One of the great eye-opening experiences of my athletic life was coaching professional basketball.

As the NBA moves toward its playoff season, thoughts turn to my time traveling here and there along the eastern seaboard and into upstate New York as coach of the Continental Basketball Association’s New England entry, the Maine Lumberjacks.

The CBA is a tough place to play for a lot of former Division I hoop stars. Let’s face it. After strutting your stuff for four years in gymnasiums which hold 20,000 people or more, returning to crowds of 800 or 900 folks can be, at best, disheartening.

Most of the young men who wore our green and white uniforms here still set their sights on a career in the NBA. So did their coach.

The most difficult aspect of the job for me was the travel. Time away from home has never been a favorite thing for this coach. Our road trips usually lasted 15 days or so, and we used Philadelphia as our port of call and commuted everywhere else from the Penn Center Inn in downtown Philly.

On one such occasion, I asked Penquis Valley of Milo boys varsity basketball coach Galen Larson to accompany us. What a time we had.

Galen went through his own coaching life as a quiet, unassuming sideline personality. Make no mistake about it. This guy could flat out coach the game, as evidenced by his 180-154 career won-loss record.

I had the good fortune to meet coach Larson when I began teaching and coaching in Milo. What a fine gentleman he is. He did a masterful job of showing a younger coach the ropes of the always competitive Penquis League. As our junior varsity coach, he was the elder statesman of the hoop staff.

Our oldest boy, Scott, is named after Galen’s son, who was an all-star point guard for one of the best Penquis teams to come out of Milo.

Galen had some great teams of his own. Names such as Larry Worcester, Troy Ouellette, Donnie Webb, David Chase, and Dean Bellatty dotted a Penquis Valley roster in 1982 which lost a hard-fought Eastern Maine Class B title game to a sharp-shooting Hampden Academy Bronco squad, coached by Norm Prouty.

On this particular road trip with the Lumberjacks, we rented a John T. Cyr coach bus. Galen got a kick out of all the rap music the players brought along for entertainment. He and I made sure that the rock band, the Eagles, got equal air time – that was my travel rule – and Les, our bus driver, was a good sport about the whole thing. He had driven enough athletic teams around to understand that the players needed something to while away the hours for the long journey.

On that particular 1980 trip, we had to finish our regular season on the road, then begin the post-season before making our way home.

I decided then and there that I would put Galen’s basketball expertise to good use. Jim Sleeper of Katahdin High School fame was our head assistant coach, and Galen was promoted from fan to assistant coach for a playoff game against Leigh Valley Jets.

In fact, Galen made a brilliant suggestion in our first-round matchup. Always the coach, and never watching the ball, he leaned over to me and whispered a defensive change he would make if he were coaching. I listened. We made the change and won the game, in large part because of coach Larson’s advice. It seemed like old times there for a while.

Looking back on all this, I think Galen had the time of his life that trip.

The former Brownville Junction sharpshooter didn’t get a lot of publicity when he coached, and it certainly wasn’t his way to seek it.

One of the great joys of my time in sports is the number of quality people I’ve had the good fortune to know in my travels.

I’d put Galen Larson at the top of any list I’d make in that regard.

When we reached the famous White Castle hamburger joint on our way back to Bangor, only future Houston Rockets center Charlie Jones could put away more of those tiny little square burgers than Galen.

Yes, the pro game is a different venue in a lot of ways, but my own memories always center around the quality people who made it enjoyable.

NEWS columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net