BYU's Ainge entering a new era

He is still a few days away from college graduation, but Austin Ainge has already landed a job any aspiring coach would envy. He is a full-fledge assistant coach at a Division I basketball program.

He knows what everyone is saying — that he got the job because his dad is Danny Ainge.

And the point is?

Sure, it helps when your dad is a former NBA player, coach and now executive director of the Boston Celtics. So what's he supposed to do, gouge out his eyes?

"I don't know too many people who get jobs without connections," said Ainge, who is already working alongside new SUU coach Roger Reid. "That's how it works. I just have to do the best job I can, and hopefully we'll win enough games that people will see that I can contribute."

Just to clear things up, the story goes like this: Reid was a BYU assistant coach when Danny Ainge was in college. Reid was later hired by the elder Ainge as an assistant coach with the Phoenix Suns. Now Reid is returning the favor.

Favoritism aside, Austin Ainge seems a good coaching prospect.

He is articulate, humble and has a mentor's eye for the game. He was BYU's team leader all last season, despite only finishing fifth in scoring.

Predictably, he led the team in assists by a wide margin. His job wasn't so much to score as to direct.

Yet even when he was benched, he readily conceded the coach knew best.

Even as a freshman, he sounded remarkably mature and coach-like — although he didn't know that would be his future.

"I haven't always wanted to be a coach; I've changed my major a bunch of times at BYU, trying to figure things out. I just wasn't ready to give up the game, and so I just wanted to stay in it. Coaching is the only thing I could think of doing for 40 years and still be living in it."

His original plan was to go to law school.

"My wife still complains that I did some false advertising; she thought she was marrying a lawyer," he said.

Ainge's break came about a month ago, when Reid was hired as SUU's new coach. Though he was at the NCAA tournament in Lexington, Ky., Ainge phoned Reid and told him he was interested in coaching. But the seeds were planted two years earlier when, at a golf outing, he told Reid the same thing.