South Carolina basketball coach Lamont Paris comments on contract extension, raise
Lamont Paris is a man with few, if any hobbies. To the extent he has free time, he recently told a former high school teammate, he watches basketball. NBA. College. Doesn’t matter. He is a laser-focused man, eyes always open to the possibility he’ll see something to improve his team.
“He’s a basketball genius. Professor. Doctor. Whatever you want to call it,” said USC guard Meechie Johnson. “He loves the game. He’ll call you, he’ll send you clips from other teams and other games.”
Naturally, Paris does not want his mind to wander from basketball in any case that a lapse in all-out focus will affect his team. So when South Carolina came to its second-year men’s basketball coach with an offer to extend his contract, his first inclination was to send it back and keep his mind “full throttle” on this season.
“Then I realized that you can multitask if you really want to do that,” Paris said Thursday, just minutes after the Gamecocks’ 80-66 win over Arkansas in the SEC Tournament.
Just hours before the Gamecocks opened play in Nashville, The State confirmed that Paris and South Carolina agreed to a contract extension that keeps him in Columbia through the 2029-30 and will pay him around $4 million per season.
The extension still needs to be approved by the South Carolina Board of Trustees. A meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday.
“This was a no-brainer, at least on my part,” Paris said with a grin. “It’s a real thrill for me to be able to coach these guys. I love where I am. And they like me, too. What else was there to do but to make a good deal?”
With Athletic Director Ray Tanner sitting in the press conference room, Paris joked that “we had to nudge Coach Tanner a little bit.”
The news came less than a week after Paris was named the SEC Coach of the Year and his name was thrown around the coaching carousel, especially as people speculated that Paris — a Findlay, Ohio native — would be a great fit for the vacant Ohio State job.
“I didn’t float my name around,” Paris said on Thursday. “A lot of people were floating my name around. I guess that’s what happens this time of year. It’s fun, exciting, a lot of things that are going on. It makes the number of text messages I get out of control.”
This season, Paris has been coaching with the lowest compensation of any SEC basketball coach ($2.3 million), though incentives will bump up his total pay. With the extension, it is expected he’ll move into the top half of the conference’s earners.
But there are other deals to shake out. Two other SEC head coaches received a contract extension this week, Ole Miss’ Chris Beard and Florida’s Todd Golden.
As more eyeballs begin to look at South Carolina basketball — beginning with Friday’s SEC Tournament semifinal against Auburn and continuing into the NCAA Tournament — Tanner and the Gamecocks no longer have to worry about the rumor mill mentioning Paris’ name.
“We were able to move forward on that,” Paris said. “I’m really, really excited about that and then still quickly be able to get back to pouring more into our preparation and getting these guys ready to go out there and show what they can do.”
