On the court, Donovan Dent can read the floor like no other.
Off the court, the California kid who proved to be one of the best UNM Lobo point guards of all time still needs some work on reading the room. He just doesn’t seem to get how many people are so interested in what he’s doing.
Take Saturday, for instance. The 6-foot-2 point guard, who finished his senior season in March at UCLA and recently moved back to Albuquerque, announced on Saturday he would host an inexpensive ($25) pop-up kids camp at ABC Prep Basketball Academy in Old Town.
“I was expecting like roughly 25 to 30 kids,” said Dent.
Monday morning, 120 kids showed up, many with Lobo fan parents, to catch a glimpse of, and three hours of working out with, the Lobo great now known by some as “Coach Dent.”
“I never expected this,” he said with a big smile after the camp concluded, and after he’d signed any and every autograph and took pictures with kids and parents alike.
He just couldn’t quite figure out why so many wanted to come to his camp.
Also on Saturday, and certainly the more newsworthy part of the weekend for those outside of Albuquerque, Dent seemed to think nobody would be all that interested in what he told the Journal about his plans to get into basketball training and coaching rather than pursuing a professional playing career.
Yeah, he was fairly oblivious as to that being some information the college basketball world might latch onto.
“My phone started blowing up on Sunday about whether I was still playing or not and I couldn’t figure out why,” Dent said Monday. “I guess it was because of the article. It was crazy.”
As the news started to spread Saturday and then into Sunday about Dent’s comments in Saturday’s Journal article — posted online Saturday, in print on Sunday — Dent was, at least initially, oblivious to it all.
Many Los Angeles-based and national media began citing sources close to Dent that the point guard was retiring. Some cited the Journal. Others just posted the information to their social media accounts without any indication where they learned about it.
To be clear, here is what Dent — a source as close to Dent as the Journal could find for this story — told the Journal on Saturday: “I’m done with pro basketball. That’s why I came back here. I want to give back to the youth and I want to start training. I want to start working in individual training, group sessions, things like that and I want to get started on that out here (in Albuquerque) — young kids, older kids, just help them with their game and I wanted to start it here because Albuquerque gave me so much.”
So, he did.
He held his first camp on Monday, has another, larger one in Albuquerque July 13-15, and will also host camps in Farmington, Santa Fe and Las Cruces over the next couple months.
The lucrative UCLA experience — reportedly $3 million in total revenue share and NIL compensation to play one season for the Bruins — afforded Dent the luxury of pursuing his next step in the game before most players get that chance.
Sure, maybe people should have noticed he wasn’t taking part in any pre-NBA Draft team workouts or combines, but still, when you hear a guy with lucrative playing opportunities out there isn’t going to pursue them, it’s going to get some buzz.
And to be clear, Dent does still train daily and is staying in top shape. And he will be playing in the $2 million, winner-take-all TBT (The Basketball Tournament) in July as the captain of The Enchantment, a primarily UNM Lobo alumni team (there are also a couple NM State Aggies playing and a couple of players with New Mexico ties who didn’t play for either UNM or NMSU).
So, is he really done playing basketball? Is that “R” word that so many used over the past 48 hours to describe his status in basketball (“retire” never appeared in a Dent quote or in the Journal’s article on his decision to get into coaching and training) an accurate one in Dent’s mind?
The Journal asked again on Monday in response to all the social media chatter, if he really meant it.
More specifically: “Is there a chance that one day you’ll still play basketball at a professional level?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about that,” Dent said. “All I’m thinking about right now is doing what I’m doing right now (at the kids camp), and that’s not a pro career. So, I guess people can say I’m retired as of right now.”
OK, then. Nice and clear.
As for the camp…
First off, Dent after the camp said there were 93 kids in attendance. Turns out that was just the online number he saw. Some in-person paying campers — a couple dozen, in fact — pushed the total to 120, according to Brandon Mason, President of ABC Prep where the camp was held in Old Town and where several current and former Lobos regularly work out and train in the offseason. That number has included Dent over the past year when not at UCLA.
The camp was controlled chaos — probably a few too many kids for that setup than ideal, but certainly a learning moment for all — and got handled, as Dent noted, thanks to so many of the players and coaches at ABC Prep. Those included prep star Brandon Mason Jr., a top-70 nationally ranked high school recruit for the Class of 2027, and Bella Hines, the Albuquerque native who was a top 100 recruit last year, played this past season at LSU and has transferred to TCU.
As for the kids in the camp? It was everything Dent could have hoped for.
“Absolutely, it made me so happy,” Dent said. “I appreciate everyone who came out today, especially on short notice. They had high energy, everyone just had a lot of fun. That’s all I can ask for. It was a great time out here.”
Reach Geoff Grammer at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.
Read the full article here