Zaragoza. It’s within the Cypriot League that Nelson believes his side can make a breakthrough this season.
“AEK Larnaca, and Keravnos have dominated for as long as anyone can remember. We want to move the needle there. The league is strong and teams are improving but we’re improving, I’m always trying to win,” he said.
“If we can challenge the long-term hold that those clubs have, it has to happen step by step.”
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