Mike Taylor (basketball coach)

Mike Taylor
Player information
Full name	Michael Richard Taylor
Nickname	Mike T
birthday	August 29, 1972
place of birth	Williamsport , Pennsylvania , USA
size	182 cm
position	Trainer
college	Indiana (PA)
Clubs as coaches
1995–1997 Clarion Golden Eagles ( AC ) 1997–2000 Indiana Crimson Hawks (AC) 2000–2001 Pitt State Gorillas (AC) 2001–2002 BV Chemnitz 99 2002–2003 Essex Leopards 2003–2011 ratiopharm Ulm 2011–2012 Rio Grande Valley Vipers (AC) 2012–2014 Maine Red Claws 2018–2020 Hamburg Towers
National team as coach
2010–2013 Czech Republic ( AC ) Poland since 2014 0

Michael Richard "Mike" Taylor (born August 29, 1972 in Williamsport , Pennsylvania ) is an American basketball coach . He is currently the national coach of the Polish men's team . Taylor coached the clubs Ratiopharm Ulm and Hamburg Towers in the Bundesliga basketball league , both of which he had led to promotion. He also served in the NBA Development League .

Career

As a student, Taylor was a member of the basketball and American football team (position: quarterback ) of Clarion Area High School in the US state of Pennsylvania .

He played basketball for the Crimson Hawk of Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in NCAA Division II during his bachelor's degree . He was on the squad in 1994 when the college team qualified for the nationwide Division II play-offs for the first time . A year later they reached the semi-finals of the championship with the Final Four . In 1995 he continued his studies with a master's degree in communication at Clarion University of Pennsylvania and became assistant coach of the Golden Eagles , which also play in Division II. After graduating in 1997, he returned to his original IUP university as an assistant trainer. In 2000 he gained further experience as an assistant to another Division II team, the gorillas of Pittsburg State University in Kansas .

His first job as chief responsibility coach was in 2001 in Germany's Chemnitz , where he 99 the BV Regional Championship and in the rise of the second basketball league lead. He then trained the English first division club Essex Leopards in Brentwood , immediately adjacent to Greater London . When the club was sold due to financial problems and should suspend a year (but was later dissolved), Taylor returned to Germany and was the coach of the Chemnitz league competitor Ratiopharm from Ulm . On the side, Taylor worked as an assistant in the summer league USBL in his home country for the teams of Dodge City Legend and Kansas Cagerz. With the Ulm team finally succeeded in the 2005/06 season as champions of the group south, promotion to the BBL. After two seasons without relegation worries with 16 wins from 34 games each succeeded in the 2008/09 season as a good fifth with 21 wins in the main round , making the leap into the play-offs , where they were eliminated in the first round against the eventual runner-up Telekom Baskets Bonn . After being placed in front of financially much more potent clubs that season, Taylor had to accept another bloodletting with Ulm in the past season and landed in the "no man's land" of the table with 13 wins. From summer 2010 he assisted Pavel Budinsky as coach of the Czech national basketball team . On April 20, 2011 he was released from play and training at Ratiopharm Ulm with immediate effect after he announced at a press conference without consulting the board that his contract in Ulm will not be extended. Robin Benzing , Per Günther and Konrad Wysocki were among the well-known players that Taylor promoted during his tenure in Ulm .

Taylor first returned to his home country in 2011 and became assistant to Nick Nurse, who is also experienced in Europe, with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in the NBA Development League . After a year he moved to the Northeast Coast as head coach to the Maine Red Claws, the farm team of the Boston Celtics . In the summer of 2012, he was part of the pre-season coaching staff of the Boston team, which was then headed by Doc Rivers . With the Red Claws he made his first entry into the play-offs of the minor league of the NBA in 2013 . This success could not be repeated in the following season, so you parted again after Taylor in late January 2014 as the successor of the German coach Dirk Bauermann a national coach of the Polish Men National Team had been appointed, and with this, among others, against Germany successfully for Qualified final round of the 2015 European Basketball Championship . In 2017, Taylor looked after the Polish team again at an EM.

In line with his university degree in communication studies, Taylor is very communicative and informative and has his own English-language website with information on the person, a collection of links on the subject of basketball, forum and chat functions. For a long time he was also an author at Eurobasket.com , a large English-language information exchange on basketball.

