Billy Baron is a natural born shooter, but it is not enough to be a great natural shooter. You have to take your reps, work on it and improve every day. Then when you are a great shooter people is preparing for you. Defenses are going to take you out. Pushing you further and further. And they don’t let you see the light. So, you got to be creative, you got to be quicker, your release has to be lightning-quick. And it is all about… the legs. Yes, the legs. “People pay attention upstairs – Billy Baron says -, in your form, but everything comes to your legs, how able you are to pop off the ground and shoot it faster, come out of your shooting pocket faster. Now, being 31, it doesn’t really matter where I start looking out at the basket. As long as my legs are set and I can pop off the ground, I feel like I really have a good chance to make it, coming off the right or coming off the left. I think the quickness in my shot starts with my legs.”
Shooting is a family thing in Billy Baron’s household. Maybe being a coach’s son helps. You make a slight mistake, and he is right there to correct it. And what about your older brother, another fantastic shooter who once made 10 three in a single BCL game? “My brother Jimmy is very mechanical, he tried to teach me, but I was very stubborn as a kid – Billy confesses -. I wanted to learn on my own. I’d watch him, I’m a visual learner, and by watching him I said this is how it is supposed to look. But I just took more attempts, took more shots and when I got stronger as a kid, I was able to use the legs more and the form slowly changed to how I wanted it to be. So, we learned differently as kids, he was very technical I was very visual, and this is basically how I learned how to shoot the ball growing up.”
You should watch a shooter doing his job every day. Someone is rebounding the ball, passing it. You catch it and shoot and become automatic over time. Only one problem. Now you are in a game and there’s nobody passing you the ball in the right position, at the right time. You have plenty of people coming at you, arms up, screaming at you, legal or illegal, and the pass is not perfect, it doesn’t come at the chest, it is on one side, or it is too low or too high. Defenders are disturbing, they are contesting, they don’t give you a millisecond. So, what all the work was for, Billy? “The work never ends. Now, being 31, it is more a mental thing as well. I don’t think you need as many reps; you do need to take shots you might take in the game as much as possible. If you approach each and every shot like you do in the game, it helps your consistency. But growing up I took a lot of shots, and I used to take all my shots off the dribble, it is tough when no one is rebounding for you so you can catch and shoot the ball, but it is a situation you rarely see in a game. I believe, when it comes to a shot like that, it is more mental. But to be a great shooter you have to be a great shooter off the dribble, off your right hand, left hand, off your crossover, or off the ball screen. Coaches around in Europe found very useful when a guy can shoot off a ball screen or shoot off the dribble in isolation or coming off screens like I do and take a right, a left step and you look off balance, but you are not off balance. Basically, learning how to shoot different type of shots consistently is what make you a great shooter”.
FAMILY DYNAMICS
Billy remembers it like it was yesterday. When he signed his letter of intent with Virginia there were cameras everywhere. He was going to go to a big-time college, in one of the most competitive conferences, where you get tremendous exposure. He was on the right path. His dad was next to him. He wanted to coach him at Rhode Island just like he had taken care of his older son Jimmy, before. But right there he was a father mostly and he was proud. Billy was small and young and tough. “It was a dynamic situation; my father was in Rhode Island and my brother played for my father at Rhode Island growing up. They had a different type of relationship at that time, my brother was his shooting guard and they had quite a conflict some time. My mother was in the middle of it. I witnessed all of it, it was a traditional dinner table argument between father and son, the frustrations coming out of the father-son dynamic especially as a coach. Going back at that stage in my career, I was playing as a point guard and with the ball in my hands I felt I had more control over the team. I went to Virginia also because Coach Tony Bennett was a great guy, I had some great teammates there. But mostly because my father and my mother and even my high school coach told me to try that road because it was going to be difficult playing for dad,” Billy recalls.
But something was wrong at Virginia. Not the coaches or the teammates. His favorite one was Joe Harris who is now one of the best shooters in the NBA with the Brooklyn Nets. In truth, Billy didn’t really want to be there. He wanted to be home and play for his dad. Nothing else mattered. “One of my goals was to play for my hometown team and reach the NCAA Tournament, which my brother was able to do. So, my story at Virginia is that my heart was never there. I made some friend, Coach Bennett and the staff were great, but the entire time my mind and my heart were in Rhode Island. That’s why I decided to transfer back, go home, and try to save my dad’s job in my hometown. So, I don’t regret it, not at all,” he explains. When Coach Jim Baron was fired and moved to Canisius, Billy followed him. He was going to spend his last two seasons there. “It’s weird how things worked out, that I went to three colleges, I had no anticipation of it. But it is funny how things worked out because my senior year, at a small school, I was able to show how talented I was at that time. I had a lot of NBA workouts, I don’t know if I’d be able to have more workouts had I stayed at Virginia, because at Canisius I was able to do more.” A lot more. He was one the best scorers in the country, a 24-point per game scorer. “At that stage in my career, I had this motivation to try to prove people wrong, because I started at Virginia and here, I’m at Canisius and Canisius is a much smaller school than Virginia. I think I had a big fire at that point, I just wanted to prove that I could play at a high level and that I was a pro, that I could make the NBA or play in the EuroLeague. Going from Virginia to Canisius didn’t stop that goal. It gave me great motivation and honestly looking back to it, it was fun because there was a lot of frustration but proving people wrong was by far the proudest part of it and gave me motivation to keep going and reach even further goals. Plus, I met my wife there and we have two beautiful kids now.”
FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME
Billy was raised in a basketball family. Basketball brought Jim Baron to St. Bonaventure, where he was a nice guard, basketball made him a coach when his playing days were over. He was an assistant at Notre Dame, then a head coach at St. Francis where he coached Mike Iuzzolino. And again, at St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island. Family followed. “Me and my brother, we naturally fell in love with the game – Billy says -. We kind of grew up in a locker room. Since I was a kid I went to college basketball games, it was so fun. My dad never really pushed us to play basketball, but me and my brother we just wanted to be around his players, his team, and we felt it was like family. So, we naturally fell in love with the game, and we looked up to his players as our heroes. We wanted to be just like them, since we were young kids”. Some of them were David Vanterpool, who later played for Coach Ettore Messina at CSKA Moscow, JR Bremer and Marques Green, who spent time in Milano later on. It is a small world. Jimmy Baron spent one year in Italy, playing for Rome. And they also played together in Charleroi, for one single, unexpected season. “That year was special. My first season overseas was rocky. I was very homesick. My brother said I should have been happy; it was going to be fun. Looking back to it we had a lot of fun. I think, it was seven years since he went overseas, we didn’t spend much time together, save for 3 or 4 weeks in the summer. So, it was great, he played the shooting guard, I played the point guard. It is something I never thought was going to happen, but it did. It was a lot of fun, it was like college, he lived on the third floor, and I lived on the second floor. We were able to see each other every single day and to catch up on a lot of things that we missed.”
RUSSIAN ADVENTURES
When he moved to Zenit St. Petersburg, Billy Baron met Kevin Pangos and forged a lasting relationship, on and off the court. “He lived on the first floor, I lived on the second floor, our wives were really close, our kids were born two weeks apart. Our family got along very nicely. But for the first month, we didn’t have the family (in St. Petersburg) because there was Covid and was hard to enter the country, so we spent all the time together, night and day, cooking dinners, playing videogames, watching football, going to practices together. So, I was really lucky to have Kevin with me at that time, because it was a rocky year. We had great chemistry on that team, we went one game from reaching the Final Four. We went a long way in that year. And when the opportunity presented to come here and I heard about the possibility of Kevin to come here, it was definitely a no-brainer.” Pangos left St. Petersburg in the summer of 2021 to pursue his NBA dream in Cleveland. Baron stayed behind. Last season was a tough one in Russia when the Ukrainian war started and the Russian teams were eliminated, mid-season, from the EuroLeague. And still, Zenit managed to win an historical VTB championship coming back from a 1-3 deficit to edge CSKA Moscow in the seventh game, on the road. “The year was mentally draining, physically demanding. Going home in March, bring the family home, going back was mentally hard. I really don’t ever want to be in that scenario again with my family for two months and half. And to come out on top and finish the job and beat CSKA was a big step for all the players involved. It was nice to finish such a stressful year with the championship. Looking back, it felt like having three seasons in one. At the beginning of the season, we had a ton of injuries, then mid-season and then the last part of the season we lost some guys, we still had four or five foreigners. It felt like three different teams in one. It built a lot of character; you learn how to fight adversity. That was why this championship is special.”
Milano is hopefully the place where Billy Baron can feel right at home, a place where he can say he is finally arrived as a big-time player. “I think I have grown mentally and physically on and off the court so much. The experiences have changed me in a good way, the adversity of last year, the extreme environment I experienced in Serbia, playing in Turkey, having different roles. Now Milan is the perfect step for me, to go for a EuroLeague championship and an Italian league championship. At the end of the day, when you go back home and retire that is all you want to show for your career. Being here, in Milan, with all the people around the organization, all the teammates that I have, facilities like these, this is what you work every day for.”
A conversation with Coach Messina sealed the deal. “Coach wants me there in the big games. And that’s what I want, I want the expectations, the EuroLeague games, coming off the bench, starting, whatever my role is going to be. I’m here to be ready for whatever Coach Messina will ask me. This is what he wants me to do, wants me to bring the experience, bring the shooting, playing hard defense as well and just contributing to the team wins. Whatever he will ask me, I’m here to show I’m willing to do whatever we need, bring the ball up, take a charge, hit a shot, hit the open man, whatever. I don’t’ want to be a liability on defense, don’t’ want to be a guy who is a liability on defense. I told Coach Messina I’m here to give everything, I’m 31 years old, it is my ninth season overseas and what I want more is a EuroLeague title and so I’m here to do whatever he wants, give my all for my entire stay here and hopefully the results will be raising up the trophy.”
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