In the span between his addiction and Tyler Kolek, Nick Correia’s relationship with basketball was “weird.” He didn’t trust himself.
The sport felt like a trigger to the drugs that once crippled Correia’s life.
But then, Correia started training Kolek, and the point guard’s underdog rise to NCAA stardom helped further push the dark times out of focus.
“Tyler was a zero-star recruit,” Correia told The Post. “He wasn’t ranked like that. He didn’t have all these high-end scholarship offers. He had to work for everything. And you can’t help when you watch a guy who is gritty like that — like, that’s the game to me, guys that play hard, that play selfless.
“I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, this is why I love this game.’ Tyler was the first time again where I didn’t want to miss a game, sitting on the edge of my seat, watching with emotion and passion.”
The Kolek-Correia partnership has been mutually beneficial.
Since he was 17, Kolek has tapped Correia for strength and conditioning guidance, including this summer as the point guard prepares for his rookie campaign with the Knicks.
Correia, a Massachusetts product with a passion for Larry Bird and an accent out of “The Departed,” worked out the 23-year-old Kolek most recently this week, about a month before Knicks training camp begins in Charleston, S.C.
Correia likened these sessions to a car tune-up.
Their workouts were more intense during the pandemic, when Kolek was home in Rhode Island for an extended period and deadlifting 335 pounds for 20 reps.
“[Kolek’s] home for a week right now. We’re kind of just changing his spark plugs, putting new tires on him, making sure he’s as loose and feeling as good as possible when he gets to camp,” Correia said. “Two weeks ago, when he was home with me, after the Summer League, we did a five-day stretch where we were trying to get him stronger, we were trying to put a little bit of muscle on him. Because I know the demands of the NBA and it beats you up. … But we can’t sacrifice speed, agility or mobility for strength. Because if we get him wicked strong and he loses a step, we’re in trouble. So I mixed it up.”
Correia was a Division III basketball coach at UMass Dartmouth before becoming a trainer.
He was also in the throes of drug addiction, when a victory celebration beer with the staff could turn into a bender.
Alcohol became cocaine and opioids.
A profile on Correia in The Standard-Times from 2017 also detailed heroin use and arrests.
“It kind of pulled away from the love of the game,” Correia said. “The problem is I’d have one beer and want to stay out. I used it as a way to buy my drugs.”
Correia got clean over a decade ago with the help of Chris Herren, the former NBA player who overcame his own drug addiction and now runs a recovery center in Massachusetts.
The ensuing years brought Correia success in both sobriety and strength training.
He linked up with Kolek, and during their six summers together, the cerebral point guard emerged as Rhode Island’s High School Player of the Year, the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Year with George Mason and the Big East Player of the Year with Marquette.
The run with Marquette turned Kolek into a college star and the 34th pick of the 2024 NBA Draft, chosen by the Knicks.
“When he started to play at Marquette, I told him, ‘You helped me fall in love with the game again, Tyler,’ ” Correia said.
But now comes the hardest part.
As an older rookie with the biggest contract for a second-round pick in NBA history, Kolek, who flashed his passing prowess at Summer League last month, could claim a rotation spot on a Knicks team with the conference finals as the bar.
There’s a potential need at backup point guard, with newly signed Cam Payne also vying for that spot and Miles McBride better equipped as a two-guard.
In a good sign for Kolek’s case for a rotation spot, a source said head coach Tom Thibodeau was a proponent of drafting the Marquette man. And Kolek has an ardent supporter in the weight room — a trainer who knows a thing or two about overcoming adversity.
“I’ve never seen that kid not be in a rotation, and I’ve never seen him not make people around him better,” Correia said. “And with the firepower the Knicks have and with the way they kind of broke down in the playoffs with the injuries, they obviously needed some depth. And I think he’s going to provide that depth.
“And Tyler can play with anyone. He can play with [Donte] DiVincenzo. He can play with [Jalen] Brunson. He can do so many different things that I just see him being an X factor that people don’t realize. And in big game situations is when he’s at his best. That kid is going to play with energy like John Starks did in the ’90s. Spike Lee is going to have a Tyler Kolek jersey in the rotation.”
