Mark Few’s run with USA Basketball isn’t over. The Gonzaga coach is set to stay in the national team mix under Erik Spoelstra, joining the staff that will guide the United States through the 2027 FIBA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that Few is one of three assistants expected to work under Spoelstra, who is taking over for Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr for the next international cycle. Oklahoma City Thunder coach Mark Daigneault and Detroit Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff are the other two names on the staff.
Few has been part of USA Basketball in one form or another for more than a decade. Before serving as an assistant on Kerr’s national team staff for the 2023 FIBA World Cup and 2024 Paris Olympics, he worked with the program in several other roles, including as an assistant at the 2018 USA National Team minicamp and on the USA Select Team in 2019 and 2021.
He also coached the 2015 U.S. Pan American team, a college-player group that won gold.
His resume with USA Basketball stretches back even further. Few was an assistant for the gold medal-winning 2012 U-18 National Team and served as a court coach at the 2009 U-19 World Cup/World University Games Team training camp.
The latest chapter comes after a gold-medal run in Paris for a roster led by LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. That team erased a 17-point deficit against former Gonzaga forward Filip Petrusev and Serbia in the semifinals before beating host France for the title.
Spoelstra was already talking about Few in glowing terms before the 2024 Olympics. During Team USA training camp in Las Vegas, the Miami coach said he’d known Few “going on three decades.”
“He’s a hall of fame (coach). First ballot.
Right now,” Spoelstra said of Few. “And you would never know it by the way he can relate to anybody.
He’s just a guy that likes to coach basketball, develop programs, develop players, make them better than when they first arrived on campus.”
That praise aged well. Few was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame earlier this year and will be officially enshrined next month in Springfield, Mass.
“He’s a brilliant basketball coach,” Spoelstra said. “One of the very best in this business.”
There’s also a Gonzaga-to-Heat connection in the family tree. Few’s oldest son, AJ, a former video coordinator at Gonzaga, joined Miami’s NBA Summer League staff in 2025 after connecting with Spoelstra in Paris the year before.
And there’s another Gonzaga name worth watching down the road: former center Chet Holmgren, now with Oklahoma City under Daigneault, could be in the mix for the 2028 LA Olympics. Holmgren made the 41-man player pool before the 2024 Olympics but did not make the final 12 for Paris.
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