In Japan, Tom Hovasse Inspires a Country to Believe in Basketball

Hovasse coached the Japanese women to a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics. As the men's basketball coach, he wants Japan to "shock the world" in Paris.

Tom Hovasse, a Penn State alum, coaches the Japan women's team at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. / Kareem Elgazzar-USA TODAY Sports

TOKYO | Tom Hovasse’s voice vibrated through the empty arenas of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, ricocheting off barren seats and wooden courts with nothing to absorb it. So television mics caught every word that the 6-foot-8 American basketball coach shouted in Japanese.

Players on the Japan women’s national team were immune to Hovasse's voice by then, even in venues vacant of fans because of COVID. The voice had rallied, praised and pushed them — implored them to Believe! — for four years since the Japan Basketball Association named Hovasse as the team’s head coach in 2017. That’s when Hovasse, the Colorado native and former Penn State forward, audaciously predicted that the Japanese women would beat the U.S. and win gold in Tokyo. Four years later Hovasse's booming voice carried a team, and a nation, on the first of two wild basketball rides. 

The “crazy, crazy” coach, whom some in Japan call the “demon coach,” led Japan to a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics. It was the country’s first Olympic basketball medal of any kind. Japan fell in love with a women’s team that ran the floor, launched 3-pointers, played unrelenting defense and frustrated opponents with a style that reflected its coach. A coach who believed he could play in the NBA (he did), believed his team could win Olympic gold (it came close) and now believes the Japanese men's team could rattle the world order at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Six weeks after coaching the Japanese women’s team to the Olympic gold-medal game, Hovasse pivoted with barely a breath to become head coach of the Japan men’s national program. The transition jarred him. In November 2021, with the silver medal still gleaming, Hovasse’s new team lost to China twice in three days, once by 33 points. “I was just like, ‘Holy cow, this is going to be hard,’” Hovasse said. 

But two years later, the Japanese men placed 19th at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, a result that touched off a national celebration and inspired a documentary called BELIEVE. A movie for finishing 19th? Of course. Japan had qualified outright for the Olympics men’s tournament for the first time since 1976 (Japan received an auto bid to the Tokyo Olympics as the host country). Then in February 2024, Japan circled back against China, defeating its rival 76-73 for the first time in a FIBA competition in 88 years. 

Now, a country powered by baseball is growing more in love with basketball, in part because of a 57-year-old American who played 4 minutes in the NBA, speaks fluent Japanese and began his coaching career by responding to an email titled, “You want to coach?” 

“For a long time, Japanese basketball lacked a winning mentality,” said Masahiko Masuda, executive director of the Japan Basketball League, the country’s growing professional circuit. “But the historic victories achieved by Tom have given Japanese basketball the confidence that it can succeed globally.”

＼ 🏀🎊本日開幕‼️🎊🏀 ／

　　◤　　　　　　　　　　◥
　　　Let's play
　　　our best basketball.

　　　　#トム・ホーバス HC
　　◣　　　　　　　　　 ◢

🎥『#BELIEVE 日本バスケを諦めなかった男たち』

🔥本日より4週間限定公開🔥
　週末は劇場へ‼️#AkatsukiJapan pic.twitter.com/22ifVAAQJi

— 「BELIEVE 日本バスケを諦めなかった男たち」公式 (@believe_aktkjp) June 6, 2024

Another chance to ‘shock the world’

Japan brings a unique story, and fascinating head coach, to Paris for the Summer Olympics. Long a bystander in international basketball, Akatsuki Japan say they’re going to “shock the world” by outplaying their No. 26 world ranking and finishing top eight in Paris. “Americans hear top eight and say, ‘What are you talking about?’” Hovasse said. “But here, it’s a very high-level goal.”

The challenge is daunting. Japan, which has advanced from group play just once in seven Olympics men’s tournaments, is grouped with three teams ranked among the FIBA top 12, including defending World Cup champ Germany. To reach the quarterfinals, Japan must finish second in Group B, which also features host France and Brazil, or be one of the top two third-place teams.

Yet the roster intrigues, notably with Los Angeles Lakers forward Rui Hachimura, whom Hovasse credits for bringing more Japanese people into basketball. The Akatsuki (which translates to dawn or daybreak) also features former NBA player Yuta Watanabe, who will transition to Japan’s professional B. League; former Nebraska shooting star Keisei Tominaga; and former Washington State player Josh Hawkinson, a naturalized citizen of Japan. 

Hovasse knows that shocking the world won’t be easy but has been building toward this coaching moment for 15 years. In 2009, eight years after retiring as a player, Hovasse lived in San Diego, working at a tech startup and coaching his son’s AAU basketball team. “But every night,” he said, “I went to bed thinking about basketball.”

Hovasse had lived the game for decades. He played at Widefield High near Colorado Springs and took a chance on Penn State, prompted in part by a recruiting call from Joe Paterno. Hovasse led the Nittany Lions in scoring and rebounding from 1987-89 and scored 1,459 career points.

