Ed Greene, ‘a real trailblazer’ as Contra Costa basketball coach, dies at 83

Ed Greene, a trailblazing coach at Contra Costa College, where he is the only two-time inductee to the athletics Hall of Fame and the namesake of its basketball gym, died Thursday night. He was 83.

When he was hired in 1969 to lead the men’s program, Greene succeeded Dr. Leroy Mims, the first Black basketball coach at a community college in California and an East Bay civil rights legend. He held the job for 19 seasons, won 419 games and six conference championships, and never had a losing record.

So synonymous with Contra Costa College, when Greene moved from the sidelines to an administrative role in 1990, he was known by one word, according to longtime athletic director John Wade II.

Coach.

“Coach Greene was a giant of a man, an inspiration for a lot of people,” said Wade, who was by Greene’s side Thursday afternoon and recalled their first encounter, more than 40 years earlier, when he was a player for a City College team that made it to the state championship game.

“We ended up being the best team in the north, but we go to Contra Costa and I see this guy standing over there, an African American guy, and he was a college coach,” Wade said. “I was intrigued. Coach Greene, he sat over there with a big smile on his face. He was sharp, clean. He dressed up. Had a tie on, a suit and tie. I hate to say it, we ended up losing that game.”

It was still uncommon for a Black man to lead a collegiate basketball program, and Greene’s success on the court didn’t shield him from racism. Growing up in El Sobrante, where he attended predominantly White De Anza High School, he was prepared to overcome it.

“There were lots of times when I heard him called the N-word,” said Paul DeBolt, who played for Greene from 1973-75 and went on to coach the women’s team. “He would just sort of bristle. He was just a gentleman. He understood the situation. He was a real trailblazer, for real.”

As one of the emcees when the college inducted the first class to its athletics Hall of Fame in November, Dwayne Foreman got to read his former coach’s name. Twice. Of the 100 inductees, he was the only one to go in as a player and a coach.

That was the last time many of his former players saw Greene, and they weren’t sure he would make it. Foreman had been unable to reach him for years, until he received a phone call a day before the ceremony. It was another former player of Greene’s, Allen Cotton.

“He called me and said, ‘I’ve got somebody that wants to talk to you,’” Foreman said. “And it was Coach Greene. That couldn’t have been anybody but God. He was supposed to be there so he could see all of us for the last time.”

While Greene is survived by two sisters, it was Cotton who cared for him as his health declined. That was the depth of relationship he built with the players he coached.

“He was very loyal to his players, and his players were very loyal to him,” DeBolt said. “He was a hard-ass coach. He expected you to play hard. (But) he let us play. He understood basketball was supposed to be fun.”

Foreman credits Greene with changing his life as a high-school senior. He had garnered interest across the country as a highly rated prospect, but those scholarship offers disappeared when he learned that a man had been physically abusing his mother and shot him.

“That was the end of my basketball career, except for Coach Greene,” Foreman said. “I had about 300 letters from basically any school, but after that I was just a little Black guy that shot somebody. … If it wasn’t for Coach Greene, I probably wouldn’t have been able to play in junior college. He was really a life saver.”

The current coach at Contra Costa, Miguel Johnson, was hired in 2006, the year Greene retired, but still described him as a mentor. He estimated that Greene touched thousands of lives over the course of his career.

“What’s interesting is looking at how his legacy created men like myself that pour it back into the community, like he did,” Johnson said in a text message. “He paid it forward, and it is now our duty to continue that legacy.”