Brian Bailey was back on the sideline at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, this time as part of the Atlanta Hawks staff as they opened the Eastern Conference first-round series against the Knicks. New York beat Atlanta 113-102 in Game 1, and Hawks coach Quin Snyder had turned to Bailey to lead the scouting work for the series.
Snyder said Bailey handled more than film and notes. He described the job as game management, including substitutions, matchups and which plays to run, while adding that Bailey took the lead role in scouting the opponent. “You watch the game and see what he does,” Snyder said. “The best way to describe it during the course of the game would be game management. Substitutions, matchups, what plays we want to run. All those things that go on within a game. He took the lead role on scouting the team in this series. It really highlights his leadership capabilities.”
For Bailey, the assignment carried a full-circle feel. He grew up in Hempstead and was a standout basketball and football player at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, where he and his younger brother Maurice led Nassau Class B champion South Side to an 83-79 win over Hempstead for the overall county title in 1998. Maurice scored 25 points in that game. Bryan scored 23, including 18 of South Side’s 21 fourth-quarter points.
The path that brought him here did not begin with basketball scholarship offers. Stony Brook was the only school to recruit him out of high school, and it wanted him to play wide receiver. Bailey said he did not want football because the players were bigger and stronger than he was. He received an academic scholarship to Bucknell, walked into the basketball office and introduced himself, then tried out and made the team. By his sophomore year, he was the starting point guard and went on to average a little more than 17 points in both his junior and senior seasons.
After Bucknell, Bailey played 13 years in Europe, competing in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Bosnia, Cyprus and Italy. When he retired, he and his brother started a business training and developing young players. He later joined the Knicks’ G League staff in Westchester for the 2016-17 season, spent one year on Mike Miller’s staff, then moved to Utah’s G League team. Two years later, Snyder added him when he was then coaching the Jazz.
Snyder’s praise fit a career that has been built on proving himself at every stop. Bailey said he had “a chip on my shoulder,” and that he was a walk-on who had to earn everything. “I was a walk-on in college. I didn’t get recruited. I had to prove myself everywhere I went. Even going to Europe, you have to grind and prove yourself,” he said. Raised in a family of hardcore New York sports fans, Bailey said he was not a Knicks fan as a kid and followed individual players more than teams. Now, with the postseason series moving forward, the Atlanta Hawks coach is asking him to keep doing the same thing that has carried him this far: see the game clearly, and help everyone else do the same.