RELATED: 14 Penn State athletes to represent Team USA at Paris Olympics

While playing professionally in Portugal after graduation, Hovasse told his agent that he needed a job to fight off-court boredom. He meant working in a shoe store. His agent suggested instead that Hovasse attend a professional tryout in New York for a Japanese team.

The Toyota Pacers (now Alvark Tokyo) signed Hovasse as both player and marketing executive in 1990. Hovasse played nine of his 10 professional seasons in Japan with Toyota, leading the league in scoring four times, and split his career with one great leap home in 1994. Hovasse made the Atlanta Hawks’ roster that year as a 28-year-old rookie. He played in two games, a total of four minutes, and attempted one 3-pointer. Hovasse called those four minutes his biggest accomplishment in basketball until the Tokyo Olympics.

During his second tour in Japan, when he played basketball full time and no longer worked concurrently as a “salaryman,” Hovasse became fluent in Japanese. He also maintained a friendship with his translator at Toyota, who would send that email.

“I told my wife, ‘I’m too passionate about basketball not to be in the game,’” Hovasse said. “But I hadn’t started looking for a job, hadn’t sent out any resumes. And then two weeks later I get an email that says, ‘You want to coach?’ It was out of the blue.”

The offer was from the JX-Eneos Sunflowers to be an assistant for the superpower of Japanese women’s professional basketball. Hovasse had two young kids and a good job and had never coached women. But coaching beckoned, so Hovasse and his son moved to Japan while his wife and daughter remained in San Diego. 

Hovasse spent seven years as an assistant for Eneos, mixing volunteer stints with the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA and a role with the Japanese women’s national team as an assistant during the 2016 Rio Olympics. He served one season as Eneos’ head coach. The Sunflowers went 38-0 and became the first unbeaten team to win the Women’s Japan Basketball League.

That earned Hovasse the offer to coach the Japanese women’s national team. At his introductory press conference in 2017, Hovasse predicted that Japan would beat the U.S. in Tokyo.

“That made everyone think I was crazy for four years,” he said.

But another coach saw promise. After winning her first NCAA women’s basketball title in 2017, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley brought her team to Japan on an international trip. Japan won one of the scrimmages by 21 points.

“I like their chances of medaling in 2020,” Staley, who coached the U.S. to gold in the Tokyo Olympics, said of Japan in an interview with Kyodo News.

Tom Hovasse, the Penn State alum who coaches Japan's men's national basketball team, is pictured in Tokyo. / Mark Wogenrich/Penn State on SI

Building a coaching career on detail

For Hovasse, Japan is a second home. “I’ve been here for 20-plus years,” he said. “The culture is fantastic. The food is great. The people are friendly. It’s clean, it’s safe, it’s amazing.”

Hovasse also admires, and identifies with, the Japanese attention to detail. While working at Toyota, he marveled at the designers who sought to perfect the sound of a car door’s closing. But for some reason, that appreciation didn’t translate to basketball.

“This country runs so smoothly, and they build great products because of that attention to detail,” Hovasse said. “But in basketball, they were really lacking it when I first got to Japan in the ‘90s. I think basketball was just a sport that nobody thought they could ever be good at.”

As the women’s national team coach, Hovasse drilled players in footwork, passing and cutting. He tasked them to labor over defensive positioning and 3-point shooting. He did this while relying on the players’ ceaseless, selfless work ethic. Atop that coaching strategy sits Hovasse's single-word mission statement: "Believe."

“There's not a country in the world that you can tell me practices harder than Japan,” Hovasse said. “I just have never seen it. And that's our advantage. So it’s getting them to believe in the attention to detail that the Japanese innately have. It's part of the culture. It's just completely amazing. So incorporating that, sometimes it takes an outside view to get people to realize what's already in front of them.”

Hovasse learned to value detail from former Penn State coach Bruce Parkhill, who bridged his program’s recruiting and talent gaps in the 1980s by being meticulous about concepts like angles and sight lines. Before the Tokyo Olympics, Japan played an exhibition game against the U.S. in Washington, D.C. As it would in Tokyo, Team USA won with its size and skill. But Japan ran nonstop, spread the floor, penetrated on offense and made the Americans work. Parkhill, who attended the game, later realized just how all-in the players were with Hovasse.

“After the game [Hovasse] said, ‘If I asked them to, they would run the stairs to the roof up and back for 15-20 minutes,’” Parkhill said. “And they would have. That team had a great work ethic.”

Fran Fraschilla, the ESPN college basketball analyst who has worked on many international broadcasts, found himself fascinated with the Japan women’s team at the Tokyo Olympics. He called Hovasse a “kindred spirit” of international basketball, and the Japanese men’s team sits high on his watch list at the Paris Olympics.

