Coach Quentin Thomas Embodies the Spirit of Oakland Basketball

What a lot of people coming to the Bay Area for the NBA All-Star game don’t understand is how, out here, basketball runs so much deeper than one celebratory weekend.

Here, the sport is more than a game. Basketball is the foundation of a community, a society onto itself. There’s a popular saying: “Ball is life.” But to many players here, basketball ascends into the spiritual realm. Hoops are holy.

One of those players is Quentin Thomas, who played on the 2005 NCAA Men’s National Championship winning team at the University of North Carolina.

I recently caught up with Thomas at the College of Alameda, where he’s now an assistant coach, about being one of the winningest players in UNC history, the ups-and-downs of his rap career and how he’s dealt with a life-altering condition.

‘We Learned the Game By Ourselves’

When I pause outside the gym at College of Alameda during hoop practice, I hear a booming voice coming from inside the building — clearly, the voice of the team’s head coach, basketball hall of famer Gary Payton.

Soon, the doors open, the team scatters, and there’s Thomas, at the far end of the gym, rebounding as a player named Jalen Scott gets in a few jump shots.

As he settles into a folding chair on the sideline, Thomas recalls his earliest memory of playing basketball: with his father at the YMCA in downtown Oakland.

From there, life has been a blur of hoop games and tournaments.

As a kid he played at recreation centers, most of them in East Oakland: Brookfield, Rainbow, the East Oakland Youth Development Center. He balled in Oakland’s Police Athletic League, played in the Oakland Neighborhood Basketball League, and even got busy on courts across town at North Oakland’s Bushrod Park.

“I learned so much just being around the rec centers,” Thomas tells me. The games at those centers, he says, were baptisms by fire.

“We didn’t have trainers,” he says. “We learned the game by ourselves.”

As a teen, Thomas would go to rec centers for hours at a time, meet someone new, take notes on how they played — and eventually adopt some of their moves. He adds that the And1 Mixtapes DVD series also dropped when he was in middle school. “That was heaven,” Thomas says with a laugh.

A traditional “pass-first” point guard, Thomas didn’t choose the position so much as his personality dictated it. “I love to see people score, I love to see people win,” he says. “It never really was about me.”

While coming up, he took notes from star guards known for getting their own shot, as well as dishing the rock. He studied guards like Oakland’s Gary Payton and Jason Kidd, and footage that his dad showed him of Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson.

“Now with these kids,” says the 38-year-old Thomas, “it’s Steph, it’s Trae, it’s Dame; it’s the three-ball.”

Leaving the Town for North Carolina

When Thomas walked on campus at Oakland Tech as a freshman in 2000, he was surrounded by big names on and off the hoop court. Former NFL star Marshawn Lynch was Thomas’ high school classmate. On the court, starting all four years, he overlapped with future NCAA standout Armondo “Mondo” Surratt.

But the center of attention was future NBA champion Leon Powe.

“When I was a freshman, we’d have six or seven scouts at our practice,” says Thomas, crediting Powe’s success with opening the door for others at Oakland Tech.

Roy Williams, then head coach of the men’s basketball team at the University of Kansas, began to take note of the wiry guard from East Oakland. By Thomas’ senior year, coach Williams had left Kansas to return to the legendary basketball program at the University of North Carolina. “And then he called me,” says Thomas, surprised that the coach was still interested in him.

“I didn’t go out there because of Roy,” Thomas admits. “Carolina wasn’t even on my list.”

Thomas wasn’t even thinking about pursuing a career in the NBA. His future priorities broadly involved supporting his family, seeing the world and putting “smiles on people’s faces.” But he wasn’t going to turn down a chance to play at one of the most storied basketball programs in the world.

“And during that time,” Thomas says, reflecting on the state of the Town in the early 2000s, “we had like 100 homicides this year, 105 the next year.” He recalls how his games would be packed, but they had to be held at 3:45 p.m. instead of at night for safety reasons.

Thomas, who at one point during high school changed his jersey number to honor a friend who’d been shot, says, “I just wanted to get as far away as possible.”

Off the Court and On the Mic

During Thomas’ first year at UNC he played on a team with future NBA players Sean May, Raymond Felton, Marvin Williams and Rashad McCants. That spring, in 2005, the team won a national championship.

Ahead of the title game, having grown up watching rap videos on The Box, Thomas freestyled for the entire bus ride from the airport to the hotel. Think the classic 2006 Malcolm Kelly post-game locker room freestyle, but unfortunately without anyone filming.

Still, he fully credits his teammates at UNC for pushing him to pursue a rap career.

“The year I graduated I met 9th Wonder,” says Thomas. He’d spend roughly a decade on the super producer’s independent label, Jamla Records.

The experience led to Thomas, who raps under the name GQ, releasing a number of projects, including the 2019 mixtape E 14th: The Town Mix. He worked with labelmates Rapsody and Reuben Vincent, and appeared alongside David Banner on the soundtrack of NBA Live 2010.

