Alabama basketball lost a major strategic and intellectual piece of its program this offseason, and now fans must wait to see how the replacement measures up.
Ryan Pannone, a former Crimson Tide assistant who left in March to become the head coach at Arkansas State, is a basketball junkie — the venerable breed of basketball nerd who boils the sport down to math formulas and spends five-plus hours a day watching game film. He even runs a YouTube channel where he uploads various basketball clips from all levels of the game.
In 23 years of coaching, he has rightfully earned a reputation as an elite basketball mind. In his two seasons at Alabama, the Crimson Tide led the country in scoring and finished within the top 10 in possessions per game, including No. 1 in 2024-25. He is the fifth assistant under Nate Oats to earn a head coaching job elsewhere, and his exit left Oats in the familiar situation of needing a new assistant.
Enter former German national coach and recent NBA assistant Chris Fleming, who was announced as Pannone’s replacement on May 21. Fleming has spent time on the sidelines with the Denver Nuggets, Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls and Portland Trail Blazers since 2015 while also briefly leading Germany’s national team. He had been a head coach at several German organizations going back to the turn of the century.
During his time overseas, he won a litany of German Cup and German League championships and took home the Basketball Bundesliga coach of the year award in 2011. His coaching chops aren’t the pressing question, but rather how he will continue the growing Alabama tradition of top-notch offense.
The Alabama offensive attack that has been set by Oats over the years sets its formula on attacking advantages and creating the most efficient shots possible — preferably layups, free throws and open 3s. Players are also coached to find an attack early in the shot clock in order to boost that efficiency, and such urgency manifests in high possession rates and high scoring margins.
Oats’ 3-heavy and analytics-based system is akin to modern NBA offensive philosophy, and how well Fleming’s fit is can be analyzed by looking at how teams turned out offensively in his recent NBA gigs. While not every aspect of offense can be attributed to Fleming, just as it’d be imprudent to call Pannone the sole mastermind behind Alabama’s recent success, these can be useful parallels.
In 2024-25, Portland finished 13th in the NBA in 3-pointer attempts per game after finishing 20th the season before, eighth in field goal attempts, 13th in free throws attempted and 12th in possessions per game. For reference, the 2024-25 Alabama squad finished sixth nationally in 3-pointers attempted per game, seventh in field goals, seventh in free throws and first in possessions.
The numbers from Fleming’s Chicago stint were generally weaker in those categories and also varied across his five-year tenure from 2019-24. In his last three seasons with the Bulls, they finished bottom-five in 3s attempted and around the middle of the pack for field goals and possessions per game. Fleming’s most significant contribution in Chicago was his close developmental relationship with guard Coby White, who struggled early in his career but has taken significant leaps in the past couple of seasons.
“He was always honest with me,” White said. “He never gave up on me in times where a lot of people did. He always vouched for me in rooms that I probably wasn’t getting vouched for a lot.”
More than just for offensive input, the primary reason Fleming was brought to Portland was to develop up-and-coming point guard and former top-three draft pick Scoot Henderson, who struggled with inefficiency through his rookie season in 2023-24. With Fleming’s help, Henderson took a negligible step back in scoring and increased his shooting splits, all while contributing to a Trail Blazers team that improved by 15 wins.
Player development is a big theme in this Alabama program, which just earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and made the Elite Eight thanks to significant contributions from multi-year veterans like guard Mark Sears and forward Grant Nelson.
“Oats has prioritized player development consistently with his recent hires. That has led him to the NBA in recent hiring cycles,” said John Mitchell of Bama Hammer. The NBA element rings true here — Fleming has never coached at the college level.
After statistical comparisons and the aspect of player development are X’s and O’s. Fleming was not the head of the systems in his previous NBA stops — although for what it’s worth, he was the Bulls’ top assistant in 2020-21 and went 5-0 as interim head when coach Billy Donovan entered COVID protocols — but in German national team clips, his team’s attack looks fluid and utilizes the off-ball movement and varying screen action that Alabama prioritizes.
In fact, Fleming’s offensive action was good enough to make it onto Pannone’s YouTube channel. Multiple times.
At the end of the day, Oats is still in the driver’s seat of Alabama basketball and all that it does, including the details of its every move on offense. Fleming has multiple decades of coaching experience with high success, and he is coming to from the NBA ranks to play a supporting role in what is effectively an NBA offense revolutionizing the college game.
If Oats’ track record of hiring assistants offers any clue, Fleming’s ability to mold his expertise to the Alabama system shouldn’t be doubted.
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