‘Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum’: Marshall Cho reaches coaching career high, leading the World Select team at Nike Hoop Summit

THE OREGONIAN | By Nick Streng | April 14, 2024

As the 2024 Nike Hoop Summit began, Marshall Cho had to take it all in.

Cho has Oregon in his veins. He was raised in Springfield. He went to college at the University of Oregon and has coached basketball at almost every level in the state.

But on Saturday, Cho had a new career highlight. He was the head coach of the World Select team at the Nike Hoop Summit.

“It was humbling,” Cho said of getting to hear his name called as the head coach of the team playing the Moda Center, the pinnacle of basketball in Oregon. “It’s humbling to know that success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I’m a product of teachers who deeply cared about me.”

The position might as well have been tailor-made for Cho, who’s spent a decade coaching high school athletes in Oregon, but also has the personal experience as an immigrant from Seoul, South Korea and has been a basketball coach and ambassador internationally in multiple capacities in his life. His World Select team included multiple future Division I basketball players, with athletes from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.

Being at the position he is now, Cho couldn’t help but think about the people who helped him find his home in Oregon’s basketball scene.

He thought of his third grade teacher at Centennial Elementary School, Mrs. Kingman, who made sure that he had the chance to be successful despite an initial language barrier after immigrating from South Korea.

“I didn’t speak a lick of English and she called her mother, who was a retired teacher, to give me additional ESL lessons,” Cho said. ”Like out of what the district mandated. I had people who were giving me opportunities to catch up and integrate as fast as I could.”

Cho also remembered Ed Whitelaw, a former economics professor at the University of Oregon. The two developed a bond when Cho would go to Whitelaw’s office hours. They talked about the curriculum but also Whitelaw would talk to Cho about life.

“He was so curious about my journey that I felt seen,” Cho said. “I felt like I belong.”

Saturday’s game at the Moda Center saw the Team USA men’s team pick up a 98-75 win over the World Select. Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 player in the senior class and a future Duke Blue Devil, led Team USA with a 19-point, 11-rebound double-double.

In the women’s game, just the second in Hoop Summit history, Team USA came back late for an 83-80 win over the World Select.

World Select men's coach Marshall Cho greets his family after the Nike Hoop Summit game on on Saturday, April 13, 2024 at the Moda Center. The Oregonian/OregonLive

After college, Teach for America took Cho to the South Bronx and Harlem where he got his basketball coaching career started. After his stay in New York, Cho spent years with Basketball Without Borders coaching in Mozambique.

Locally, Cho was previously the director of basketball operations at the University of Portland before an eight-year tenure coaching at Lake Oswego High School. He’s worked with USA Basketball for a decade and has worked with the Hoop Summit in multiple capacities (including as an assistant coach in 2023) since 2012.

“To go through that 20-year coaching journey, to have it culminate last night in front of my friends and family. In front of my entire, you know, siblings and their families. My parents. My in-laws. My wife and kids sitting front row right behind the bench,” Cho said. “It was probably one of the most emotional but surreal experiences in my coaching career.”

Last season, Cho was an assistant on the World Select team for head coach Kaleb Canales — who was once the interim head coach for the Trail Blazers, and has had assistant coaching stints for the Blazers, Mavericks, Knicks and Pacers.

“I learned so much from watching Kaleb,” Cho said. “And I think it’s something that motivates me to consider what it would be like to coach at the next level, collegiately or in the NBA. He is very professional, and very on point.”

When it comes to coaching the team this year, Cho said he had an advantage in working with the athletes because he has so much experience working with youths. After nearly a decade coaching high school basketball in Oregon, Cho has been working with his son’s middle school program (among other ventures) since stepping down at Lake Oswego High.

“I prepped for this game, the biggest game of my coaching career, as people say, by coaching 45 to 50 youth games for my son’s eighth grade Lakeridge Pacers,” Cho said.

As for what’s next, the sky seems to be the limit for Cho, who has spent the past year running basketball camps in the Portland metro area, coaching youth basketball, traveling internationally to coach (including an NBA Academy camp in Asia) and working with many other national and international basketball organizations.

“It can be the beginning of broadening my influence,” Cho said. “So I can help kids in Oregon. I can help kids overseas in Asia and Africa. We’ve really built a bridge between all of those places have had an impact on me. It would be a beautiful thing for us to see it unfold in the coming years.”