Despite a 23-year battle with kidney disease, I consider myself blessed in basketball. I really do.

My two-year stint in pro ball in one of pro basketball’s minor leagues, the CBA, taught me valuable lessons in not only coaching but also time management.

The 24-second clock teaches coaches and players a lot, but the chief difference between high school and college ball regarding the pro scene is money.

Yes, you read that correctly.

If, in fact, the love of money is the root of all evil, then that age-old axiom does indeed fit the pro scene, even at the minor-league level.

The biggest adjustment I had as a high school basketball coach making the transition to professional hoops was understanding how to capitalize on players’ greed to coach a team.

Let me give you an example.

Longtime pro coach Bill Klucas, who was coaching a CBA franchise in Alaska at the time, asked me one day what my discipline rules were for my players in areas such as tardiness to practice, unexcused absences to practices, that sort of thing.

As a well-known high school coach at the time, I prided myself in being fairly strict. My punishments for the aforementioned violations usually resulted in extra laps around the gym.

I shared this with coach Klucas, and all he could do was laugh at me.

“Money, kid,” he said over lunch one day. “Hit them where it hurts – in the wallet.”

I gave Bill’s sage wisdom my attention, and I subsequently began a series of fines for violations. And guess what? It worked.

I learned in short order that the only language these pros understood was money.

And why not?

Let’s face it. These kids were always whining about cash. They didn’t have enough, or they wanted more. And then there were the agents. Yes, even at that level, there was a group of agents who hounded me constantly for advances on salaries or potential rewrite of contracts.

Back in that time period – the late 1970s and the early 1980s – good players were earning in the neighborhood of about $300 to $400 a week.

Taking some of that sum away because of tardiness and the like could change weekend plans real quick.

I once fined a star player a week’s pay for taking a swing at an official.

That one, tacked on to what the league fined the kid, made for a lot of soup and sandwiches for a while.

The 24-second shot clock taught me valuable endgame strategies for my return to high school and college coaching. Within the 24 allowable ticks of the clock, prudent instructors move to about an eight-second play set if the original play didn’t work out.

I give full credit to the 24-second pro clock for teaching me organization within a set.

Through the years, the discipline my teams were noted for in the half-court stemmed directly from the discipline the 24-second clock taught me.

The final difference between the interscholastic games and the pro game was the amount of games played in a short period of time.

It was not unusual for us to play five games in six nights and travel to each different venue with our Maine Lumberjacks team in the CBA.

All in all, if given the chance to coach again and I came out of retirement, I’d have to say a small college was the perfect blend of travel, talent, and fun.

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