Lakers’ Jake LaRavia and former coach reunite and reflect on ‘grueling’ workouts

It was going to be an uphill battle for Jake LaRavia.

When the Los Angeles Lakers forward was in middle school and first approached AAU basketball coach Rick Thomas about joining his team, he didn’t exactly have the making of a future professional athlete.

Sure, he could shoot. And he did have big feet, suggesting he was going to be tall. But he was skinny, had poor balance and ran, Thomas joked, like “a baby giraffe.”   

“He’d fall a lot, trip over his feet, falling backwards, backpedaling,” Thomas said. “It was bad.”

So, Thomas took him to “the hill.”

At a community park in Indianapolis, adjacent to baseball fields and a skate park, was a large slope of grass. That was where LaRavia built his endurance, developed his athleticism and learned to run without looking like what his coach described as a wobbly, newborn, long-legged animal.

Thomas would make LaRavia and his teammates jump on one foot while climbing the hill, or bear-crawl backwards all the way up, or carry a teammate on their back to the top.

“I got a lot of grueling memories with him,” LaRavia said when he had a surprise reunion with Thomas on NBC’s “Launching Legends.” “I mean, the workouts that he used to put me through were nuts.”

But effective.

Thomas helped LaRavia go on to become a first-round pick in the NBA, where he now plays for the Lakers.

He went from the hill to the Hollywood Hills.

“I credit a lot of where I’m at today because of the work and the time and the faith and the effort that he put into me when I was in high school,” LaRavia said.

‘I’m willing to help anybody that wants to play basketball’

Thomas wasn’t much older than his players when he began coaching.

Just 22 years old at the time, and not far removed from his own playing days, he had been working at an electronics store when the head coach of the local high school basketball team asked him to coach his AAU team.  

“I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that. I’m not ready for that. I’m still trying to play myself,’” he recalled.

He was convinced to take the job, which was an unpaid position

“I’m willing to help anybody that wants to play basketball,” he said.

One player in need of help was eighth-grader Jake LaRavia, who was looking for playing time on an AAU team. He was in the first group of players that Thomas coached. Had it been a movie, where the future NBA star meets a first-year coach in an Indiana gymnasium, they would have led a scrappy, underdog team to a title and rode off into the sunset with their trophy.

“That first year we were terrible, actually,” Thomas said. “So, that next year it was like, ‘Ok, something needs to change here.’”

The workouts changed.

If his team was going to win games, it wouldn’t be because they were better, but because they were stronger, faster and tougher.

“I knew that we wouldn’t be the best team out there,” Thomas said. “We weren’t a high-ranking team, but if we were conditioned and we could fight, there’s a chance.”

He had his players run — a lot. He strapped a green, elastic resistance band around them and made them drag him. He made them wear a 40-pound weight vest while doing drills.

“Just a lot of sweat, a lot of sweat,” Thomas said. “A lot of yelling, too.”

And a lot of trips up the hill at Lawrence Park.

“Nobody likes the hill,” Thomas said. “When it’s hill day, heads go down.”

But the players still went up, completing what Thomas describes as “plyometrics on an incline.”

“It’s credit to where I’m at now and kind of just the work ethic that he was able to build from me,” LaRavia said. “We would go out to the local hills and run sprints at the hills and do bear crawls backwards up the hills.”

He occasionally even carried Thomas up the hills, back when his coach said he weigh as much as 250 pounds.

“He got the heavy Rick,” Thomas said with a laugh.

“He really helped my athletic side come out a little bit more in the work that we did,” LaRavia said. “He was my guy, as far as from a basketball, and even, like I said, a big brother perspective in that aspect of my life.”

‘They just became family’

Thomas agreed the relationship had more of a big brother feel than head coach, thanks in part to the two being close in age.  

The relationship also grew, Thomas said, because of their team’s shared struggle.

They were not, he said, a “shoe-deal team” — a brand-sponsored AAU team that gets free apparel and travel expenses for tournaments. That meant working as a team on and off the court, whether it was continuing workouts in the cul-de-sac at Thomas’ house, or holding a car wash to raise money so the team could travel to Las Vegas to compete in a tournament.  

“I think we made $2,500,” Thomas said. “Just signs, had three or four guys out on the corner and we pulled up in a parking lot at the church, and they let us use the water.”

They made it to that tournament in Vegas, and many others that followed. At one tournament in particular, following a growth spurt from his sophomore to junior year that helped with his dunking ability, LaRavia began getting noticed by college coaches.

“I had like five or seven offers in a day,” Thomas said. “It was crazy.”

LaRavia decided on Indiana State, where he played for two years before transferring to Wake Forest for one year. He then declared for the 2022 NBA Draft and was selected with the 19^th overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves.

“That day was a movie,” Thomas said. “Because that’s every kid’s dream. Mine. Everybody … It really didn’t set in until we hugged and he was like, ‘All the work we put in finally paid off for him.’ That’s all I could ever ask for because that’s all he wanted was to be good and make it to the NBA. I just wanted to be a part of that. So, any time he’d call, I’m going to be there.”

Now it’s usually LaRavia’s phone that’s ringing because Thomas’ daughter Rayleigh, now 9 years old, always tries calling him.

“’Can I FaceTime Jake?’” Thomas said she asks. “‘No, he’s working!’ or ‘No, he’s at practice!’”

Although LaRavia did once answer her call on gameday and told her he was getting ready for the game. Thomas told her to say, “Sorry, have a good game!”

“She really loves him,” Thomas said.

Added LaRavia: “They just became family at the end of the day.”

They had a family reunion in Los Angeles in March. Thomas — now a fire alarm technician who still coaches AAU — went to LA to surprise LaRavia as part of NBC’s “Launching Legends.”

LaRavia had been traded on draft night to the Memphis Grizzlies, where he played two-plus seasons. He was then dealt to the Sacramento Kings in 2025, and that summer as a free agent signed with the Lakers. Playing alongside LeBron James and Luka Doncic, he had his most productive season yet, playing all 82 games and averaging 8.3 points and 3.9 rebounds in 25 minutes per game.

Thomas was in attendance for one of those games following his surprise visit in Los Angeles, watching his former player — and forever younger brother — run up and down the court instead of a hill.  

“All the work and the grit and the grind that we’ve been through,” LaRavia told Thomas, “and the hills that we ran and the work that we did … was really impactful in my basketball journey.”