J.J. Outlaw used to play in the NFL — he’s now an NBA summer league head coach

LAS VEGAS — When listening to J.J. Outlaw speak, you’re reminded of an NFL coach. 

He speaks clearly and directly, rarely wasting syllables when answering a question. The 41-year-old, who is short and stocky, stands with a straight posture with his arms folded across his chest, one hand resting gently atop the other.

When he’s frustrated, you can see it in the throbbing tiny veins near his temple, but he doesn’t let irritation consume him. You see parts of the intensity of Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin or San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan in Outlaw’s demeanor.

The only thing is, Outlaw doesn’t coach football.

Instead, he’s a longtime assistant coach in the NBA, currently working as head coach of the Washington Wizards’ summer league team. Now, you wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Outlaw has a football background: Nearly two decades before he coached in this year’s Vegas Summer League, he was suiting up in the NFL.

And while that part of his life is long past, Outlaw has taken lessons learned from football to hopefully become the basketball equivalent of successful NFL coaches like the aforementioned Tomlin, Shanahan, or Tony Dungy.

Born John-Jerome Outlaw, the Maryland native played four years of varsity basketball at Baltimore’s Mount Saint Joseph High School and was an all-state receiver on the Gaels’ football team. He received college basketball offers from mid-major schools, including Quinnipiac and Coastal Carolina.

Initially, Outlaw preferred basketball, but after reading an ESPN The Magazine story about the Baltimore Ravens in the early 2000s, he was inspired to pursue football.

“It was basically about how much they love the game, how they get each other through their dark days, and then how they go out and do battle together on Sundays,” Outlaw said of the story. “… The article just really spoke to me and I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ ”

Outlaw accepted a football scholarship from Villanova, where the 5-foot-9 receiver contributed in multiple ways for the Wildcats. He finished his Villanova career (2002-05) with the most punt return yards in school history, a record that still stands, as well as the fourth-most receptions and seventh-most receiving yards.

His 83 receptions during the 2005 season were at the time the fourth-best single-season performance by a Wildcat, and Outlaw averaged more than 10 yards per rushing attempt as well. He totaled 4,431 all-purpose yards and 18 touchdowns in four seasons.

In January, Outlaw, a three-time All-Atlantic 10 Conference honoree, was inducted into the Villanova football Hall of Fame.

“My kids are asking me, ‘What is all this?’ They’re young, so they didn’t get it,” Outlaw said. “And I said at one point, ‘Your dad was pretty good at something’.”

Outlaw wasn’t selected during the 2006 NFL draft, but he was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles to a training camp contract shortly afterward. He was eventually cut before the season but re-signed with Philadelphia the following year and was assigned to the team’s NFL Europe squad, Rhein Fire.

Not having a long-lasting NFL career is still a sore spot, Outlaw admits. He said he didn’t study as much as he could have, nor did he take care of his body, which could have led to longevity in the NFL. But it has benefited him in two ways as an NBA coach. First, it’s unlikely he will ever again take an opportunity like that for granted. Additionally, he can pass that life lesson on to his basketball players.

“There’s no guarantees in life, but I think I would’ve felt better if I knew that I had given it everything that I had,” Outlaw said. “And I don’t ever want any of the players that I worked with to live with that regret and say: would’ve, should’ve, could’ve.”

After leaving football behind, Outlaw switched back to basketball in 2010. His father, John Outlaw, 79, became an NBA coach when J.J. Outlaw was 6 years old, and his son always wanted to coach like Dad did. A friend of J.J. Outlaw’s, Dwayne Killings, knew he wanted to get into coaching. He hooked Outlaw up with Chuck Martin, then the men’s basketball head coach at Marist University in upstate New York.

Martin, of course, wanted to know why a former NFL player wanted to work for a college basketball team, but after a feeling-out process Outlaw was hired as Marist’s director of basketball operations.

After a year and a half at Marist, Outlaw was hired in 2011 as a video coordinator for the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers under then-head coach Mike Brown. At the time, Bernie Bickerstaff, a longtime NBA coach, was an assistant to Brown. Bickerstaff, who hired John Outlaw for multiple assistant positions in the 1990s, is Outlaw’s godfather.

Over six seasons, Outlaw learned the ropes from those two, not to mention Mike D’Antoni and Byron Scott. The four have combined to win five championships as players or assistant coaches.

In 2016, Outlaw was hired as an assistant coach for the Memphis Grizzlies under J.B. Bickerstaff, Bernie’s son. Outlaw followed J.B. Bickerstaff to Cleveland in 2019 to serve as an assistant coach until the end of the 2023-24 season, when Bickerstaff was fired by the Cavaliers. Last summer, the Wizards hired Outlaw as a front-of-the-bench assistant./

Outlaw has been willing to learn and earn his stripes, which has included taking on summer league head-coaching duties for the third time, following 2018 with the Grizzlies and 2021 with the Cavaliers.

“He has a very good coaching voice, can meet people where they’re at and also see the vision,” said Wizards general manager Will Dawkins. “And for an organization like us, that aligned really quickly. But he’s also someone you don’t mind going to dinner with, don’t mind hanging out with. And that’s important because we’re on the road so much.”

That voice Dawkins mentions was on display after Washington’s 103-84 loss to the Phoenix Suns on July 11. As a basketball coach, Outlaw leans on the lessons he learned from football. To be successful on the football field, a team is expected to excel in the three phases of the game: offense, defense and special teams. There are similarities in basketball, though with slight adjustments.

“We’ve got to be great on the offensive side, the defensive side, but also our SOBs [sideline out-of-bounds plays], our special situations, and really paying attention to the details,” Outlaw said. “It’s very difficult to win any type of competition with one of those three or two of those three missing.”

The Wizards shot 41.4% from the floor (25% on 3-pointers) against the Suns, were outrebounded 43-29, out-assisted 22-14 and committed 17 turnovers. Overall, Outlaw didn’t like his team’s lack of physicality, which he expressed to the assembled media in a calm but stern manner.

“I think you’ve got to watch the film objectively, and everybody has to see individually where they can be better and how that fits into the overall success of the group,” he told Andscape a day after the game.

The message was heard ahead of the team’s second game on July 13, when they outrebounded the Brooklyn Nets 40-38 and combined for 18 steals, and had a summer league-record eight blocks by second-year center Alex Sarr. The Wizards shot nearly 50% from the field and connected on 11 of 31 3-point attempts.

Outlaw’s unconventional path to the NBA is actually not all that unique in his own family. John Outlaw played 10 seasons in the NFL (1969-78) as a defensive back for the New England Patriots and Eagles before later transitioning to the NBA in the early 1990s as an assistant coach and scout for the Denver Nuggets, the then-Charlotte Bobcats and Wizards, all under Bernie Bickerstaff.

J.J. Outlaw said that his dad has always been supportive of his career, partly because it mirrors his own.

“I think he sees, in me, a lot of himself,” he said. “The conversations that we have, there’s nothing that I’m doing that he hasn’t seen. So it’s a great sounding board.”

Outlaw said there’s always been skepticism about his basketball credentials. It doesn’t bother him as much as it did when he was in his early 20s, but he still wears that skepticism like a chip on his shoulder.

As an undersized guard in basketball and receiver in football, Outlaw is used to being overlooked, but he said that’s what drives him to be better at his craft. Going from undrafted NFL player to coveted assistant NBA coach is probably proof that he isn’t wrong in his thinking.

“I think the point where I stop feeling like I need to prove myself every day is a point where I lose my edge,” Outlaw said.