“ I GOTCONNECTED WITH KEVIN DURANT AND TRAINED HIM . HE WON THE MVP THAT YEAR ( 2014 ) IN THE NBA , AND MY WORLD KIND OF EXPLODED .”
ADAM HARRINGTON
DOWN WITH KD Brooklyn Nets assistant coach Adam Harrington and Kevin Durant during practice at HSS Training Center in Brooklyn , New York in 2019 .
COURTSY OF NATHANIEL BUTLER
Jill was the first of the Harrington siblings to play basketball at Pioneer Valley Regional High School in Western Massachusetts . She went on to play at York College in Pennsylvania for a year before transferring to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst to pursue a degree in sports management .
Meanwhile , Adam became a 2,000-point scorer at Pioneer Valley and was named USA Today Massachusetts Boys Basketball Player of the Year as asenior in 1998 . He , too , switched colleges after one year , going from North Carolina State to Auburn , where heaveraged 15.5 points per game as a sophomore .
“ When I went to Auburn , she came to live with meand worked a little bit with the program ,” he says . “ Then , when Iwent to play my rookie year with the Mavericks , I used to sit next to Mark Cuban on the team plane . Iwas just telling him about my sister , and he said ,‘ Hey , I ’ d love to meet her .’ And sure enough , he hired her .”
That Jill worked in the Mavericks front office for four years — after Adam played just one season with the team — became abit of arunning gag . “ She always joked that her NBA career lasted longer than mine ,” he says , adding softly and with a chuckle , “ If she could only see me now .”
In Dallas , Harrington met Nets coach Steve Nash , who has gone from being his Mavericks teammate to , essentially , his boss .
@ montclairmagazine MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE HOLIDAY 2021
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