From the biggest nights of his playing career to a new chapter on the sidelines, Tyrese Rice has never been one to go unnoticed. A EuroLeague champion, a fierce competitor and a player who left his mark wherever he went, the former guard is now experiencing the game from a different perspective, taking on a new role with Bayern Munich.
In an exclusive conversation with SKWEEK, Rice looks back on his time with Panathinaikos, leaves the door open for a potential return to the Greens in a different role and delivers a clear message about their losing streak against Olympiacos. He also revisits his unforgettable 41-point performance in the Eternal Derby, revealing the deeply personal story behind one of the most iconic nights of his career, while taking on another intriguing question: Prime Tyrese Rice or Kendrick Nunn?
But this conversation goes far beyond basketball. Rice opens up about the adversity he faced throughout his journey, the years it took him to embrace vulnerability and accept the importance of asking for help, and the advice he would give his 20-year-old self today.
From unforgettable EuroLeague battles to lessons learned away from the spotlight, Tyrese Rice reflects on the moments that shaped not only the player he became, but the man he is today.
After a successful career as a player, what made him decide that his next step would be coaching
“ Honestly, I don’t know if coaching is my next step. This was just an opportunity that came along. I had a couple of other opportunities before that I turned down, but none of them were like this one. This one is unique because of how it happened.
I wasn’t pursuing coaching. I wasn’t reaching out to people about becoming a coach or joining a staff or anything like that. A friend of mine put my name forward, and that’s how it happened. It wasn’t something I expected, and I didn’t know this was going to happen.
I’m happy to be here. It’s a good situation for me. I get to work with familiar faces and be part of an organization I’m familiar with. It’s very comfortable to be here and to know that I can have an impact on the team, the organization, and the coaches. The fact that they believe in my value and in what I can bring to the team made the decision easier”.
If he could see himself coaching one of the teams you played for
” I guess we’ll see. Sometimes opportunities come along that you can’t—or shouldn’t—pass up. I feel like this was one of those, especially with a club like Bayern Munich: EuroLeague, a historic club, a big organization, and one of the biggest organizations in the world in any sport.
When an opportunity like that comes along, it’s very hard to pass it up, especially when there’s familiarity. I don’t want to say that coaching is something I’m actively pursuing or that it’s definitely what I want to do. But if the right opportunity comes along, you have to explore it”.
If he could see himself going back to Panathinaikos in a different role
” I would. It’s another historically great club, with a winning tradition and one of the most passionate fan bases you’ll ever see in any sport. Panathinaikos is Panathinaikos. We know it, we understand it, and we know what the expectations are when you go there and become part of that club. When you’re a competitor like myself, you embrace things like that. It’s definitely a conversation I would have”.
What is the first memory that comes to mind when he hear “Panathinaikos”
” The first derby I ever saw. During my rookie season, I was playing for Panionios, and it was the first derby I saw live. They were playing in the Cup Final. The way the arena was set up was crazy. It was all Olympiacos fans behind one basket and all Panathinaikos fans behind the other. Then there were us—the neutral fans and the families—and on the opposite side, there was only security.
I had never seen anything like it in my life. During the game, they were shooting flare guns over the court, back and forth at each other. I believe Olympiacos won that game. Dorsey hit a big three at the end to steal it, and when they announced the winners, all hell broke loose.
People were running across the court and fighting, and I literally just stood in the stands and watched the entire thing. I stayed there for about an hour and a half after the game, just watching everything that was going on.
I had never seen anything like that in my life. I was shocked. My agent was living with me in Greece at the time, and we literally sat there in disbelief. People were getting hit with chairs, fighting with security, and throwing things back and forth. I just sat there and watched it. At the same time, though, it gave me some motivation to one day be part of such a heated rivalry”.
What he remembers about the game against Olympiacos in which he scored 41 points
” Honestly, it was an out-of-body experience. There were a lot of factors that I think many people don’t know about. December 6 is the day my high school coach passed away. For me to score 41 points on that day didn’t feel like a coincidence. I didn’t really know what I was feeling that day, but the energy was there.
I remember being in warm-ups. I have a pregame routine that I go through, and typically it takes me about 25 minutes to complete the entire routine. That day, I didn’t miss a single shot. It took me only 12 minutes to get through it, and after that, I didn’t even know what to do before the game because I was done so quickly.
Then, being out there and feeling the energy of the crowd… I usually got to the gym about three hours early, and there were already fans in the stands. It was the first time I had walked into the gym that early and seen so many people already there. There were so many factors in that game. As a team, we were ready, we were prepared, and the energy just flowed. They found me, I found them, and it just happened to be my day”.
About Panathinaikos’ last EuroLeague home win against Olympiacos was the game in which he scored 41 points
” They have to break the streak. It’s not about whether they can—they have to. Something has to change. Something has to happen. I don’t know what, and honestly, it doesn’t matter. They just need to win. Whatever it takes, Panathinaikos has to come out and fight for the entire game. You go out there and fight the entire game, but somehow you have to figure out a way to walk out victorious, by any means necessary. That’s a difficult situation to be in. I can only imagine how those fans feel, coming into OAKA game after game against Olympiacos and not winning. It doesn’t matter how they do it. They just need to do it”
Prime Tyrese Rice vs. Kendrick Nunn. Who wins?
” That’s a battle. He’s a competitor. He’s a talented, skilled player. I would have loved to play against him, and I would have loved to play with him. That’s a battle. I don’t know. I win some, he probably wins some. For me, it’s just about the fight. When you have two people who like to battle like that, some days you win and some days you lose”
About what basketball took away from him
” I’ve been through a lot of adversity in my life. I’ve had to handle a lot of things—not necessarily alone, but at that point in my maturation process, in those moments, I handled them alone. It’s not that I didn’t have support. Again, I had great support, a great family and great friends. But sometimes, as a man, you feel like you have to do a lot of things by yourself.
It took me a while to embrace vulnerability, and I don’t think I really began to do that until I got older. By “older,” I mean when I was approaching the back end of my career, probably two years before I was about to finish. I would say that it was in my thirties when I began to embrace vulnerability and seek the help that was necessary—the kind of help that can support you mentally, emotionally and spiritually, which ultimately helps you physically as well.That’s what basketball life can sometimes do to you, but also, as a man, those were some of the difficulties I went through”.
If he could talk to his 20-year-old self, what would he say
” Twenty years old… I would tell myself to take care of my family, continue to do the work and do right by people. I think the biggest thing would have been to tell myself to be myself—to fully be who I was. Because of what I dealt with early in my teenage years and during my early college years, I was very closed off from people and conversations. I wasn’t a very outgoing person at that time. I just put my head down and did what I knew how to do.
I think I would tell myself to embrace some of the people around me and trust my discernment, because I believe I had great discernment at that time. I just didn’t know how to use it. I would also tell myself to continue having fun with what I was doing. I feel like I always had fun with it, but it reached a point where it became a little too serious for me, and I put too much into it. So, I would tell myself to continue having fun and embrace the people around me”.