Inside The Huskies

Huskies Promote Abdul Gaddy to Assistant Coach

The former UW point guard played for four tournament teams and alongside Isaiah Thomas.
Dan Raley|
Abdul Gaddy has been promoted to full-time UW basketball assistant coach.
Abdul Gaddy has been promoted to full-time UW basketball assistant coach. | UW

Few people have experienced University of Washington basketball the way Abdul Gaddy has.

He came from Tacoma as a highly regarded guard to join the Huskies, which is what Isaiah Thomas did.

He started all or parts of four UW seasons, two of them in the same backcourt with Thomas.

The 6-foot-3 Gaddy went to postseason tournaments each year, as part of two NCAA teams and a pair of NIT qualifiers.

He dished out more assists than everyone except Will Conroy in the history of the program -- with 469, or 4 per game.

He was a two-time Husky team captain.

After a long international career, Gaddy, now 33, reunited with the Huskies last season as part of Danny Sprinkle's first staff, hired as the director of player development.

And on Wednesday, he was promoted to a full-time assistant coaching job, replacing Tony Bland, now at Kansas.

"I think he's s a superstar in the making," Sprinkle said recently. "He's great at relating to players. They respect him for who he was on the court, but I think once they really get to know him, they respect who he is off the court, as a person -- he's going to be a huge asset for a long time in this program."

Gaddy emerged from Bellarmine Prep as a McDonald's All-American and a top-15 prospect.

While he had postseason successes and an aptitude for distributing the ball, he also had to overcome an ACL tear as a sophomore that ended his 2010-11 season in January.

Following his UW career, Gaddy played pro basketball internationally in Italy, Latvia and Germany, and in the NBA Developmental League and G League.

He credited Sprinkle and the rest of the Husky basketball staff for encouraging him and helping him make a rapid advancement as a coach.

“I’m also extremely grateful because this is my school -- I bleed Purple," Gaddy said. "To be able to be a part of this and help us get back on the right track is special. We have an amazing group, of players, of staff and as a university. To be a part of that and to help us get back to winning ways is a dream come true.”

He'll be on the bench, actively involved, when the Huskies open the season against Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Alaska Airlines Arena on Monday, Nov. 3.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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