SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Al Biancani tells a story about Mike Bibby.

It dates back to the 2000s. Biancani was the strength and conditioning coach for the Sacramento Kings then with Bibby, the steady, never-rattled point-guard floor leader. Bibby could not throttle down after games or practices, Biancani recalled. He could not ease off the gas despite having already sweat through his jersey.

“He always kept working, wanting to lift weights or to take more shots late at night when everyone was gone, and I’d have to tell him, ‘Hey Mike. You’ve gotta take a break.’ ” Biancani said. “He’s not wired like that. He doesn’t slow down.”

Recently, Biancani watched Bibby in his new element, leading a practice in his role as the first-year head coach of the Sacramento State Hornets. Bibby’s first call upon landing this gig was to Biancani, who is now Sac State’s strength coach. The two have been close for nearly 25 years. “He’s like a son to me,” Biancani said.

“Mike hasn’t changed,” Biancani said. “Look at him. Look at his face, and you can see how involved he is, how much he cares. He’s still a competitor, and if you’re not a competitor, you don’t belong in this business. You can’t be a sissy playing basketball, and you can’t be a sissy and play for Mike Bibby.”

Bibby is 47 now, still youthful looking, still with the same spirit that made him a beloved Kings player. Bibby receives rousing ovations when he attends Kings games and his image is shown on the big screen at Golden 1 Center. His body is thicker than it was when he logged 14 NBA seasons, including from 2001-08 for the best teams in the Kings’ time in Sacramento, because the work ethic hasn’t stopped.

“Mike’s still lifting,” Biancani said. “He thinks he still looks great.”

Oh, and there’s the hair. Biancani and Bibby have roasted each other since the start of their union.

“I told Mike, ‘Hey dog, you’ve got a little salt in that pepper on top,’ ” said Biancani, who has, as Bibby knows well, no hair to be salt or pepper.

“I’m showing my age,” Bibby said.

Bibby acknowledged that the switch from playmaker — the leader of Team Dime — to first-time collegiate coach pulling together all these players — now called “the Maestro” — does take a toll. And losses for the 4-4 Hornets take their toll.

“I love winning,” Bibby said. “Always have. That’s what we want to do here: learn the game, play it the right way, compete and win. I’m disappointed with some of our losses, but I knew it wasn’t going to all come quick. I scheduled tough games so we can learn —UCLA, Cal and (Dec. 2 against) Baylor. If you bow down without effort, I have a problem with that. As long as we put in the effort, and if we lose, I’m OK with that.

“That’s why I’m here.”

Elevating a down program

Bibby’s burden is different now. As a guard, Bibby ran the team, set up teammates for buckets and took the big shots. He was hard on himself in defeat during his playing career, fretting over details.

Now, Bibby carries the burden of trying to elevate a Hornets program that has enjoyed just two winning seasons since Sacramento State moved up to NCAA Division I status in 1991. He vowed to teach players how to play the game as he did — focus on details and fundamentals. That includes spacing on offense, setting screens, executing the pick-and-roll, where to be and where to go.

Bibby said he is trying to create habits with repetition in practice, and he runs his players hard.

“We’ve all responded,” Hornets guard Mikey Williams said. “Coach Bibby knows what he’s doing, and we’re all learning the game. It’s great to have a coach like this. We’re all excited.”

Said Hornets guard Jayden Teat, “I mean, that’s a legend right there. Who doesn’t know the name Mike Bibby? This is an experience none of us will forget.”

‘He runs the show’

Bibby has the attention of his players. When he speaks, they stop and listen, including in practice, where Bibby is prone to stop the action and show exactly where a screen is supposed to be set and where the shooter is supposed to go.

He also lets his coaches coach.

“I don’t have an ego that won’t allow our coaches to teach and talk, too,” he said.

“When coach talks, it’s dead silence,” said Zach Chappell, the Hornets basketball assistant general manager and the lone holdover from last season’s coaching-management staff. Chappell is a Sacramento-raised product who played for the Hornets. He was “a huge Mike Bibby fan” growing up.

“Everyone listens when Mike talks out here,” Chappell said during a recent practice. “We call him ‘The Maestro.’ He runs the show. And anything a player has gone through, or where they want to go, Mike’s been there and done all of it. He makes it all simple in teaching the game how it’s supposed to be played. He has 14 new players from 14 different places, and that’s not easy, but we’re getting there.”

