Stan Van Gundy turned down $37,000 to make $7,500 because his dad told him to choose responsibility over money “It’s 1983, And I ended up with two job opportunities at the same time. I could have gone as the assistant at Dartmouth… That job was paying like $37,000. Or I could go as the head coach to Castleton State, which was a Division III program, for $7,500 bucks a year. So like a five-times difference.” “I remember calling my dad. He said, ‘If you want to coach, take the responsibility over the money.’ ‘You’re 24. You don’t need the money.’ He said, ‘Once you have more money, you’ll never go backwards, so then you’d never take a job like that again.’” “He said ‘The bottom line is $7,500 is good for you because if they were paying more, you couldn’t get it!’ He said ‘They’re stuck with you a $7,500 and 2 years of experience. And so that’s what I did.” “And the opportunity to be a head coach, and inherit a really good team at that level, was great. And with great people who virtually every single one of them I’m still in touch with now. And again, learned a lot from them in terms of how to coach. I came in with all the answers… My dad would say ‘If you got all the answers, it’s only because you don’t know all the questions.’ I remember thinking that’s so true in any job. “It was great experience to be able to coach my own team. I was two years older than most of the players… It’s still the most fun I’ve ever had coaching, and I’ve coached a ton of NBA teams.”