Ex-Delsea star Demetrius Poles to enter S.J. basketball Hall of Fame
Demetrius Poles likes to say his journey has come "full circle." That's an apt image, since Poles grew up in Glassboro and now serves as an assistant to the men's and women's basketball teams at Rowan University in the Gloucester County town.
Demetrius Poles likes to say his journey has come "full circle."
That's an apt image, since Poles grew up in Glassboro and now serves as an assistant to the men's and women's basketball teams at Rowan University in the Gloucester County town.
"I went to day-care right across the street," Poles said the other night between games of a doubleheader against Stockton University in Esby gymnasium.
But any sketch of Poles' remarkable path from Glassboro and back wouldn't be nearly as neat as a simple closed geometric shape.
It would start with a short trip down Route 47 to Delsea for some high school heroics, continue at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia, return to Glassboro for some small-college glory at Rowan, and then explode like a pop-art painting - with stops in 16 countries over a 17-year professional playing and coaching career.
"I was a globe-trotter," Poles said. "My mother raised us, me and my brother, to believe that you can do whatever you want in life.
"She always told us, 'Don't limit yourself. Don't put barriers on yourself.'
"But I don't think she meant that I should go away for 17 years."
The 6-foot-8 Poles, who won a state title at Delsea and a national title at Rowan, will be inducted into the Al Carino Basketball Club of South Jersey Hall of Fame on Feb. 12 at the Crowne Plaza in Cherry Hill.
It's a well-deserved honor for an athlete who was one of the first and best "point forwards" in South Jersey history, a cerebral player whose grasp of the game translated into the overseas experience of a lifetime as well as a still-flourishing "second career" as a coach.
"I'll coach to the day I die," Poles said. "I love to coach more than I liked playing. You learn so much as you get older."
Poles played in Lebanon, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Poland, Qatar, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Russia, Syria, Jordan, and Argentina.
"Sweden was always my base," Poles said. "It became my second home.
"I had great experiences all over world. Warsaw, Petra [in southern Jordan], swam in the Dead Sea. You see different cultures, you learn to try to understand them and not judge them."
After Poles' playing career ended in 2003 - "My knees couldn't take anymore," he says - he coached for 11 seasons in Sweden for teams such as Kvarnby Basket, Nassjo Basket, and Brahe Basket.
Poles also coached the Swedish junior national team (U-18 Boys) in 2012-13 and was named eurobasket.com's coach of the year.
Working camps and clinics, Poles estimates that he coached 80 European players who have made the NBA.
"I hate to say it, but I like the European game, the fundamentals of it, more than I like the American game," Poles said. "It's not based on pure athletic ability. It's based on the way you think the game, how you set up the game."
Poles' affinity for that approach to the game makes sense, since that was his playing style. He was a dominant player in high school, leading Delsea to its only state title, in 1991, but he loved to pass as much as score.
"We were very close," Poles said of his high school team. "We lost my junior year to Salem. We were shocked. After that game, we said, 'We're not even going to lose a pickup game this summer.'
"We went undefeated from pickup, playing on Stanger Avenue [courts in a park in Elk Township] all the up to St. Anthony's [the Crusaders' lone loss in the Tournament of Champions]."
After playing at St. Joseph's, Poles returned to Glassboro for the first time and helped the Profs to their only national title. He averaged 6.7 rebounds and 5.7 points for a team that won the NCAA Division 3 championship in 1996.
"That team was built to win," Poles said of a squad that included Division 1 transfers such as himself, Antwan Dasher, and Roscoe Harris as well as top players such as Terrence Stewart, Rob Scott, Toure Sealey, and Osco Williams.
"I remember Coach [John] Giannini saying, 'This is a not a goal. It's mission,'" Poles said.
A little more than 20 years later, Poles is back on campus. He helps out with both basketball programs and hopes to use his expansive network of contacts to bring overseas players to Glassboro in a reversal of one leg of his own unique journey.
"We're going to be Rowan International soon," Poles said. "It's a meshing of those two worlds of basketball."
Poles said there's no better place for him to try to bring together the diverse aspects of his own basketball career than at Rowan University, and in Glassboro.
"This is home," Poles said. "This is my heart. This is full circle for me, but it's also a new beginning."