Lonny Shockley, former North Babylon player and coach, dies at 72
Lonny Shockley played basketball at North Babylon High School and later returned to become an assistant coach. He was also an assistant coach at Dowling College and counseled inmates in Yaphank and on Rikers Island. Credit: Shockley Family
A highly respected presence on the Long Island basketball scene for decades, Lonny Shockley was a little different from many of his peers.
Basketball was his passion from the time he was a youngster to when he helped North Babylon High School win its first county championship to coaching in college and high school. But he also was friends with celebrities who lived in his TriBeCa neighborhood, counseled jail inmates about life after release, and worked summer basketball camps run by the Knicks and Lakers.
“I remember one time we were out in his neighborhood and he told me we were meeting a friend for lunch and when we got there it was Ethan Hawke,” his nephew Jeff Randolph said. “He knew everyone — Robert De Niro — and we used to call him ‘The Mayor of TriBeCa.’ ”
“To us, he was a great family man,” said his daughter, Lynsey Simmons. “But he was also a person who cared deeply for others. He always helped other people.”
Shockley died of natural causes on March 19 in Charlotte, North Carolina, his family said. He was 72.
'The team psychologist'
Alonzo Hilton Shockley III was born May 21, 1952, in Delaware to parents who were educators and activists in the Civil Rights Movement. He was 8 when the family relocated to New York and ultimately settled in North Babylon.
He was raised with a focus on education, a passion for Michigan State — where his father and older sister went — and a love of sports in general. Described by his older sister, Cheryl Durant, as “gregarious,” he made friends easily and showed a talent for playing basketball.
He attended North Babylon High School and was a member of the varsity boys basketball team when it captured its first Suffolk County title in 1970, according to Newsday records. After attending Wagner College on Staten Island, Shockley returned to Long Island and chose to indulge his passion for sports by coaching everything from youth baseball to middle school basketball and then becoming an assistant coach under Joe Pellicane at his high school alma mater.
When Pellicane was hired to be the men’s basketball coach at Dowling College before the 1986-87 season, he asked Shockley to be on his staff.
“I wanted him there because he was good with people, honest and genuine and he had an eye for talent,” Pellicane said. “I was always taken with the way he cared so much about every player’s future beyond college.”
“People will probably remember him best as the coach who best promoted team chemistry and kept players from getting [mentally] off track,” said Scott Greene, who played at Dowling and now is an assistant coach for the boys basketball team at Wyandanch High School. “In a lot of ways, he was kind of the team psychologist. But there was a lot more to him than that. He could draw up a set for us to run.”
Shockley was on the staff for arguably the school’s finest men’s basketball moment when Dowling won the 1988 ECAC Division II championship. The college closed in 2016.
He made some of his biggest impressions and long-standing relationships with the people at Dowling, including players who still refer to him as “Shock” or “Shocker.”
“He was a coach, but he was also like a big brother,” said Kenny Parham, who played at Dowling and now is the boys basketball coach at Bay Shore High School. “In addition to the basketball, there were life lessons and there was inspiration from him. We’re talking about a truly great man.”
“He had a personality that got along with everyone and was a positive influence to all,” said Mike Voyack, who was on Pellicane’s staff with Shockley before becoming head coach. “He could help anyone through any hard time.”
Work helping inmates
Shockley worked for the state as a guidance counselor at jails, first at the Suffolk County jail in Yaphank and later on Rikers Island, Simmons said. “He helped the younger [inmates] work through things so they wouldn’t make the same mistakes when they got released,” she added.
In the summers Shockley worked at basketball camps, including one run by the Knicks and another run by the Lakers, a gig he landed due to a friendship with Mitch Kupchak, the Long Islander who played in the NBA and became the Lakers’ general manager.
Shockley and his wife, Denise, lived in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan and that made for long days, first driving out to Yaphank, then to Dowling in Oakdale for practice and then home.
“He’d have to leave early to get to work out East and wouldn’t get home until 10 p.m., and he never complained about anything because he loved what he was doing,” Pellicane said. Added Randolph, “Even when he encountered health problems later in life, he would always say, ‘I’m doing fine, I’m doing fine.' ”
After leaving Dowling, Shockley spent more time in the city, working and coaching boys and girls basketball at the United Nations International School where he coached Joakim Noah, who played 13 seasons in the NBA, including a stint with the Knicks.
Shockley was predeceased by his wife, who suffered a number of illnesses resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. He moved with his daughter to Charlotte in 2021.
In addition to his daughter, survivors include his sisters, Novella Randolph and Cheryl Durant, brother-in-law, James Durant, son-in-law, Bobby Simmons, and grandchildren, Mya and Mavrick.
A memorial service was held April 5 at Trinity Church in Manhattan and he was interred at a cemetery in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
