Penn’s Nat Graham has learned lessons that extend far beyond the basketball court

On most Fridays, you can find Penn men’s basketball assistant Nat Graham at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral right off Penn’s campus — even though he’s “not a real religious guy.”

He is there for the Rev. Charles L. “Chaz” Howard.

Howard regularly touches on the racial injustices that plague the United States, connecting them during his homily to the horrors of the country’s past. For Graham, these services have become a point of inspiration.

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Graham, 50, has written on topics from racialized police brutality to white allyship to the lasting effect of Jim Crow laws on Black neighborhoods. He sat alongside his players in protest during the national anthem in 2021 to bring attention to institutional racism, for which the program faced harsh backlash.

Over the years, Graham has built a strong relationship with Howard, who serves as chaplain for Penn Athletics. Just as Graham attends services led by Howard, the chaplain can be found seated behind Penn’s bench at almost every home game.

“That’s my brother,” Howard said of Graham. “A brother and friend. A model, in a lot of ways. He’s my teacher, too. We’ve started out as friends and as colleagues here at Penn. And then that grew into a relationship where we talked about the hard topics around racism and violence in our society.”

Added Graham: “Chaz is, first of all, a great speaker. He’s really thoughtful, such a great guy. He just can calm me down a little bit, and I just find [his homilies] soothing. I’ve been fortunate since I’ve been here to get to know him.”

Graham is in his 10th season as an assistant on Penn’s staff, including as associate head coach since 2018, and the Quakers have made the Ivy League Tournament five out of six years.

This season, Penn (6-11, 2-2 Ivy) started slowly but has won its last two league matchups going into Friday’s home game against Brown (7 p.m., ESPN+).

“Coach Graham is as close [to me] as any coach I’ve been with my entire life,” said senior center Nick Spinoso. “He’s first and foremost just a great person — don’t tell him I said that. We have a great relationship where he can give me a lot of tough love and really be hard on me, and I can go right back at him, too.”

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Almost 20 years before he coached at Penn, Graham played center for the program. There he met current Penn head coach Steve Donahue, who was an assistant under Fran Dunphy.

“I’ve known [Graham] since he was 17 years old,” Donahue said. “And he’s, in a lot of ways, who he was as a young kid. He’s very curious, smart, and he was very sensitive as a young kid as well.”

Graham contributed to Ivy championship teams in the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons. He played in 11 games at Penn during the 1995-96 season before transferring to Western Ontario.

“I finished my career [at Penn], and I didn’t play my last year,” Graham said. “I was struggling as just a young person, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. ‘Ah, I’ll go play basketball somewhere else.’ The transferring and the grad-transfer thing wasn’t a big deal back then. I was looking at some local places, and then the Canada thing just came out of nowhere.”

He became a captain at Western Ontario, in London, and was a first-team All-Canada selection both years. After college, Graham played professionally in Ireland and Denmark. He coached at the high school and college level in Canada while his wife, Kelly, finished up her degree.

With his eyes set on returning to the States, he contacted Donahue, who was then the head coach at Cornell.

“At some point, Coach Donahue says, ‘Listen, I know a lot of people, I can help you with this’. I probably took that to the extreme. I remember at one point he’s like, ‘I’m not Bobby Knight, I can’t just snap my fingers to get you a job,’” Graham said.

“I kept trying with his staff, and he passed me over at least once, and then finally gave me a shot to work on his staff for exactly zero dollars, but it’s just so hard to get in the business. I’m so fortunate.”

In his five years at Cornell under Donahue, Graham helped coach the Big Red to three Ivy championships and had a Sweet 16 run in 2010. Following this success, Donahue left for Boston College. Graham followed. After finding immediate success in their first season at BC, the duo had three consecutive losing seasons. At the conclusion of the 2013-14 season, the entire coaching staff was fired.

Graham quickly became an assistant at Penn under then-coach Jerome Allen. A year later, after Allen was fired, Donahue joined Graham at the Palestra. They have been together since.

A shy kid growing up in Florida, Graham clung to basketball at a young age. He saw it as a way to escape from his social awkwardness. He played regularly at his local YMCA, where his father worked.

He made and has kept friends from various neighborhoods and backgrounds, through basketball. In his own writing, he credited these friends for giving him a different perspective on racial injustices at the time, namely the Rodney King trial, in which Los Angeles police officers were found not guilty in the 1991 assault of King, who was pulled over after a high-speed chase.

Graham first picked up the pen in 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement reached peak public awareness, and he was stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. He believes speaking out against hate in the moment is increasingly important.

“He’s always been someone that worried about the world and the more vulnerable of us,” Donahue said. “He is trying to be part of the solution as well. He didn’t get that from me. I try to do my best, but I’ve learned a lot from him.”

Graham is looking to write a book on institutional racism and his position as a white man in fighting for equal rights. In the meantime, his education continues — including on Fridays during church.

“He’s fighting for his players, and he’s fighting for other students who are around the program, and he’s fighting for people down the street, and that’s a beautiful thing,” Howard said.

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