A Conversation with Paul Mills, ORU's New MBB Coach

We sat down with Paul Mills, the new head coach for ORU's men's basketball program, to get to know him a little better. Due to space limitations, we printed only a portion of that conversation in the latest issue of Excellence; here we present the conversation in its entirety, edited for clarity.

How has the transition been so far?
So far, so good. It's a lot of ripping and running, trying to get situated not only with a move, trying to get your family acclimated to a new city and new situation, but recruiting is also nonstop. There's always one more letter to write, one more phone call to make, and you have to put limits on yourself, otherwise you can go overboard and neglect some areas of your life that you shouldn't be neglecting. There's a balance there. There's a lot of ambition. There's a lot of desire to put a good product on the floor. But to be honest, I don't really consider it a job—it's fun for me. It's fun getting to know these recruits and their families, to see if it's a fit. It's fun being around the guys every single day. So even though there is some transition involved, it's a joyous transition.

You're inheriting a team you didn't put together. How has that transition been?
As I shared with the guys, this isn't a situation where I'm thinking, 'Hey, wait for me to get my guys in here and then we're going to start winning.' They are my guys. Coach Sutton has assembled a great group. Albert Owens is a senior, is an all-conference player, leading scorer, really talented and has a chance to make big strides this year. Emmanuel Nzekwesi was Freshman of the Year in the conference last year. Javan White was hurt last season, but his health is coming along and I think there's some stability there where he'll be able to be utilized. Chris Miller is good. The freshmen Emir Ahmedic and Kellen Manek are good, so the whole front line is really good.

How have the ORU community and the surrounding communities welcomed you?
It's been great. Everybody has been very open. Everybody has been asking how they can help or what they can do to make our transition easier, from recommendation of schools for my children to where we should live, to restaurants, to where you get your hair cut. Everyone has been very welcoming.

How did you get into coaching?
I fell in love with basketball around the 7th grade. The culture of basketball in the NBA at that time was what I consider one of the golden eras. It was Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and you were roped into it from a national scene. We lived in a poor neighborhood in Houston, Texas, and basketball was kind of the sport of the poor. In a lot of European and African countries it's soccer, but for America, it's basketball. That was what my neighborhood did: we played basketball. You could run down to the end of the street and there were ten, twelve kids and one basketball, and everybody's having the time of their lives. Because of the neighborhood, the culture, and where the game was nationally, I was roped in. I enjoyed it, loved it, enjoyed being around teammates, enjoyed the game, enjoyed spending time with it, and became really focused on it.

I went to Southern Nazarene University on a basketball scholarship. Was there a year and got hurt; transferred to Texas A&M and knew that I wanted to be around the game because the injury prevented me from playing anymore. Teaching the game, being around kids: those were two areas that I really loved. To be around young men and help those guys and hear their life stories, that this magnet we had between us, despite the age difference, was a twelve-ounce rubber ball, that was rewarding.

The second I graduated from college, I wanted to coach. Unfortunately, coaching is a lot like pastoral work, in that there's not a lot of money involved, but I knew I wanted to do it and felt called to do it. I loved it. I coached six years as a high school coach, then made the transition collegiately to Rice University for one year, then went to Baylor University for the last 14. The last 21 years have been an experience, but it's been a joy. It's not even been a job.

Who'd you model your game after?
[laughs] I think everybody in that era, in the neighborhood where I lived, we all tried to be Michael Jordan. None of us were. [laughs] I did the whole thing, I wore the arm band, I wore the sleeve, I wore the Air Jordans, I had 27 posters in my room. I idolized the guy. I loved him. But what I really took away from watching Mike and Larry Bird and Magic was that their work ethic was just insane. The stories you would hear, and you've seen that later with guys like Kobe and Steph and Lebrons—what separates you is a work ethic. During that time, you just knew that you had to work. I enjoyed it, though. I would literally leave my house at 7:00 am on a Saturday, the day you didn't have school, and I'd come back at 10:00 at night. You went to the park, you went neighborhood to neighborhood, seeing where the game was. And you just loved it. You enjoyed being around your friends who also did it. I was glad when I turned 16 and had a car, had friends who had cars that could drive me to the park instead of walking or riding your bike everywhere.

All those friends you grew up with, have any of them gone on to play basketball?
I played on a really good high school team, and a lot of those guys went on collegiately, some to UConn, some to Pittsburgh, some to TCU, some to Prairie View A&M. But no, the city of Houston, when you went back, a lot of those guys stayed where they went to college, and so I haven't been able to keep in touch with those guys as much. I'm not on Facebook, so [laughs] that's usually the way people connect nowadays.

So you weren't into Hakeem Olajuwon?
Hakeem was good, but he wasn't a guard. I couldn't relate to a seven-footer! [laughs] Spud Webb, Muggsy Bogues, John Stockton, those were guys where you were like, 'Okay.' But Hakeem was great. I enjoyed watching the Rockets. Otis Thorpe and Ralph Sampson, they had a host of guards, but it was never—it was Jordan, and then it was everyone else.

How does it feel being a head coach at this level?
I think what happens when you're an assistant coach is you do a whole lot of recruiting, and you spend a whole lot of time with the players. Individual development on the court, while off-court you're trying to help them with leadership and navigating the world that they walk into day by day. I don't know that I've shifted. I was fortunate to be under a boss at Baylor University who gave me a lot of liberty and would put a lot on our shoulders. He wasn't a micromanager. He gave you a lot of responsibilities and you followed through on it. If you had to be handheld, it wasn't going to work. So I was very fortunate to be under a leadership style that empowered you to do your job and do it well.

