Mark Patton: Goleta’s Matt Houston Completes an Olympian Task

Matt Houston specifically trained Team USA center Bam Adebayo in Paris for his battles in the Summer OlympicsYes, Al Michaels … Matt Houston does believe in Olympic miracles.The former Dos Pueblos High School football star never envisioned himself helping the United States win a gold medal in men’s basketball.But that’s just what he did in Paris two weeks ago.“It was crazy,” he told Noozhawk. “A kid from Goleta working in the Olympics.”Houston, one of the strength and conditioning coaches for the Miami Heat of the NBA, was enlisted to specifically train Bam Adebayo.The Heat’s 6-foot-9 and 262-pound center was tasked by Team USA to battle the likes of 6-foot-11 and 284-pound Nikola Jokić of Serbia and 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama of France.“I was very humbled to be a part of it,” Houston said, “but at the same time, I know I put in the work.“I’m ready to keep it going and see where it takes me.”He did have big dreams as a kid running around the Goleta Boys & Girls Club.“I’ll tell you this,” he said with a laugh, “me growing up, you couldn’t tell me that I wasn’t the best.”But the dream of a National Football Leaguecareer was beaten out of Houston after four mostly injury-plagued seasons at the University of Washington.Houston had to sit out his entire junior season of 2009 with nerve damage, and played hurt in many of the 22 games in which he appeared as a linebacker.He began looking for an entirely different profession after his college graduation in the spring of 2011.“I told myself, ‘I’m going to get away from sports,’” he said. “I was over it.”

Getting Charger-ed Up

But John Ramirez, who played strong safety to Houston’s free safety in Dos Pueblos’ defensive secondary of 2005, talked his Charger teammate back into it one day as they drove to a shopping mall in Ventura.“I wasn’t even a year out of ball when I told him that I’d started a job in property management,” Houston recalled. “He gives me this look … starts shaking his head … and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’“He tells me, ‘Nah, Matt, that’s not for you, man … I’d be happy for somebody else, but you are a ballplayer … You should be around ball … These people on TV, that’s you.’”

Ramirez’s pep talk pushed the right button for Houston.“It got me out of my funk,” he said. “It’s crazy, because it suddenly all just clicked with me.”Houston called his cousin, Julyan Stone— another DP athlete who was then of the NBA’s Denver Nuggets — as soon as he got home.Stone was training at that time at the IMG Performance Institute in Bradenton, Florida.“I told Ju Ju, ‘Tell your strength coach there that I’d be the best intern he ever had,’” he recalled.“I was literally on the phone the next day with their strength coach, Jeff Dillman, and that’s how it all started.”He followed up a five-month internship at IMG with training jobs at Colorado State, the University of Hawai‘i and the University of South Dakota.Houston then returned to Santa Barbara in 2016 to work for Dr. Marcus Elliott, the founder and director of Peak Performance Project. The training center known best as P3 boasts a clientele that has included more than 63% of the NBA.That got the ball rolling for his career in basketball. He spent the next four years in China — first with the Chinese National Team, then in the China Women’s Basketball Association, and finally in the men’s China Basketball Association.He helped the Guangdong Southern Tigerswin back-to-back championships.“I stopped playing basketball in ninth grade, and I never thought I’d be with a basketball team at the Olympics,” Houston said. “But I will say this: When I worked for Team China, that became an immediate goal.“I actually wrote that down: ‘OK, my goal is to work in the Olympics at some point.’”He found he could help top-level basketball talent … as well as a difficult foreign language.“I can count my numbers and recite basketball terms in Chinese,” Houston said with a laugh. “I could get around there in an Uber.“Unfortunately, Team China didn’t make this year’s Olympics in men’s basketball.”But Houston did.

Center of Attention

His work with the Miami Heat — beginning in 2021 with its G League affiliate at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which has expanded into a role with the NBA club — set him up for his Olympic opportunity. “I’ve been writing Bam Adebayo’s training programs since last year’s training camp,” Houston said. “Eric Foran, our head strength and conditioning coach, divided the team’s 15 players between the three of us: He took five guys, Hunter (Glascock) has five guys, and I have five guys.“My personal assignment this summer was with Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro.”That assignment became Houston’s French connection when Adebayo was selected to the U.S. Olympic team.

Adebayo averaged 6.0 points and 3.7 rebounds per game for a star-studded U.S. team roster that included Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin as Durant.More important, he gave no quarter defensively to Jokić, this year’s NBA Player of the Year with the Denver Nuggets, nor to Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs’ NBA Rookie of the Year.“Bam does everything the right way no matter if it’s his rehab, his nutrition or when we’re in the weight room,” Houston said. “We train hard — that’s one thing I’ve always prided myself in since I was a young kid.“He’s working hard because that’s our standard for each other.“He’s a really humble guy, but he pushes me as much as I push him. You’ve got to be locked in and in a different mindset to be an Olympian.”Houston joined Adebayo and Team USA in London just before it completed its pre-Olympic tour with nail-biting victories of 101-100 over South Sudan and 92-88 over Germany.The Americans then swept six games in Paris, edging Serbia 95-91 in the semifinals and France 98-87 in the gold-medal game.

Family Affair

Houston shared the Olympic experience with his mother, Terri Williams, and 7-year-old daughter, Marley Rae Houston.“I got the best of everything … Got to see it firsthand from both ends,” Houston said. “I went into the crowd to watch the opening ceremony with my daughter and mother, and then I got to train Bam for the games.“Those are moments you cherish for a lifetime. The best part for him was how the experience affected his daughter.“She was soaking all this up and saying, ‘I want to be an Olympian one day,’” Houston said. “She’s already looking at the big picture, you know what I mean? A whole different stratosphere.“She loves volleyball and basketball. She has some natural gifts and just enjoys the gym, and I’m pretty thankful for that.”It’s prompted Houston to start a nonprofit organization named after his daughter — the Rae of Hope Foundation — which will bring together kids from both ends of the economic spectrum for a wide range of activities.“We want to provide positive experiences to stimulate youth into believing they can achieve their dreams,” he said.Just like an Olympic strength and conditioning coach who once held court at the Goleta Boys & Girls Club