In May 2018, Taylor was introduced as the new head coach of Hamburg Towers ( 2nd Bundesliga ProA ) and initially remained in office as the Polish national coach. Under Taylor's leadership, the Polish national team secured participation in a World Cup in 2019 for the first time in 52 years. At the end of April 2019, he achieved promotion to the basketball league with the Hamburg team: In the fifth game of the semi-final series against his former club Chemnitz, they won 78:72 away and thus won the decisive game. Then Taylor's hamburgers won the ProA championship title. The accompanying motto of the Hanseatic League in the 2018/19 season was Taylor's English-German statement "You can't guarantee an ascent" (German: You can't guarantee an ascent) when he was introduced as a Hamburg trainer, which after the jump into the Bundesliga in a slightly modified form (“You can guarantee an ascent”; German: You can guarantee an ascent) was emblazoned on the Hamburg winners' shirts. At the 2019 World Cup, he led the Polish national team to the quarter-finals, which was one of the big surprises of the tournament and was referred to as the "Polish World Cup fairy tale".

After advancing with Hamburg, Taylor achieved three wins and 17 defeats with the team in the 2019/20 season. At the time the game year was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic , they were bottom of the table. Subsequently, Taylor's contract in Hamburg was not extended.

family

His father Richard "Dick" Taylor, whom he described as his greatest role model, was also a basketball coach and assistant to the well-known college coach Bobby Knight, and in the 1970s assistant to Willis Reed at the New York Knicks in the NBA .

Taylor's wife Alice was born in the Czech Republic and grew up in Tübingen , where her father Gerald Dietl was a professional basketball player.

Web links

• http://www.taylorhoops.com/ - English language website Taylor Hoops International
• Ulm's trainer Mike Taylor in a Schoenen Dunk interview - Interview with Taylor from May 2007
• University Videographer: Mike Taylor - IUD promotional video with Taylor on the Indiana University of Pennsylvania pages

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Former Bobcat Standout Mike Taylor Having Great Success In Professional Basketball Coaching Ranks (05/06/19). In: Clarion Sports Zone. June 5, 2019, accessed June 5, 2020 (American English). 
2. ↑ Mike Taylor becomes co-national coach in the Czech Republic. Südwest Presse , April 8, 2010, archived from the original on April 11, 2010 ; Retrieved June 16, 2010 . 
3. ^ Ratiopharm Ulm: No contract extension for Mike Taylor. Südwest Presse , April 20, 2011, archived from the original on April 23, 2011 ; Retrieved November 19, 2011 . 
4. ↑ Mike Taylor says goodbye to the fans and the people of Ulm with a letter. Retrieved June 5, 2020 (German). 
5. ↑ Maine Red Claws Will Feature New Head Coach For 2014-15 Season. (No longer available online.) National Basketball Association , July 16, 2014, archived from the original on January 31, 2015 ; Retrieved December 6, 2014 (English, media info Red Claws). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Taylor Hopes To Unlock Polish Potential. FIBA Europa , January 31, 2014, accessed February 2, 2014 . 
7. ↑ http://www.fiba.basketball/eurobasket/2017/qualifiers/Poland
8. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated May 24, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ https://www.abendblatt.de/sport/article215373661/Wir-wollen-Hamburg-zur-Basketball-City-machen.html
10. ↑ Slam dunk! Poland head's to basketball World Cup for first time in 52 years after victory over Croatia. Retrieved February 25, 2019 . 
11. ^ Rainer Grünberg: Hamburg Towers rise spectacularly - Nowitzki congratulates. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. April 30, 2019, accessed May 1, 2019 . 
12. ↑ Alexander Berthold and Rainer Grünberg: Exciting finale: Hamburg Towers are second division champions. May 4, 2019, accessed May 4, 2019 . 
13. ↑ Christian Görtzen: The portrait: Trainer Mike Taylor as a guarantee for promotion . In: The daily newspaper . May 6, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed June 4, 2020]).
14. ↑ https://www.eurohoops.net/en/fibawc/932444/spain-overpowers-poland-for-semifinal-berth/
15. ↑ https://www.eurohoops.net/en/fibawc/932444/spain-overpowers-poland-for-semifinal-berth/
16. ↑ http://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2019/news/spain-put-an-end-to-poland-s-world-cup-fairy-tale
17. ^ The coach-off: That's why Mike Taylor failed at the Hamburg Towers. In: bild.de. Retrieved June 4, 2020 . 
18. ^ The new coach from ratiopharm Ulm: Mike Taylor. Schoenen-Dunk.de, July 21, 2003, accessed on June 16, 2010 (press release from ratiopharm Ulm). 
19. ↑ http://www.hamburgtowers.de/taylormadebasketball/