The heir to the Gonzaga’s men’s basketball kingdom actually turned down his first coaching gig—an offer from the Bulldogs, no less, way back in 1999. Instead, Tommy Lloyd decided to backpack around the world, reasoning, reasonably, that life should be about more than basketball, that Spokane wasn’t the only place where he could coach and that he’d never get the chance to travel like that again.
Lloyd wrapped up the second season of his brief and unremarkable international basketball career—in Düsseldorf, Germany—that same year. He had spent the summer before back home in small-town eastern Washington, working construction for his father, saving money to buy around-the-world airplane tickets for him and his wife, Chanelle.