Former Ute Jarred DuBois Hosting Mental Health Panel During NBA All-Star Weekend
Feb 17, 2023, 11:31 AM
SALT LAKE CITY – Former Ute and current Lakers assistant coach Jarred DuBois is returning to Salt Lake City for NBA All-Star Weekend to host a mental health panel at his old stomping grounds at the University of Utah.
“The Right Conversation” is taking place Friday, February 17 from 4-6 pm MT at the Spence and Cleone Eccles Football Facility with doors opening at 3:00 pm. The free event will feature several specialists in the field of psychology along with some rising stars in the NBA. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to register for the event at Everyone Has A Story but space is limited.
Before his big event, DuBois sat with KSL Sports to talk about his journey growing up to playing with the Runnin’ Utes, his NBA career and how it’s all melded together into his passion for mental health awareness and bringing people together with is nonprofit, Everyone has a Story.
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It All Started At Home
DuBois gives his home life a lot of credit for setting the foundation of realizing two statements can be true at once- you can have your own personal struggles and also find time to help others with their struggles as part of the healing process.
“A lot of my growth honestly started in the household,” DuBois said. “When you have someone like my dad going through a lot of financial struggles and living out of his car, even while that was his circumstances, he was still- when I was in college we would go downtown and feed the homeless who were living on the street. So, at the same time he’s dealing with his individual struggles, he’s still pouring into other people. That was my up-close and personal, not role model, but real model. When I got to the University of Utah, yeah, I had my personal struggles.”
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While a student-athlete playing for the Runnin’ Utes, DuBois says his vision for Everyone has a Story really took off thanks in part to head coach Larry Krystkowiak, his staff and teammates providing a solid support system while he waded through his own experiences growing up in Los Angeles.
“I had a really great group of teammates- Dekari Tucker, Branden Taylor, and Jordan Loveridge- they were all freshmen and Justin Seymour, we were all new,” DuBois said. “Aaron Dotson, Glen Dean- we just had a really good group of people- Jason Washburn, like that allowed me to feel comfortable in a new space. I really credit the people who were involved with the university and our team from coach K to Slocum to all of the individuals connected to the University of Utah Athletics and then our community as well was extremely helpful for me in balancing those two spaces.”
Making Waves In The NBA
Once DuBois graduated from Utah, he spent some time playing basketball in Europe before coming back to the states to pursuit a coaching career. DuBois credits the relationship he built with another former Ute, Delon Wright for continuing to help him not only develop Everyone has a Story but also putting him on the NBA’s radar as coach material.
“The parallels of my non-profit organization and NBA career are extremely connected to Delon Wright who gave me the opportunity to work with him and holistically develop his game while he was in Toronto,” DuBois said. “He had a youth camp in Salt Lake City, and we were just looking to see how we could add a component to the camp that was different from everyone else’s youth camp. The mental wellness topic was extremely important to the both of us.”
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That relationship with Wright ultimately led to DuBois making a great impression on now Detroit Pistons head coach Dwane Casey during Summer League. When Casey got the call up to Detroit, he took DuBois with him as an assistant coach and the rest is history.
“My career really started with coach Dwane Casey in Toronto at the time taking a chance on me and really giving me an opportunity to volunteer at Summer League,” DuBois said. “There was no job in line, I didn’t have any vision of what it may look like. I just knew I wanted to be around the best teachers and players in the world and he really gave me an opportunity to learn from him. He brought me to Detroit once he left Toronto and that’s where I’ve spent the last four seasons just learning under him and looking to build as much of a foundation of teaching like he sets the example for all of us.”
Tragedy Turns Into New Opportunities
Sadly, like all of us, DuBois recently had to deal with the painful turns life can hand us with the loss of his mother last year. That led to DuBois making the hard decision to leave Detroit in order to go back home to help his family in LA.
“I lost my mom about a year and a half ago and our family when through a struggling point, it really got to a boiling point I’d say with a couple of months left last season and I left Detroit,” DuBois said. “I informed the GM and head coach Dwane Casey that we were having a lot of family struggles from a mental health standpoint I wanted to be present with my family.”
