Winthrop assistant, former Wake Forest player Justin Gray helps Eagles ‘be in the moment’
The day that many people think began the resurgence of Wake Forest basketball in the early 2000s started with the team’s freshman standout in a dentist chair.
A month before then, in Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, Justin Gray had broken his jaw. And for the month that ensued, Gray’s mouth was wired shut. He had to talk through his teeth. His teammates jokingly called him ‘Ye — a tribute to the Kanye West song that was popular at the time, “Through the Wire.” He had to eat everything through a straw.
“To this day, I don’t drink smoothies or milkshakes,” Gray said with a big smile. “I wish I could lose 20 pounds like that right now, without my jaw being wired shut.”
Gray, who’d just turned 18 at the time, said that when he first had the dental procedure, the dentist told him that he’d recover in six weeks. But the rematch with Duke was four weeks away — and Gray wasn’t going to miss it. So, before the fateful night, when the Blue Devils traveled to Winston Salem during the 2002-03 season for the ACC matchup’s sequel, Gray was again under a piercing fluorescent light in a dentist chair, getting the wires around his jaw cut.
Nearly 16 years after that moment, Gray sits in a new chair. He’s wearing a gray Winthrop quarter-zip sweater, and he’s doing his new job: scrolling through his email and building a scouting report before the Eagles head into their own matchup against Duke in Durham, N.C., on Friday at 7 p.m. He’s in his first year as an assistant coach under head coach Pat Kelsey, who was an assistant at Wake Forest when Gray was a player.
Ahead of Friday’s game, Gray admits he probably won’t have the same influence on the game as he did when he played as a freshman at Wake Forest, when he wore a big, “goofy” mask to protect his jaw.
He won’t need to score 18 points, lifting a team that was picked to finish last in the ACC to a 94-80 double overtime win. He won’t be tasked with helping his team ignite what Kelsey calls a “Renaissance” of Wake Forest basketball — when the program won an ACC regular season title and temporarily returned Wake Forest to its previous station among the college basketball canopy, after the departures of Tim Duncan and Randolph Childress in the mid-90s had sent the program into a downward spiral.
“That was the game where it exploded,” Kelsey recalled. “That was when tie-dye nation started, when the mascot riding into the stadium on a motorcycle started. And we played unbelievably.”
Gray won’t be asked to do any of this, this time. Instead, the bulk of his work will be due before the game. Everything he’ll experience in Cameron Indoor Stadium, this time, will be new.
“I do think there’s value in playing in the ACC, and playing against these guys and playing against Coach K and being in Cameron before and, you know, all those things…
“But at the end of the day, you have to be in the moment.”
‘College basketball at its best’
Gray accomplished a lot in his four years at Wake Forest, and as a coach, he gets to recycle through a new set of “firsts.”
He was a three-time All-ACC selection and graduated as the program’s most prolific 3-point shooter. He then pursued a pro career for 12 years — traveling from Belgium to the Czech Republic, Romania to Belarus and many other countries — before returning to the college basketball scene this summer, when he reconnected with Kelsey.
His credentials lend him a special credibility. But everything is still new to him, so he lets how he played, it seems, inform the way he coaches.
For instance, when Winthrop’s starting point guard Russell Jones, told his coach that he was nervous prior to its road test against No. 18 Saint Mary’s, Gray responded resolutely.
“I told Russ, ‘I don’t remember a game that I went into that I wasn’t nervous before… If you can, find a comfort zone or something that calms you right before the tip. And after they throw the ball up, it’s like: ‘Boom. It’s basketball.’”
And the moment the buzzer went off in Moraga, Calif. — when Winthrop had defeated Saint Mary’s — Gray turned to the team’s graduate assistants and managers and gave them a simple directive: “Grab the phones. Somebody record this because this is going to be good.”
What ensued was a special celebration in the locker room: water spraying, players screaming and hugging each other in elation, coaches and players all coming together in an impassioned prayer led by its head coach: “This is for Winthrop. This is for Winthrop!”
And it was all caught on camera for the players to have forever.
“That is college basketball at its best,” Gray said.
And even in the moments where it’s not the best, Gray is reminded that he’s where he should be. Last week, after being upset by Tennessee Tech at home, the Winthrop coaching staff went to work immediately after the buzzer.
Around 1 a.m., Gray walked out of his office to use the restroom when he heard a familiar sound. Basketballs echoed off the hardwood and clunked off the rim.
Gray peered into the Coliseum and smiled: “We had four guys in the gym — after a game, after a loss — getting those shots up because it was important to them.”
College basketball at its best, Gray might have thought.
‘What’s next?’
Earlier this week, Gray sat in his new chair, in his new office, excited by the question he’s fallen in love with answering as a coach: “What’s next?”
“That’s the job,” Gray said with a shrug and a big smile. “Even though it’s my first year here, this is what I enjoy about it. What’s next? Just trying to figure out the puzzle pieces of another game and another scouting report. What can we do to win? What do we need to do? What do we need to prepare for?”
Answering those questions are harder than asking them sometimes, especially ahead of games like the one Winthrop has on Friday night.
Although Duke lost to Stephen F. Austin on Tuesday night — which turned out to be the biggest upset in a Division I game in the last 15 years, per ESPN Stats & Info — the Blue Devils will still be ranked No. 1 when Winthrop comes to town. The Blue Devils still play in front of a crowd that suffocates its opponents — in a venue that Gray never won in as a player, and one that Kelsey said was “one of the greatest settings in American sports.”
In so many words, Duke will still be Duke.
“I’m just really excited,” Chandler Vaudrin said after his team’s win over Pfeiffer. “It’s one of those childhood games that when you’re in the backyard, you’re thinking of playing teams like Duke.”
And Gray, although he’ll be in a new role, will still know which memories to channel.
“I haven’t won there, so hopefully that’ll be something that changes,” Gray said with a laugh. “But I’ve played well against them before, and I know how it is in Cameron. They’re going to make a run. The Crazies are going to go crazy. And it will be loud.
“And that’s the challenge for us: Can we look to the right, and can we look to the left and say, ‘We got this; this is who we’ve been training for; and we’re ready for the moment?’”
Until that decisive moment arrives, Gray will be sitting in his new chair and working his new job — using his past to help him do what he’s never done before.
This story was originally published November 28, 2019 at 6:17 AM.
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