Italy born, New York bound.
While new head coach Mike Brown and the New York Knicks have yet to fully fill out the coaching staff, New York made the first hire of Brown’s tenure earlier this week when it was announced that the Knicks would be adding player development coach Riccardo Fois to Brown’s staff.
Fois, who worked with Brown in Sacramento, is just 38 years old, but has had years of experience around the game.
The Italian-born 6’2” coach was a part of the Italian National U-16 team in 2003, and moved to the United States in the late 2000s and played a season of Division I basketball at Pepperdine University, where he was named to the WCC Commissioner’s Honor Roll.
Just a few years after leaving Pepperdine, he came back in 2012, where he served as a graduate assistant for the men’s team until 2014. He then spent five years at Gonzaga, where he eventually got promoted to the Director of Analytics for the men’s team, and handled video breakdowns, evaluated player analytics, and helped out with day-to-day operations. During his tenure there, Gonzaga made the Sweet 16 in all five years and made the program’s first-ever Final Four in 2017.
In the midst of his time at Gonzaga, the well-respected and very accomplished Mark Few, who was, and still is, the coach of Gonzaga, brought on Fois to work with him as the video coordinator for the United States national team that took home third place at the 2015 Pan American Games.
After a couple of years, Fois joined Monty Williams’ staff on the Phoenix Suns, where he worked as the team’s director of player development. Fois was not only a part of the Suns’ 2021 Finals run, but he also developed a close relationship with current Knicks player Mikal Bridges. When the forward was asked about Fois, Bridges said of his assistant coach, “Riccardo is one of the hardest working people I know. All he cares about is helping people improve and winning.” Bridges went on to add, “He helped me a lot to develop my game and never let me feel too comfortable.”
After his two-year stint in the NBA, Fois returned to the college game. He signed on to be an assistant coach for Tommy Lloyd at the University of Arizona, where he helped lead the team to two Pac-12 championships in three seasons.
And before being hired by the Knicks just a few days ago, his last job, as mentioned earlier, was as an assistant under Brown in Sacramento.
Despite being in different roles and hopping back and forth between the NBA and college, Fois comes across as a hard-working and respected coach. He’s learned under some very notable and successful coaches, and has played a hand in developing solid players like Domantas Sabonis, Rui Hachimura, and Zach Collins at Gonzaga, as well as guys like Benedict Mathurin at Arizona, and the Knicks’ very own Bridges during his time at Phoenix.
New York has plenty of veterans who may not need too much individual coaching, but they have their share of younger players who could certainly benefit from Fois. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of magic he can work with players like Deuce McBride, Tyler Kolek, Pacome Dadiet, Ariel Hukporti, Mohamed Diawara, Kevin McCullar Jr., and Dink Pate.