He takes losses hard. The Hornets are 4-4 after Tuesday night’s victory over San Francisco State at Hornet Pavilion. Bibby has acknowledged players for good plays, and he will rip them for sluggish efforts.

Bibby said he does not sleep well after games, even victories, because he pores over box scores and game film, recognizing a forced pass or a breakdown on defense. Nothing irks him more than a lack of effort.

“Mike will text us at 5 in the morning to go over ideas, so we know he’s not sleeping,” Chappell said.

Give back to the region

Bibby gave up sleep and pursued the Sac State job for several seasons, reaching out to Hornets athletic director Mark Orr and school president Luke Wood to inquire about the role. He attended Sac State football games in 2024 to get a feel for the place, to chat it up with Orr and Wood.

“The timing wasn’t right before, but it is now, and I’m excited,” Bibby said.

Bibby said he is moved by the support from Kings fans, including those who wear Kings jersey No. 10 in overflow crowd settings inside new Hornet Pavilion. He said he has taken selfie pictures with fans who reminded him that he held them as a baby some 20 years ago.

“Isn’t that cool?” Bibby said.

The Bibby name has piqued interest in a program that didn’t always move the needle over the decades.

“We’re here because of Bibby, and because we’ve been waiting for a good team here for years,” said longtime Hornets fan John Campbell during a recent game. “I didn’t want to be one of those fans who asked for an autograph, but he signed. What a thrill.”

Bibby said he feels an obligation to boost the Hornets, to give Sacramento a winner, and to give back to a region that has given him so much.

“I don’t want to let the city down,” Bibby said.

Orr said the Hornets didn’t hire Bibby because he was a Kings star, but noted that “was the cherry on top. He’s a Kings legend who knows this sport.”

Orr during a recent home game said he was impressed with the new-look Hornets and the crowds. He admitted that he is a bit star struck himself.

“I looked over at Mike, and it was a surreal moment,” Orr said. “I was thinking, ‘Man, look at that. That’s Mike Bibby coaching our basketball team. I mean, who doesn’t love that?”

Bibby’s rock: His mother

Bibby sought out his mother, Virginia Bibby, before the opening tip of Sac State’s home opener on Nov. 4. She eased down stands and gave her son a warm embrace behind the team bench.

“I’m just so happy and proud of Mike because this is exactly what he wanted to do,” Virginia Bibby said at the half of that game, a 103-79 victory over Dominican University. Hornets players signed the game ball and presented it to their coach after the game.

“When Mike was a boy, he wrote an essay to his English teacher and said he dreamed of playing in the NBA,” Virginia Bibby said. “He did. Then he wanted to coach, and here he is.”

Virginia Bibby said she used to drive from Phoenix to Sacramento dozens of times when her son played for the Kings. Her son insisted she fly, on his dollar, but she liked to drive and to think. Now she flies to Hornets games. Back home in Arizona she watches Bibby’s and wife Darcy’s youngest child, Nylah Bibby, compete as a high school volleyball star.

She also smiled talking about the view of her son and grandson on the same bench again. Bibby coached his only son, Michael, at Shadow Mountain High School in Arizona when that program was a national prep powerhouse. Michael is now coaching with his father after playing overseas professionally.

“I will say that it’s much easier watching Mike coach than watching him play because it’s not as stressful,” Virginia Bibby said. “But Mike curses more now than he did as a player. Michael doesn’t curse at all. I just know that this is Mike’s dream, and this is his life.”

Bibby said being involved in his children’s lives was important to him. His father, Henry Bibby, played college basketball at UCLA and in the NBA and coached in college and the NBA, but father and son didn’t see a lot of each other. Bibby said he is indebted to his mother for her love and loyalty to him and to his children.

“It wasn’t like I hated my dad or anything, but he wasn’t around, and I grew up without him,” Bibby said. “He was coaching, away from the family. I always told myself that I’m going to do my best to be there for my kids, no matter what.”

Bibby said he and his father are in regular contact. He invited his father to come to Sac State to talk to the players before the season.

“He told the guys that ‘this has to be your life,’ ” Bibby said.

Insights from Brad Miller, Shaq, Doug Christie

Basketball has been Bibby’s life since he first handled a ball as a little boy, wearing a jersey so big it draped over his skinny frame.

He was a prep All-American at Shadow Mountain High School in Phoenix, where he led a state-championship team in 1996. He led the Arizona Wildcats to the NCAA championship in 1997 and was the No. 2 pick in the 1998 NBA draft, selected by the Vancouver Grizzlies. Bibby, 6-foot-2, logged 14 seasons. His best run was with the Kings during the Rick Adelman-coached era of the early 2000s when he averaged 17.6 points and 5.5 assists. He retired from the NBA in 2012.

