Edward Joyner Jr., the head men’s basketball coach at Hampton University, calls coaching basketball “the family business.” This family business takes place on the hardwood and is rooted in historically Black colleges and universities, where Edward Jr.; his father, Edward; his uncle, Stephen; and his cousin, Stephen Jr., are all head basketball coaches.
It began about 50 years ago when Stephen, who goes by his family nickname Big Steve, and Edward, known as Buck, made a pact. Avid athletes, the brothers grew up with a love of sports fostered by their father, who would load them and their friends in his old van to take them to games at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) in their North Carolina hometown.
They were sitting on the front porch one day when Steve asked his older brother Buck what he wanted to be when he grew up. Buck said he wanted to play in the NBA or be a coach, which was what Steve aspired to as well.
“Steve said, ‘Let’s make a pact,’” recalls Buck, 60. “‘The first one who gets a head coaching job will call the other in to be the assistant.’ I said OK.”
Although they were only 10 and 11 when that pact was made, Big Steve, now 59, held to it. The brothers played high school basketball first together and then on opposing teams after Buck was bused to a predominantly White high school. They studied Earl Monroe, who attended WSSU, and taught each other his moves. Both attended college on basketball scholarships. That NBA tryout never did happen, although Buck swears he was good enough. After college, they both went into coaching.
“All those years went by—middle school, junior high, high school, college. We were both out coaching,” Buck says. His work as a high school coach took him to St. Croix, Virgin Islands, where he was raising Little Buck as a single father. He’d been there about two years when a call came. “Steve called and said, ‘Buck, you remember our pact?’ I said yes. He said, ‘I just got the head coaching job at Johnson C. Smith University.’”
In 1987, Big Steve sent Buck a plane ticket to come interview for the assistant coach’s job. After the interview, Buck said he’d think about the job, but that he was heading back to St. Croix to at least collect his things. “I looked at my ticket and he had bought me a one-way ticket. I was never going back,” he says.