As his music was blossoming, though, hoops continued to call him. Even if he didn’t want to answer, the message was coming from a source too close to deny.

Thomas’ then-roommate and former teammate, Michael Copeland, invited him to work with some local hoopers of all ages. “I’m like ‘fuck no, bro, I’m cool,’” Thomas replied.

His reluctant façade quickly fell, though. And after a week at the gym, “I’m like bruh, I love this shit.” Thomas says. “That was probably God too, using [Copeland]. Because if it was coming from somebody else, I probably would have been like, nah. But this is my teammate, my brother, someone I trust.”

A Life-Changing Diagnosis

Around the same time, Thomas’ world flipped. Stomach pains, deep cramps and bowel issues began plaguing him in 2009.

By 2012, he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a painful condition with no cure.

After his diagnosis, Thomas lived between Oakland and North Carolina, even spending a stint in Las Vegas on the coaching staff for state champ runner-ups Silverado High School.

But while there, his condition took a turn. In 2023, he lost a drastic amount of weight. He made the hard choice to move back to Oakland permanently.

“I always felt like a failure coming back home,” says Thomas, rueing the impression of moving backwards in life. “I told myself, ‘When I leave here, I won’t come back here ’till I’m right, whether it’s financially or I got my family, I got my career, everything.’”

But the move back proved fruitful. He began infusions to manage his colitis. During his trips to the hospital, he’d see people battling ailments and conditions of all kinds, many worse than his. “It just made me appreciate simple stuff,” Thomas tells me.

With a newfound gratitude, “I started getting better,” says Thomas. “I started getting stronger, and started becoming Quentin again.”

‘He Prays for Us’

Not long after, he got a call from College of Alameda assistant coach Sam Moses, who put him in contact with head coach Gary Payton. Thomas and Payton had been around each other before, not because of hoops, but church.

“My mom is from West Oakland, she grew up at Saint John Church,” says Thomas, noting how small the Town is. “That’s where most of the Payton family grew up, too.”

The first thing coach Payton told Thomas when he joined the team was “just be you.”

Thomas, the youngest on the staff, a man with a naturally mild-mannered demeanor, has a style that’s the complete opposite of coach Payton’s.

“GP is gonna yell at you,” says Thomas of the head coach. “He gon’ cuss you out, because that’s what made him great. That’s how he was taught, that’s how he was raised, that’s what brought the best out of him.” Conversely, Thomas says, “For me, I’ve never been that way. Even when I played, I wasn’t the rah-rah type.”

As such, he often serves as a bridge between coach Payton and the student-athletes.

“It’s tough on them,” Thomas says, referring to the players’ ability to deal with harsh criticism. “It’s tough on GP too,” he adds. “Because he’s not used to having to cater to feelings.”

Thomas’ role for the team is illustrated by player Isaiah Hill, who I also talk with during my visit to Alameda.

A 6’2” guard from New Jersey and the nephew of R&B singer Lauryn Hill, Isaiah Hill is a star on and off the court. The night before, I’d watched him ball out, scoring a team-high 24 points in a victory over Solano Community College. In 2021, he played a lead role in the Kevin Durant-inspired basketball series Swagger.

“He looks at all dimensions of brotherhood,” says Hill of coach Quentin, explaining that the coach’s commitment goes beyond the game. Hill calls Thomas a “brother-slash-coach,” explaining that he “realigns players with their purpose when they’re derailed by tones, emotions and feelings.”

And then Hill tells me something that catches my attention.

“He prays for us,” Hill says of coach Thomas. He also connects with student athletes daily, shaking their hands.

“It makes the path feel more in alignment with the divine, in a way,” Hill says.

Joining a Historic Legacy

Alameda is having a great season. They’ve had some big wins, and learned valuable lessons. Thomas is thankful for the mentors on the bench with him, in his broader community and even in the form of his younger sister.

Asha Thomas, former star basketball player at UC Berkeley and women’s basketball all-time three-point leader, is currently an assistant coach at Sacramento State. She’s 11 years younger than Quentin, but “she’s the person I go to for advice,” Thomas says. (After the win against Solano Community College, Quentin and Asha FaceTimed for an hour.)

Now, as a young coach with potential for growth, and a musician with more work on the way, “I have a village that supports me,” says Thomas.

When asked to describe Oakland’s basketball legacy, he candidly replies, “Unique. Profound. Historical.” And since he and Bill Russell are the only ones from Oakland to ever win a national championship, he’s a pretty big part of that legacy.

And at the same time, he’s just another human answering the call to use the resources he’s been given — and in Oakland, when you’re given the ability to ball, you give it your all.

“When I start talking about God, people think I don’t do nothing bad. Man, I’m a normal person,” Thomas says.

“Did I make mistakes? Yeah,” he adds, reflectively. “But I know who runs my life.”