Marvin Harvey (basketball)

Early years

Harvey was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He excelled in baseball and football at the Boys and Girls Clubs in his early years. He attended Central High School, but graduated from Paseo High School. Harvey fell in love with basketball while watching his older brother Melvin Harvey dominate at Penn Valley Community College. In 1974, Marvin Harvey decided to try out for the Penn Valley Community College basketball team. He didn’t make the team, but seeing the raw talent, Coach Fred A. Polhman offered him a managers position, promising that if he stayed on as a manager he could learn the game and would get a scholarship the next year. Harvey took that position; he watched and listened to everything Coach Polhman taught the team. This humility would eventually lead to him trying out for the NBA eight years later.

After playing two years at Penn Valley, Harvey was offered a scholarship to play basketball at Ottawa University, where he eventually graduated in 1980. In 1982, Harvey tried out for the NBA in Los Angeles, California. After making the final cut, he was then chosen by Marty Blake (then Chief Scout of the NBA) to attend two other training camps for different NBA teams. Harvey went to training camps in Lethbridge, Canada and Billings, Montana. After successful adventures at both places, he decides his calling was to teach rather than play.

Kansas/Missouri

In 1982 Marvin Harvey became the head coach for the boys' and girls' basketball teams at Santa Fe Trail Jr. High School in Olathe, Kansas. During this time he coached the boys' team to three one-loss seasons. Marvin left the program in 1990. In 1983 however, he became the Shooting Coach for the Kansas University Women’s Basketball under Head Coach Marian Washington, and eventually became a graduate assistant for the Lady Jawhawks. At Kansas, Harvey would eventually train Olympian and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Lynette Woodard. After which, he was the Shooting Coach for every major college and university in Missouri and Kansas.

Fall of 1986, Harvey started the first individual and small group, Player Development program in the State of Kansas; the Basketball Workshop. While gaining attention and exposure from his program, Harvey begins training his first NBA player Clay Johnson. Clay Johnson would eventually win a NBA Championship with the Los Angeles Lakers. During the same summer he toured the United States as the “Shot Doctor” with top NCAA Women Basketball Coaches (World-Wide Sports) for the Lynette Woodard free basketball camps sponsored by Dial Soap. The tours conducted free clinics with the help of top-name coaches and players across the country and discussed drugs, character, commitment, and what it means to be a student-athlete.

The summer of 1987 and 1988, Harvey worked at the Kansas University Men's Basketball Camp where he was heavily influenced by Head Coach Larry Brown and his staff (RC Buford, Alvin Gentry, Bill Self, Rick Calipari), Harvey began to get a better understanding of teaching the game versus coaching the game. Harvey started teaching some of the KU men basketball players on the side, among these Calvin Thompson, Keith Harris, and Milt Newton, to name a few.

In 1990, Marvin Harvey wrote, and produced a thirty-minute video, “Shooting the Basketball” with Marvin Harvey, the Shot Doctor. With the video was a free instructional development shooting poster. This shooting project sold across the United States, and became the fundamental way to shoot a basketball.

Florida/Alabama/Texas

From 1991 to 1993 Robert “Basketball Bob” Corwin, President of “Team Florida” hired Marvin Harvey Basketball Organization to tour the State of Florida, from Miami to Pensacola to teaching girls how to shoot a basketball correctly. From that tour, in 1993, Harvey became the Athletic Director for Pine Castle Christian Academy in Orlando, FL. Harvey was there for six years and during that time, not only did all athletic programs go from good-to-great; the Academy was nominated three times for the Fred E. Rozelle Sportsmanship Award.

In 1999 Harvey did one-year tenure as a Women’s Basketball Assistant Coach for the University of South Alabama. The following year, he became the Head Coach of the now defunct NWBL’s Alabama Mobile. During this time he also worked as a Liaison for the NCAA Sports Program at Bishop State Community College. Here he worked with at risk children, trying to get them out of the at-risk system and on a more sensible track.

In 2000, Harvey retired from teaching and coaching to focus on “Individual Player Development”. He moved to Houston,Texas, where he trained college and pro players at the Tony Westside Tennis Club with John Lucas II. He also worked training camps and served as a shooting coach for the WNBA Houston Comets, he was allowed to attend the Houston Rockets workouts under Rudy Tomjanovich. At the same time, he was hired by Antonio Lang, NBA Philadelphia 76ers to transform his game from the forward position to the guard position.

2001 marked his return to the state of Florida where he started his non-profit organization C5D Inc, and a for-profit Harvey’s “Shooter’s Touch” Academy. In August 2002 Marvin Harvey received awards (Sensei) in Bogotá, Colombia for training international teams in the SaludCup, FIBA Basketball Association. He trained teams and introduced his Shooting Information to coaches from Europe, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

2003, he took HSTA on the road, and became the Shooting Director at the RDV Sports Complex, Home to the NBA Orlando Magic; this is where he introduced “video-analysis” for NBA players. The following year Harvey became the Director of Basketball Operations at Champions Sports Complex of Orlando, Home to HSTA. After working at Champions Sports Complex for two years, he became the Director of Basketball Operations at the EDGE Training Facility, Home to HSTA. In 2005, Marvin Harvey extended his basketball training program in Monterrey, Mexico, where he met Vicente Fox, then President of Mexico.

2008–Present

In 2008, Marvin Harvey partnered with a South African Petroleum Company Engen and Octagan Marketing Company to produce a Coaches DVD to help build basketball programs and TV visibility in South Africa, from Johannesburg, Cape Town, to Durban. Later in 2008, Harvey moved C5D Inc Foundation and Harvey’s “Shooters Touch” Academy to Tampa, Florida. HSTA opened operations in Monterrey, Mexico (the New Fundamentals Series) in partnership with American School of Fundamentals in Monterrey, Mexico. 2009 marked the creation of the Shot Lab. The most comprehensive break down of the shooting form and the mechanics of shooting a basketball in the world.

The Shot Lab has been the place where College players like John Henson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Dominique Jones (University of South Florida) and WNBA Players like Alana Beard (Washington Mystics), Marie Ferdinand-Harris (Los Angeles Sparks), and Armintie Price (Atlanta Dream) found sound information and shooting development. In 2009 Harvey was officially brought on as the shooting coach of the WNBA Eastern Conference Champion Indiana Fever.

In 2010 Harvey authored three books Winning Within Reason, The New Fundamentals: Coaches Manual, and The New Fundamentals: Coaches Workbook. His 2010 Spring Tour included Italy, France, Serbia, Georgia, and Turkey. His summer teaching tour includes the National Basketball Team of Rwanda, Africa, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Colombia, Australia, and Japan.

Books