Proud Omar Minaya watches son Justin's quest for NBA career
Providence's Justin Minaya, left, poses for a photograph with his father Omar Minaya after an NCAA college basketball game against Butler at the Big East conference basketball tournament Thursday, March 10, 2022, in New York. Providence won 65-61. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
Omar Minaya knows more than a little about judging talent.
As a former general manager with the Mets and Expos who now works as a scouting consultant for Major League Baseball, Minaya intimately understands the process young athletes go through as they try to make it to the professional ranks.
Still, he says it’s been both exciting and a little nerve-wracking to see his son Justin, a 6-7 forward from Providence, fly around the country to work out for NBA teams in preparation for the NBA Draft.
“I’ve had to make evaluations on thousands of kids over the years. It is different when your kid is the one being evaluated,” he said with a laugh. “You just have to let him be and not get caught up in the actual moment. He will take care of himself.”
Justin has worked out with eight teams, including the Knicks, Nets, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Detroit, Denver and Utah. He has two more workouts scheduled before the June 23 draft.
“The whole process has been like a dream for me,” he said last week after working out for the Nets in Brooklyn with a group of prospects that included Scottie Pippen Jr. “I walked into the [Nets'] practice facility today and there’s Steve Nash, a legend that I grew up watching. It was so cool.”
Having grown up around professional athletes, Justin doesn't often get star-struck. He was a 5-year-old baseball fanatic when his father was named general manager of the Mets, and he spent his childhood hanging out in the clubhouse with some pretty heavy hitters.
“I learned so much being around guys like Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran,” he said. “Being exposed to that as a kid, I saw firsthand just how hard guys like that work every day.”
He’s also learned from his father, especially when it comes to handling team interviews. “He just tells me to be myself,” Justin said.
Justin came to basketball relatively late. A lefthanded pitcher and centerfielder, he played baseball and basketball from a young age in Harrington Park, New Jersey. A growth spurt in ninth grade convinced him to get serious about basketball and join an AAU team. He knew if he was going to do that, he had to give up baseball.
Given that baseball was their shared passion, Justin initially was a little nervous about telling his father about his decision. His father, however, didn’t waste any time going all in and became a fixture in the stands at his AAU games and later on in college.
“He’s basically seen so much basketball that he’s turned himself into a basketball scout,” Justin said.
After four years at South Carolina, Justin transferred to Providence last year. It proved to be a wise decision as Providence won its first Big East regular-season championship and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 25 years before losing to eventual national champion Kansas. Justin averaged 33.2 minutes and 7.8 points per game.
“I think my biggest strength is my versatility and my defense,” he said. “I think I was one of the best defenders this year in college basketball.”
Though Justin is not projected to be taken in the two rounds of the NBA Draft, his goal in the workouts is to get himself noticed, raise his stock and find a way onto an NBA team.
“I don’t’ care where I go,” he said. “My main goal is to try to get onto a team right now, whether it’s a two-way contract, that would be amazing, and then trying to get into summer league and work my way to a roster spot through summer league.”
Having scouted so many kids over the years, the older Minaya understands that there are a lot of different paths to making a career as a professional athlete. A 14th-round pick by the Oakland Athletics in 1978, Omar played in the minors, the Dominican Republic and Italy before beginning his scouting and front-office career with the Texas Rangers.
“It’s a journey,'' Omar said, "and everyone’s journey is different.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
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