Former Wright State basketball star’s NBA coaching career profiled in Boston Globe

Excerpt

Vitaly Potapenko, second from left, with some of the Wright State Men’s Basketball coaching staff. Potapenko is now a coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Vitaly Potapenko giggles when he hears “The Ukraine Train.” He’s carried that nickname since his days at Wright State University, when he was a fierce, burly center who ran through the Midwestern Collegiate Conference on his way to being a first-round pick of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Celtics acquired Potapenko in 1999 for Andrew DeClercq and a first-round pick the Cavaliers used to select Andre Miller, and he was a contributor on the Jim O’Brien-coached team that reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2001-02.

Potapenko has excelled in his new NBA life as a Cavaliers assistant coach the past four years. He works with the big men in near anonymity. What’s more, during the Cavaliers media session during the Finals, when every member of the team and coaching staff was available, the 42-year-old Potapenko buried himself behind his laptop to work, shocked to receive an interview request.

Read the entire story at bostonglobe.com