Armed with NBA experience, Surge Kaleb Canales’s Latest Stop is CEBL

During his first year in the Canadian Elite Basketball League, Calgary Surge head coach Kaleb Canales has had to watch his mouth.

“I'm used to using the word 48 minutes, right?” Canales said recently, in reference to the length of an NBA game.

Of course, in the CEBL, games are 40 minutes — or thereabouts, depending on how Target Score Time goes.

And so it’s safe to say that the league has been an adjustment for Canales, whose long NBA career includes 23 games as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers.

He is the first former NBA head coach to come to the CEBL.

“With Target Score and having strategy when it comes to that, when the clock stops, we want to execute certain things. But no, listen, I think from a coaching perspective, it probably keeps me up at night. But from a fan perspective, I think it's pretty cool,” Canales said.

Canales, the 46-year-old from Laredo, Texas, moved north of the border in May in pursuit of furthering his coaching career. He has spent the past two seasons as an assistant with the Texas Legends — the Dallas Mavericks’ G League affiliate — but was ready to move back into a lead role.

“I felt strongly about taking this step to lead an organization, to lead a team to a championship, to have the challenge of leading a team to a championship. And so we took it head on,” Canales said.

Canales’s rise up the coaching ladder was swift.

He was a high-school assistant for two years, spent one season at the NCAA level and then jumped to the NBA, where he spent four years as a Blazers assistant.

In 2012, after head coach Nate McMillan was fired by Portland, Canales took over for the final stretch of the season, becoming the youngest head coach in the NBA and the first ever of Mexican-American descent.

But since his brief stint in Portland, Canales had not returned to the lead chair until joining the Surge.

“Any opportunity to lead a franchise and lead an organization is a big step in my development as a coach. So I wanted to continue to grow as a coach like players continue to grow as players,” he said.

“In my coaching journey where I was at, I think everything matched and it was a blessing for me to get this opportunity. And I also wanna get better, and obviously this was a great opportunity for my career and to help my growth as a coach.”

It was also an opportunity for Canales to help expand his coaching creativity.

While he was familiar with Target Score endings since the G League uses them in overtime, the rules are slightly different. Plus, the run of game before the clock turns off in the CEBL is much shorter.

Other rule differences — such as the maximum three imports allowed on the floor per team — create new situations, too.

“I have a lot of respect for other coaches in this league. There's a lot of good coaches, a lot of good players. And I felt, right when I started studying the league, it's a young dynamic league that's growing and it's going to continue to explode here in the next couple of years,” Canales.

Canales has found plenty of success in the early going with Calgary. At 9-5, the Surge are second in the West, having handed the first-place Vancouver Bandits (11-3) two of their three losses.

Statistically, the Surge score the third-most points per game in the league and allow the fourth fewest. They lead the CEBL in steals per game and sit second in blocks — essential parts of Canales’ coaching philosophy.

“I love our team. I love our squad. I love that our identity is defence to offence and staying in an attack mindset throughout the game. I've just been really proud of the group,” Canales said.

Sean Miller-Moore, who’s played four CEBL seasons for the Surge franchise under four different coaches, said Canales’s energy stands out.

“He’s one of those coaches that makes me want to play for him because of how energetic he is and how focused he is. And obviously he knows what it takes to win a championship because he’s been at the NBA level before,” Miller-Moore said.

Canales isn’t the only NBA-experienced coach in the league. Nathaniel Mitchell, a former assistant for three teams including the Toronto Raptors, recently signed with the Brampton Honey Badgers as a coaching consultant.

Meanwhile, longtime CEBL head coaches like Vancouver’s Kyle Julius and Niagara’s Victor Raso have proven their chops year after year in the league.

Now, Canales is looking to chart his own path through the CEBL and up the NBA ranks — just like his players.

“One of our main goals going into the season is to help these players develop and to have them have a great summer of development to put them in a great position in their careers heading into next season,” Canales said.

Miller-Moore said Canales allows him to be himself on the court — to “play without thinking.”

“He’s like a player’s coach. He makes me want to take shots that I might not usually take and he instills confidence in me,” he said.

Together, Canales and the Surge could be ascending toward a CEBL title — and potentially beyond.