Let's talk a little about your spiritual journey. What did that look like?
I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a Nazarene pastor, so I attended more church services than basketball games. You were always at church. Got saved at a really early age, and as most people, you knew that you put your faith in Jesus Christ, but you didn't really know what that meant and how to flesh that out and walk with it on a day by day basis. I had a father who was the most godly man I know, and had a mother who was phenomenal. Those two really modeled for me what following Christ looked like on Monday through Saturday.

I went to college and, you just experience life and begin to have a lot of questions about a whole host of things. Sometimes our viewpoint of God is that He's a genie in a bottle, and we rub the bottle and expect wishes to come true. But you don't actually realize how God manifests Himself on a day-by-day basis, because we don't necessarily see it. It's why 1 Corinthians talks about how we walk by faith and we don't walk by sight. So navigating this journey as a teenager, knowing all the peer pressures and pulls you can get, and then even getting into college, I think that was more—especially when you're at a secular university, you get exposed to secular mindsets, and you're around atheists, and they're asking challenging questions that you've never been forced to answer before or even confront.

Texas A&M, being at a secular university, forced me to really think about this process of faith. As you love God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, when we get into the mind, I was forced to confront questions that, maybe in a sheltered home, you were never forced to confront. So it was really around college that I really began to own my faith and get serious about it, because you were kind of swimming in an environment where you could easily get pulled one way or the other if you weren't serious about your application of God's word. For me it became really important and I began to delve into it more and more and began to take quiet time seriously, began to take my walk more seriously. This wasn't just God on the peripheral, and there He is, and you pray to Him whenever you're in trouble. This was a daily pursuit of knowing Christ better, to fulfill the calling and purpose that you knew that He'd uniquely placed on your life. That process, for me, really generated and picked up steam when I was about 20 years old.

Being exposed to outside viewpoints helped sharpen your faith. Do you feel any responsibility to help that along here, at a Christian university?
I do. I think there's value in diversity. Jesus said, "Look, I didn't come for the well, I came for the sick." I think sometimes, as we get exposed to more and more, whether they be communities, whether they be people, we learn how to apply the love that we're called to exhibit. People who have different viewpoints, people who have different worldviews—we are called to extend grace. And it is often, people have a different opinion, and you say, "I can't believe you hold that opinion. I don't like you because you have a different opinion than I do." Instead of pointing people or navigating people towards the truth.

We're all image-bearers, and because we're all image-bearers, everybody has a diverse opinion. We're not called to be in the world or of the world, we're called to follow Christ. And this Great Commission that you and I are called to do on a day-by-day basis is going to be outside a community that doesn't know Christ. When we can get to diverse backgrounds and diverse settings, and different socioeconomic situations, the more it allows the love of Christ to be spread. And you'll better know how to apply it when you're around those experiences.

You talked about God not being a 'genie in a bottle'. That's really refreshing to hear.
I would be disconcerted by a viewpoint where someone thinks things always go their way. That's not even biblical. I'm unaware of a story in the Bible where things always went someone's way. You even imagine yourself walking with Jesus and being one of the twelve, and you have a doubting Thomas! Who was with him every single day! So for people to have doubts—Thomas had doubts, and Jesus didn't condemn him for it; Jesus said, 'Let me offer some proof here, that your doubts are legitimate.' Even as you look at Jesus' ascension, it says some worshiped and some doubted. Even after the resurrection! Even after He says, 'Hey, we're gonna meet.' Some worshiped and some doubted.

I think what happens is that we think the God of the Universe is submitting to us, rather than we're supposed to submit to Him. It is this idea, 'Whatever I got going on, God is going to make sure He deals with that situation the way I think it should be dealt with.' And that's not the way it works. God calls us to submission to Him, and it is through our submission to Him that He begins the revelation of Himself to us. It doesn't work the other way around.

I think that's where this Genie in the Bottle theory comes, that somehow we are the center of the universe and God beckons everything towards us, rather than God is the center, and it's us who are around the stage, looking at the center, and we are submitting ourselves to Him. And I think sometimes this can get construed, especially for young people, who are unsure just about, 'Man how does this whole thing work? I thought it was gonna work this way.' And you're like, 'Let's read the story of Job, let's understand that we all sin, we all fall short of what God intends for us.' Once we get to Genesis chapter 3, all the way up until the end of Revelation, we can see that there's sin. Well, who's guilty of sin? All of us.

Is a Spirit-empowered education part of what drew you to ORU?
Absolutely. I think that I, as a coach, would not do well if I couldn't acknowledge God and that salvation comes through Jesus Christ. And we know when we receive Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit. We are now sealed. So to be around, helping young men navigate the world they're going to walk into, the world they're in now, without being able to speak on that, I wouldn't be able to be who I feel I'm called to be. So yes, I'm extremely drawn to an area and a community where you can speak truth into a situation, because otherwise it's disingenuous.

What drives you?
Your calling drives you. As I look at Nehemiah 4:14, and Nehemiah is trying to tell the people there who are building the wall, 'Hey, we're halfway done.' You look at verse 14 and he says, 'I need you to remember a couple of things: Adonai, that God is sovereign. I need you to understand that God is in control.' I'm driven by that fact. To know that I have a God on high who has called me into something, into a world that we're called to help make disciples. That mission is paramount to me. And then the verse goes on and it says, 'You need to remember your families.' I'm also motivated by the fact that, if I don't do what I'm called to do, it's going to have an impact on others. It's going to have an impact on my family. It's going to have an impact on other young men. I don't want to impact them negatively, my family or these people that I'm called to serve.

I think callings are holy things. God uniquely puts a calling upon your life that you're asked to pursue for a season. I'm driven by that. And I'm also driven by the fact that, because of that, there can be an impact and people can know Jesus better when you pursue what God has called you to do.