Once Hofstra teammates, Jay Hernandez and Norman Richardson now coach with Charlotte Hornets
Norman Richardson, left, and Jay Hernandez starred on the last Hofstra team to make it to the NCAA Tournament in 2001. Now they are both assistant coaches with the Charlotte Hornets. Credit: Charlotte Hornets, Hofstra Athletics
It’s been 22 years since Hofstra last played in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, but for two of the top scorers on that team, it isn’t the experience of facing UCLA as a 13-seed in the first round in Greensboro, North Carolina, that they remember most fondly at this time of the year.
It was the win that got them there.
Amid one of the most electric sports atmospheres ever felt on the campus, Jay Hernandez and Norman Richardson helped lead Hofstra to a 68-54 victory over Delaware in the America East Tournament final on March 10, 2001, to secure a second straight ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
“Me being a Long Island guy, being able to sell out the arena and to have all my family and friends there, coaches from the area, people I grew up with, to be a part of witnessing and celebrating us getting to the tournament when we were able to host the final game to get in, that was special,” Hernandez told Newsday. “The UCLA game was a lot of fun. Obviously, playing on that stage was great. But yeah, being able to win on our home court with the support of the community and staff, everybody who had been part of it for all of those years, that was phenomenal.”
Richardson agreed.
“It meant everything,” he said. “At the mid-major level, you have to win your conference to get in, so it makes it that much more special. You play your entire season in order to play three games to get to the biggest stage in college basketball. We always dreamed of that. Delaware was our rival. They were the team to beat when Jay and I arrived at Hofstra, they were winning the conference tournament year after year, and we always tried to knock them off. To have the chance to do that on our home floor was a special moment. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
Hernandez and Richardson talk about those days quite a bit. They talk about Hofstra a lot, too, and not just because the Pride were the top seed in their conference tournament earlier this month and won their NIT first-round game over Rutgers on Tuesday. It’s because they're still teammates. The two are assistant coaches for the Charlotte Hornets. But even though they started their careers together at Hofstra and now are together again, they took two very different paths in between.
Richardson’s was more global and included a respectable playing career that began with a brief stint in the NBA (he appeared in 11 games for the Bulls and Pacers in the 2001-02 season) and then took him to Europe and South America until 2010. During his final season in Germany, he suffered a long-term injury and found himself wandering into coaches' meetings in between rehab stints.
“I really enjoyed talking basketball from the other side and watching it through a different lens,” he said. “I started getting the itch. I came back home and was looking for some jobs in colleges, visiting teams and going to practices, and I got an opportunity to coach a team in Germany. I did that for two years.”
That’s when he received a call from an old friend back in the States: Hernandez. He was on the coaching staff of the Orlando Magic and the team had an opening with its G League team in Erie, Pennsylvania. Richardson took it and spent five years coaching in the G League.
When he crossed paths with Hernandez within the G League bubble during the COVID-19 season, Hernandez was with the Hornets and the head coach of their G League team, the Swarm.
The following season, in 2021-22, both were on the sideline for the Hornets. They still are.
Norman Richardson, left, and Jay Hernandez, at a Charlotte Hornets practice on Thursday. Credit: Charlotte Hornets
Hernandez took a more local route.
After growing up in Bayport and attending St. Dominic in Oyster Bay, he graduated from Hofstra with two MBAs, and while he played professionally in Puerto Rico, he soon left that life for a job in pharmaceutical sales. Hoops, though, still was stuck to his soul, and he was helping to train some local players on the side.
After two years in the pharma game, Hernandez decided he wanted to get back to basketball full-time.
“I went to Puerto Rico one last time after a few years off, played, and earned enough money after about six months to make it work,” he said. “We opened up a company called Pro Hoops in 2004.”
Based on Long Island — he bounced between facilities in Glen Cove, Old Westbury and Roslyn over the course of about a decade — Hernandez started molding some of the most talented players in the region. Tobias Harris off Half Hollow Hills West High School was one of his top pupils — he's now on the 76ers — but others were drafted too.
NBA teams would ask prospects: Where are you working out? The answer they kept hearing: With Jay Hernandez and Pro Hoops on Long Island.
The Orlando Magic were so intrigued by that repeated response that they sent an assistant coach up to scout the players and the facility. Impressed, the Magic and then-head coach Jacque Vaughn (now the head coach of the Nets) offered Hernandez a job as an assistant and to help with player development.
“Coaching wasn’t something I ever thought of myself doing,” Hernandez said. “When it came around, I thought I could marry what I had learned from my business to a team setting where we actually get to compete in games. That was the one thing I was missing was the competitiveness, being a part of wins and losses. It gave me that opportunity by joining the NBA. I figured if I did it for two years and it didn’t work out, I’d just have like a doctorate in basketball.”
Vaughn wasn’t long for the job, but Hernandez turned out to be. He remained with the organization for four years through four different head coaches.
“Had I been let go that first year, I probably would have just come back to Long Island and picked up where I left off with the training business,” Hernandez said. “I had a good thing going there, but I wanted to give myself a chance in the coaching world, try that new challenge, and see where it would take me.”
After four years in Orlando, he’s now in his fifth season with Charlotte and working with head coach Steve Clifford (who, by the way, was the coach at Adelphi, just a few miles away, when Hernandez and Richardson were playing at Hofstra).
Last week Hernandez, Richardson, and the Hornets spent a few days in the New York area facing the Knicks and Nets. For the two long-time teammates, it was a chance to check up on their alma mater — now coached by someone else they played with back in the day, Speedy Claxton.
They watched as this year’s Hofstra team tried to win the Colonial Athletic Association Tournament to return to the big bracket but came up short in overtime of a semifinal against UNC Wilmington. It was a result that again left Hernandez and Richardson as Hofstra's most recent participants in the NCAA Tournament (the 2020 team won the conference tournament, but the pandemic ended their season before they could play any games in the NCAA Tournament).
“It is hard to believe,” Richardson said of the long span between appearances. “I didn’t realize it was so many years up until recently.”
While that team didn’t produce any NCAA victories, it has produced three coaches who now are at very high levels of the sport between Claxton, Hernandez and Richardson.
“The coaching staff we had there at the time was phenomenal and we obviously learned a lot from Coach [Jay] Wright about the way to do things and how to handle your business from a personal and professional standpoint,” Hernandez said. “We had a great coach, teacher, mentor, and somebody that we respect and love who was able to set the foundation for us. That’s carried for not only us but a lot of other people he was involved with over the years.”
Richardson said he still can recall his first encounter with Hernandez. He had just signed his commitment to Hofstra and read an article about a guard who was transferring to the school after one season in New Hampshire.
“I remember thinking: ‘Who is this kid coming to Hofstra? He’s not going to play over me!’ ” Richardson said, laughing. “But when I met him, we clicked right away. Jay is a very easy guy to get along with. Then I quickly saw how tough he was and how talented he was as a basketball player and I was very happy to get the chance to play with him . . . We go back 25-plus years. He’s a great man, a great coach. I learned a lot from him. We’re the same age, but he’s still like one of my mentors.”
Hernandez feels similarly.
“That’s been the biggest blessing,” he said of getting to work with Richardson again. “If you had asked us when we were playing if we would be coaches, I don’t think either one of us was really thinking that. To be coaching at the highest level together now, sometimes you have to pinch yourself. We’re a big part of each other’s lives. It’s great to have somebody that you really trust being in the trenches with you.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