“He has a great basketball mind, and what he did with the Japanese women’s team was an incredible accomplishment,” Fraschilla said. “His teams play fast, they space the floor, they drive it, they kick it out for 3-point shots. They’re a very fun team to watch if you love up-tempo basketball. And now I think he’s trying to bring a similar style to the men’s side.”

The Oni coach who is a “great motivator”

On the court, Hovasse thinks and speaks entirely in Japanese. It’s natural for him now. Yet even after speaking Japanese for more than two decades, he still doesn’t understand all the language’s grace notes. For instance, Hovasse respects, but isn’t entirely comfortable with, his team being referred to as “Hovasse Japan.” It’s common culturally in Japan to elevate coaches as a sign of respect. The U.S. equivalent would be Reid Kansas City or Franklin Penn State, which wouldn’t fly.

Hovasse said that sarcasm barely exists in Japan, so he has softened that side of his personality. And sometimes, his internal translations cause trouble. At the 2023 World Cup, Hovasse shouted No liwake! to one of his players. It means “No excuses” in English and wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the U.S. But in Japanese, liwake is a strong word, too strong for that moment. It earned Hovasse extensive media coverage and contributed to his reputation as the Oni coach, a reference to a giant demon in Japanese folklore. 

“As a foreign coach, my Japanese is very straightforward, which can be a little bit abrasive,” Hovasse said. “But after I tell the players what's going on, they understand where I'm coming from.”

Hovasse is a process and preparation coach who anchors his motivation in research. After becoming head coach of the women’s national team, Hovasse embarked on a driving tour of U.S. basketball programs, visiting the New York Knicks, the Connecticut women’s program, his alma mater, Michigan State and Virginia before flying West for stops at Golden State and with the Lakers. He built the women’s strategy around speed and shooting and is working a similar model with the men’s program.

“Tom has a growth mindset in that he’s not fixed on one style,” Fraschilla said. “It’s apparent, moving from the women’s side to the men’s side, that he’s made the necessary adjustments based on Japan’s personnel.”

Having strategic bona fides strengthens Hovasse’s motivational pitches. Masuda, of the B. League, said that Hovasse is “diligent in his studies” and equips his teams with the latest basketball techniques, “which I believe is his strength.” Masuda also called Hovasse a “great motivator.”

“If you watch the movie BELIEVE,” Masuda said, “you will quickly understand this.”

Inspiring Japan to believe in basketball

Akatsuki Japan’s 2023 World Cup run swept the country in a communal basketball moment. About 40 million people watched the team’s 80-71 victory over Cape Verde to clinch the Paris Olympics bid, according to the Japan Basketball Association. BELIEVE, the documentary celebrating Japan’s 19th-place finish, was released theatrically in Japan in June. Its subtitle is, “The Men Who Didn’t Give up on Japanese Basketball.” Hovasse is a centerpiece.

According to Masuda, attendance at B. League games increased 140 percent after the World Cup. “Even people working in our league did not expect it,” he said.

“Basketball has been said to follow baseball and soccer in popularity [in Japan], but it seems that the time is near when basketball will be spoken of alongside baseball and soccer,” Masuda said. “What would take over ten years for the league to achieve on its own now seems possible in just a few years thanks to the success of the national team.”

Hovasse is proud to be part of Japan's basketball rise, which includes higher professional salaries and new arenas, but unsure how long he wants to continue in it. After the Tokyo Olympics, Hovasse considered offers from European national teams and WNBA teams in addition to the Japan men’s national job. The NBA and U.S. college basketball interest him less.

“I like creating a team, I like building a team,” he said. “I like building team chemistry. I like growing, right? In college, all they ask about is recruiting, and now it’s NIL. So I don't know. I'm happy. I like being a national team coach. I think it's interesting.”

Still, coaching national teams is exhausting, and Hovasse worries about staying too long with any one team. “I don't know if it's good for the team and players or me,” he said.

Fraschilla said that Hovasse would make a “seamless” transition to coaching in the U.S. at any level. “If you just look at what his women’s team accomplished at the [Tokyo] Olympics, going up against the mighty USA team, it’s apparent that his coaching chops can compete with anybody,” Fraschilla said. One team might get the chance.

In a 2023 editorial, the Japan News, the English edition of Japan’s largest newspaper, hailed Hovasse’s rebuild of the national basketball teams as “particularly noteworthy.” The editorial spotlighted Hovasse’s daily practice plea: “Please believe. Believe. Believe.”

Hovasse will bring Believe to Paris. What happens after the Olympics, he’s not yet sure.

“Because I am 57, I think about next steps, so it’s kind of tough,” Hovasse said. “And then the Olympics are always an emotionally draining thing. It's just building building, building, building, building. And then you play, and then it’s over, and then you’re like, ‘Now what do I do?’ So I’m going to wait to see after the Olympics and just see what I feel like.”

Penn State on SI is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.