Seth Jones’s dad couldn’t teach him hockey. But he taught him the next best thing: how to be a pro.
Some hockey dads can show their young ones how to cradle the puck or set up in the slot for a one-timer. Others simply get their kids to the rink, keep the skates sharp and get them home again. Popeye Jones didn’t fit into either category—or any other in the long history of a game so often passed from father to son. Having grown up in Dresden, Tenn., he played football, baseball and basketball and parlayed his six-foot-eight, 250-lb. frame and fourth-liner’s feistiness into an 11-year NBA career. “I’ve always been a huge sports fan,” says Jones. “But I didn’t know anything about hockey.”
He was, however, a father of sports-loving boys, and when they came home begging to be taken to the “hockey store” so they could get outfitted to play with their new friends in Denver where Dad was playing for the NBA’s Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche were winning Stanley Cups, off they went.
It was the first of many trips. His eldest, Justin, enjoyed the game, but his other two—Seth and Caleb—were enraptured, to the point that Seth Jones will be the first son of a former NBA player to be taken in the first round of the NHL draft this June. Chances are he’ll set a record that will be tied but never broken, as many project him to be taken first overall, a pick held by the Avalanche of all teams, for those who like the full-circle thing.
“He was probably confused at first,” Seth, a six-foot-five, 220-lb. defenceman who has starred with both U.S.A. Hockey and the Portland Winterhawks, says of Popeye’s hockey-dad chops. Since he couldn’t offer much in the way of technical advice, he picked the brain of Avalanche legend Joe Sakic. During a chance weight-room encounter at the Pepsi Center, where they both worked, Jones asked what his boys should focus on to become good players. Sakic took one look at Jones, figured his kids would be monsters by hockey standards, and suggested they focus on skating. So Seth took lessons from a figure-skating coach before he ever put on equipment or shot a puck, an early focus that serves him well to this day.
But even if Popeye didn’t know much about hockey, he knew everything about being a pro—lessons he was never shy about passing on either through word, deed or access. Seth Jones may be the first player in NHL history who can cite Dallas Maverick Dirk Nowitzki and New York Knick Jason Kidd as inspirations for his practice habits. He got to see it up close when his dad, now an assistant coach with the Brooklyn Nets, started his coaching career in Dallas. “He’d see how serious their workouts were when he was a little boy, and I think that has a lot to do with his development,” says Popeye. “I see it now. He’ll talk about the work he’s putting in on his shot after practice or on some other weaknesses. Seeing athletes behind the scenes working on their games was huge for him—a lot of kids don’t get to see that.” His son did, and he took good notes.
This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Subscribe here.