Bibby got into coaching at Shadow Mountain High, first to help his son’s prep team as an assistant. He became head coach at the urging of Michael Warren, the school’s athletic director, and he coached five state championship teams.

Bibby and Warren became so close that Bibby hired him months ago to become his director of basketball operations at Sac State. Warren came up with the title of “The Maestro” for Bibby, having watched him orchestrate things for years.

Bibby served as an assistant coach for the Puerto Rican National Team, summer league teams for Cleveland and Memphis, and in the NBA G League.

Bibby said he sometimes peeks at old clips of some of his best plays, none bigger than his Game 5 winner against the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference finals that put the Kings on the cusp of reaching the NBA Finals. It remains the biggest play in the franchise’s 41-year history in California. Bibby said he is still pained at how the Kings lost that series. He does not watch the Robert Horry game winner that turned the series for the Lakers, or the fateful Game 7 when the Lakers won in overtime behind Shaquille O’Neal.

“I can’t watch some of those Lakers games,” Bibby said. “I refuse to watch. If I know it’s coming up, I’ll turn the TV off.”

Time heals, and relationships remained. In the 2000s, Bibby could not have imagined ever working alongside Shaq in any capacity. As fate would have it, Shaq is Sac State’s general manager, a volunteer position as a favor to an old friend.

Bibby’s first signing with the Hornets was Shaq’s son, Shaqir O’Neal, a 6-foot-8 forward.

“I’m the GM because Mike needed me, and Mike is good people,” O’Neal said.

Brad Miller is another former NBA big man who is with Bibby today because of years of their friendship. Miller was the center-forward for the Kings for a stretch when Bibby was there. Miller is an advisor to Bibby and the program.

“Mike and I always got along, always talked basketball, and we have the same kind of high basketball IQ that you need,” Miller said. “When Mike got this job, I told him I’ll come check him out. He said they don’t have money to pay me, and I told him that’s OK. I want to help and I’m coming out.

“I love what he’s doing here. Mike’s doing a great job of teaching the game. There will be some lows, because it’s basketball, but there will be a lot of highs. It’ll happen. We’ve already seen sone of it.”

Bibby didn’t expect to be a coach when he played for the Kings, though he had some “Maestro” to him then, too, in orchestrating practices and games.

Bibby’s backcourt mate with the Kings was Doug Christie, now the Kings head coach. Christie said he watched Bibby “from afar” when Bibby was a prep coach. But Christie didn’t see Bibby becoming a head coach in college when they played together.

“I am surprised,” Christie said. “I’m not sure that I ever saw him coaching, but at the same time, he knows the game. He understands the game, and all the things that equate to coaching. So it surprises me, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

Christie added, “We’ve talked some schematics more than anything, offensive and defensive stuff, like how the players today are different from when we played, and how to manage that.”

‘The good life’

Bibby said he’s living “the good life.” He has accomplished all of his goals with more to accomplish, such as someday getting Sac State into the NCAA Tournament. He married his teenage sweetheart and they had four kids. They are even grandparents now.

“Had my first grandchild in August, and when we call, we say, ‘Hey, put the baby on!’ ” Bibby said with a laugh.

Bibby added, “I pushed myself at every stop. I wanted to be a good high school player and worked at it. I wanted to do well in college. I wanted to get drafted. There are only about 4,500 players who have ever made it to the NBA, so I’m proud of that. It’s not easy. None of it is every easy. You have to work at it.”

Bibby looks like he can still play. But he rarely picks up a ball and shoots. He used to work himself to the point of exhaustion as a player with extra shots and extra weight lifting. He now works himself to the point of fatigue in breaking down film. He also stresses about making sure his players are taken care of, including paying for a hair cuts and meals. He and the Hornets would have a Thanksgiving gathering.

“That’s Mike,” said Biancani, the team’s strength coach. “He’s a good man. He’s loyal. He cares. He works his ass off.”

“I don’t shoot anymore,” Bibby said. “I don’t even workout with the guys here in practice. I let the coaches run the floor with the players. I don’t want to get all sweaty for the rest of the day, so I’ll let the kids here get sweaty, and I’ll just stand on the side and teach the game.”

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Sacramento Bee Staff Writer Chris Biderman contributed to this story.

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