With no immediate prospects of getting back to coaching, DuBois set forth preparing to further elevate his education when the opportunity of a lifetime came knocking.
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“In the back of my mind if there was a potential opportunity maybe at home, that would be the only way that I would get back into coaching,” DuBois said. “A couple of months later I had already applied to the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. I was about a week away from orientation and coach Darvin Ham gave me the means to join his team.”
As an LA guy who loves the sport of basketball, it doesn’t get better than coaching with the Lakers. With the 2023 season past the halfway point, DuBois says he still sometimes has a hard time believing he is associated with his childhood team.
“Each day I drive by places that I grew up around and drive by my childhood barber shop and I see friends who I grew up around that all we knew as kids was Lakers basketball,” DuBois said. “Be it at the Forum, or when they moved to Staples and now that they’ve renamed it the Crypto- just having the opportunity to work with such a storied franchise, but also the opportunity to work with and learn from some of the brightest minds that our game has ever seen has really been an extremely important aspect for my career.”
“More importantly, for me to be able to provide all of the information and all of the resources from my playing career and coaching career and implement those in the community with young men who look like me and come from the exact same circumstances I came from is really the more exciting component,” DuBois continued of being able to have an impact on his hometown. “This is why the work we do at ‘Everyone Has A Story’ and the ‘Right Conversation’ is so close to me.”
Using All-Star Weekend To Serve His Second Home
DuBois said he was well aware of where NBA All-Star Weekend was going to be when he took the job with the Lakers and knew it was going to be a no-brainer for him to return to the University of Utah to hold one of his mental health panels.
“I got on the phone with Manny Hendrix and Dr. Smith (a longtime professor and mental health advocate for the University of Utah) and we started to collaborate with the University of Utah’s Mental Health Institute, the student-athletes and University of Utah Athletics,” DuBois said. “We knew this was such an important discussion for not only the student-athletes but the local community as well.”
The Right Conversation discussion panel was carefully curated by DuBois to bring in people with extensive expertise in the area of mental health, interesting local connections to SLC as well as the NBA in order to make the event as impactful as possible.
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“We’re starting with Dr. Corey Yeager,” DuBois said. He’s one of the moderators. He’s the Detroit Pistons’ psychotherapist and life coach, he also happens to be my uncle so it’s always fun to work with him in this community space. Dr. William Smith who works with the Huntsman Institute and has been a longtime professor and advocate for mental health and wellness at the University of Utah. Kayce K. who is a WNBA and NBA host- she does a lot of work with brand ambassadors and speaks a lot to the pressure social media can provide. A local star in my eyes, Frank Jackson, who is from the Utah area. I coached him in Detroit, he’s going to be back and on the panel. Last but not least we have Cuffs the Legend who is an NBA insider and covers a lot of the NBA and what is happening in our league while also running a youth development league back in North Carolina. I’m excited for both students, student-athletes, coaches, professors- there is something for everyone who will be attending.”
Despite it being years since DuBois last suited up for the Utes, he appreciates the fact he can still call on the athletic department at Utah and current Runnin’ Utes staff for support on Everyone has a Story when he’s in town. DuBois is happy to be back and have the ability to provide valuable information for a community that supported him as a student-athlete and continues to support him as he makes his way up the NBA ranks.
“I’m extremely excited to be back to a place that has welcomed me from the beginning with a lot of individuals who have become like family members to me,” DuBois said. “Just the opportunity to provide the campus and the local community with the information and resources I’m able to tap into on a day-to-day basis. I’m just looking to educate, impact and collaborate with all of the different individuals that will be in attendance Friday.”
Michelle Bodkin is the Utah Utes Insider for KSLsports.com and host of both the Crimson Corner Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and The Saturday Show (Saturday from 10 a.m.–12 p.m.) on The KSL Sports Zone. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @BodkinKSLsports
