Alex Sarama

Alex Sarama
Alex Sarama, head coach of the Portland Fire in 2025
Portland Fire
PositionHead coach
LeagueWNBA
Personal information
NationalityBritish
Coaching career2020–present
Career history
Coaching
2020–2023College Basket Borgomanero
2022–2023Paris Basketball (Player Improvement Specialist)
2023–2024London Lions
2023–2024Rip City Remix (Assistant Coach)
2024–2026Cleveland Cavaliers (Assistant Coach)
2026Portland Fire

Alex Sarama (/ˈsɑːrəmə/) is a British basketball coach and author. He is the assistant coach and director of player development for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. In October 2025, he was appointed head coach of the Portland Fire, an expansion franchise in the Women's National Basketball Association, set to debut in 2026. Sarama is associated with the application of skill acquisition concepts and the constraints-led approach in basketball.[1][2]

Early life and education

Alex Sarama is originally from Guildford, England,[3] where he attended St. Peter's Catholic School. He started coaching basketball as a teenager and later founded the Guildford Goldhawks, a youth basketball club in Guildford. Sarama studied history at the University of Nottingham from 2013 to 2016, where he obtained a bachelor's degree.

Career

After graduating from the University of Nottingham, Sarama joined NBA Europe and worked with the league's office in Madrid and supported grassroots initiatives, youth coaching education, elite camps such as Basketball Without Borders, and other basketball operations projects. From 2020 to 2023, Sarama served as head coach of Pallacanestro College Basket Borgomanero in Italy. During this period, he implemented training and player development methods motivated by contemporary skill acquisition research.[4][5]

During the 2022–23 EuroCup Basketball, Sarama also worked with Paris Basketball as a player improvement specialist in LNB Élite under head coach Will Weaver where he contributed to trainings that are inline with CNS load management and game principles for 2022–23 EuroCup competition.[6] He then proceeded to serve as Director of Methodology for the London Lions of the British Basketball League after his time at College Basket in Italy. Alongside his role with the London Lions, Sarama joined the Rip City Remix, the NBA G League affiliate of the Portland Trail Blazers, for the 2023–24 season as assistant coach and director of player development.[7]

In 2024, he joined the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA as assistant coach and director of player development supporting head coach Kenny Atkinson where he helped establish player development systems grounded in the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) and contemporary skill acquisition research. During the 2024–25 regular season, the Cavaliers finished with a 64–18 record and secured No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.[8]

Portland Fire

In October 2025, Sarama was named the first head coach of the Portland Fire, an expansion franchise in the Women's National Basketball Association set to debut in the 2026 season.[9]

Transforming Basketball

Sarama is the founder of Transforming Basketball, an international coach-education organisation established in 2023. He has published a book Transforming Basketball: Changing How We Think About Basketball Performance , under the organization and released in 2024.[10]

Coaching philosophy

Sarama is an advocate of the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) to skill acquisition and practice design, a methodology that emphasises decision-making, adaptability and game-representative learning environments rather than isolated and repetitive drills.[11] His application of CLA principles was related with player development systems he implemented during his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers. When he was working under head coach Kenny Atkinson, Sarama contributed to practice design and development frameworks. Atkinson publicly said that the organisation aimed to "get ahead of the league" in areas such as player development and methodology, with Sarama's appointment forming part of that strategic direction.[12] Sarama's work and his adoption of CLA-based coaching in the NBA was reported by The Athletic and The New York Times, which explored how ecological dynamics and constraints-led methods are increasingly used by elite coaches and organisations.[13][14]

See also

References

  1. ^ Merchant, Sabreena (October 17, 2025). "WNBA's Portland Fire name Cavs' assistant Alex Sarama first coach in team history". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 17, 2025.
  2. ^ Peterson, Anne M. (October 17, 2025). "Portland Fire names Alex Sarama as first head coach, team to begin play next season". Toronto Star. Retrieved October 17, 2025.
  3. ^ "Alex Sarama". transformingball.com. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  4. ^ Mast, Dave. "Hiland coach Schlabach brings home new techniques after basketball camp in Italy". yourohionews.com. Your OHIO News. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  5. ^ "WELCOME ALEX SARAMA!". collegebasketball.it. College Basketball. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  6. ^ Merchant, Sabreena. "WNBA mock expansion draft: Who will Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire select?". nytimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  7. ^ Maloney, Jack. "Who is Portland Fire coach Alex Sarama? Isaac Okoro on the 'basketball junkie' leading the WNBA expansion team". cbssports.com. CBS SPORTS. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  8. ^ Dulk, Brian. "Cavaliers cruise past Bulls, secure No. 1 seed in Eastern Conference". nba.com. National Basketball Association. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  9. ^ Uitti, Jacob. "Alex Sarama: how a 30-year-old Englishman became an WNBA head coach". The Guardian. The Guardian. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  10. ^ Saram, Alex (April 9, 2024). Transforming Basketball: Changing How We Think About Basketball Performance. Independently published. p. 372. ISBN 979-8876624888. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  11. ^ Shelburne, Ramona (October 17, 2025). "Fire hire Cavaliers assistant Alex Sarama as 1st head coach". ESPN.
  12. ^ Dulk, Brian. "Cavs embracing analytics under Kenny Atkinson". Fear the Sword. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  13. ^ "What is the CLA, the revolutionary coaching method used by Victor Wembanyama and other top athletes?". The Athletic. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  14. ^ "How NBA teams are experimenting with constraints-led training". The Athletic. Retrieved December 30, 2025.
  • Media related to Alex Sarama at Wikimedia Commons
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