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Lessons From A Basketball Life: Jim And Kendall Chones
The father and son duo talk Cavs Academy, basketball as a metaphor for life and growing up in an NBA household.
by Dillon Stewart | Jun. 13, 2018 | 2:00 PM
Growing up, Kendall Chones didn’t realize his father was Jim Chones — at least not that Jim Chones. The 6-foot-11 forward played five seasons in Cleveland, including the 1975-76 Miracle of Richfield season, before winning an NBA Championship as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers.
But Chones downplayed his basketball life at home so his triplet sons and two daughters could discover sports organically.
“They came home one day when they were 7 or 8 and said, ‘These guys at school were saying you’re Jim Chones,’ ” says the Cavs radio network analyst. “ ’They gave us cards for you to autograph.’ ”
Still, Kendall found basketball. After playing at Colgate University and nearly a decade professionally in Europe, he returned home to lead the Cavs Academy, the organization’s youth summer camps held weekly from June to August.
It’s a full circle moment for Jim, who coached his own summer camps at Cuyahoga Community College and in each of Cleveland’s municipal wards.
“I knew how to play, but I didn’t know how to teach,” says Jim. “[Kendall] has a coach’s mentality.” In honor of Father’s Day, Jim and Kendall share lessons they’ve learned from each other and from a bond they’ve forged on the court.
Kendall Chones: My dad was my favorite player growing up. I used to take his autographed cards and sell them to my buddies at school.
Jim Chones: I never put up my trophies, not even my first team All-American honors [from Marquette University]. I didn’t want my kids to try to live up to the trophies. I never even pushed sports. I pushed academics.
JC: One day they came home and said, “We want to play basketball.” I said, “Are you sure? It’s a very difficult sport to play well.”
KC: The main thing I took away from him was work ethic. The first thing he taught us was to put in the right amount of work and to work smart.
JC: I come from the Vince Lombardi, Bobby Knight mentality. I would swear at them and penalize them, until I saw that I was scaring them more than I was helping. I had to learn to coach.
KC: When I was playing Europe, we’d be in a 6,000-seat arena in a village two hours north of Helsinki and not many people would be there. Or we’d be in Israel and bombings would be going on. A lot of guys came and went. They couldn’t do it. I would think back to the discipline I learned from my dad. Basketball got me there, but the things my dad taught me allowed me to survive.
JC: The fundamentals of the game are the same — pass, dribble and shoot — but the emphasis has changed with the impact of the 3-point shot. Kendall’s camps teach all the things that make these kids relevant, including character-building, confidence-building and how to struggle and overcome.
JC: Basketball is life. What is life but a continuous lesson on how to be what I know and who I know I am? Playing sports makes everything else in life easy.
More Info: cavs.com/cavsacademy
But Chones downplayed his basketball life at home so his triplet sons and two daughters could discover sports organically.
“They came home one day when they were 7 or 8 and said, ‘These guys at school were saying you’re Jim Chones,’ ” says the Cavs radio network analyst. “ ’They gave us cards for you to autograph.’ ”
Still, Kendall found basketball. After playing at Colgate University and nearly a decade professionally in Europe, he returned home to lead the Cavs Academy, the organization’s youth summer camps held weekly from June to August.
It’s a full circle moment for Jim, who coached his own summer camps at Cuyahoga Community College and in each of Cleveland’s municipal wards.
“I knew how to play, but I didn’t know how to teach,” says Jim. “[Kendall] has a coach’s mentality.” In honor of Father’s Day, Jim and Kendall share lessons they’ve learned from each other and from a bond they’ve forged on the court.
Kendall Chones: My dad was my favorite player growing up. I used to take his autographed cards and sell them to my buddies at school.
Jim Chones: I never put up my trophies, not even my first team All-American honors [from Marquette University]. I didn’t want my kids to try to live up to the trophies. I never even pushed sports. I pushed academics.
JC: One day they came home and said, “We want to play basketball.” I said, “Are you sure? It’s a very difficult sport to play well.”
KC: The main thing I took away from him was work ethic. The first thing he taught us was to put in the right amount of work and to work smart.
JC: I come from the Vince Lombardi, Bobby Knight mentality. I would swear at them and penalize them, until I saw that I was scaring them more than I was helping. I had to learn to coach.
KC: When I was playing Europe, we’d be in a 6,000-seat arena in a village two hours north of Helsinki and not many people would be there. Or we’d be in Israel and bombings would be going on. A lot of guys came and went. They couldn’t do it. I would think back to the discipline I learned from my dad. Basketball got me there, but the things my dad taught me allowed me to survive.
JC: The fundamentals of the game are the same — pass, dribble and shoot — but the emphasis has changed with the impact of the 3-point shot. Kendall’s camps teach all the things that make these kids relevant, including character-building, confidence-building and how to struggle and overcome.
JC: Basketball is life. What is life but a continuous lesson on how to be what I know and who I know I am? Playing sports makes everything else in life easy.
More Info: cavs.com/cavsacademy
Dillon Stewart
Dillon Stewart is the editor of Cleveland Magazine. He studied web and magazine writing at Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and got his start as a Cleveland Magazine intern. His mission is to bring the storytelling, voice, beauty and quality of legacy print magazines into the digital age. He's always hungry for a great story about life in Northeast Ohio and beyond.
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