Mark Few’s coached many current and former NBA players and coaches.
One can measure Gonzaga University men’s basketball coach Mark Few’s Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame career with a basic resumé.
- Two NCAA Final Fours.
- Twenty-seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
- Twenty-seven consecutive seasons with at least 23 victories, including 37 wins in 2016-17, the year the Bulldogs lost to North Carolina in the national championship game.
- Nearly three dozen players who played in the NBA, including seven lottery picks, multiple All-Stars and 11 players who were on NBA rosters at the start of the 2025-26 season.
- Two-time National Association of Basketball Coaches and Naismith coach of the year.
- Few’s overall record is 773-156, a .832 winning percentage.
He took the basketball program at Gonzaga, a small, private Catholic school with 5,200 undergraduate students in Spokane, Washington, from mid-major to major-major – a perennial power for nearly three decades.
Few was elected to the Hall in April and will be inducted Saturday in Springfield, Massachusetts.
“Where I come from, a little tiny town (Creswell) in Oregon, it wasn’t a dream come true. You couldn’t even possibly dream about something like this happening,” Few said. “But the biggest emotion and feeling that I’ve had is just this incredible, overwhelming flush of just gratitude for everybody, every step of the way.”
So that’s one way to measure Few’s impact on basketball. Another way is to listen to NBA coaches Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors and Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat – two of the best in the game.
Kerr was the head coach of the United States’ 2023 FIBA World Cup team and 2024 Paris Olympics team, and Spoelstra and Few were assistants.
“My kind of guy. He just gets it,” Kerr said at the Paris Olympics. “He’s passionate about the game, passionate about life, passionate about his family. Humble enough to know that he doesn’t have all the answers, but driven and smart enough to seek the answers. And above all, he loves being part of the staff. And so, the dinners and the coaches’ meetings, there’s great humor and joy. He’s just somebody I want to be around every day.”
Spoelstra has known about Few for almost 40 years – Spoelstra played at the University of Portland in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Few was an assistant at Gonzaga.
“I’ve been a fan of his and rooted for him and rooted for the program,” Spoelstra said.
Spoelstra will coach the U.S. at the 2027 FIBA World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and Few will be an assistant for those teams, too.
“Even with the success that they’ve had, he is one of the most underrated coaches in all of basketball,” Spoelstra said. “He’s a first ballot Hall of Famer. And he’s so humble and understated. He doesn’t want any of the credit.”
Few began his coaching career as an unpaid assistant at Creswell High School in 1986 and joined Gonzaga as a graduate assistant in 1989. He was promoted to full-time assistant coach in 1990 and took over as head coach in 1999. He has had chances to leave for other jobs.
“My dad (Norm) in that little, tiny town of Creswell was 54 years a Presbyterian minister at this little, tiny church,” Few said. “And usually ministers move every five years or eight years or whatever. The congregation gets tired of them. It’s 54 years. Probably when I was younger – I would never admit it – but as you get older, you’re like, ‘You know what, we tend to mimic who we admire.’”
Few stayed and stayed some more, building one of the top programs in college hoops and coaching players such as Adam Morrison, Kelly Olynyk, Domantas Sabonis, Rui Hachimura, Jalen Suggs, Andrew and Ryan Nembhard and Chet Holmgren.
“Just feeling just so blessed to just have so many awesome, awesome players that came through this program,” he said on the Mark Few Show. “They not only were awesome players on the floor, talented and so easy to coach and competitive, but just awesome people. Any coach will tell you, at the end of the day, it’s all about your players, and we’ve just had an amazing run. And then also, I mean, just so lucky and so fortunate to have just crazy talented and hardworking assistant coaches over the years who have helped so much.
“I’ve had nothing but great basketball minds who also really understand how to deal with people and just became great friends too. It’s just been a joy, but never, ever, ever would’ve ever thought I’d even be considered for such a thing. It’s extremely, extremely humbling and a huge, huge honor.”
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