Bowen now head coach in Nuggets' system

GRAND RAPIDS - The question came up to Ryan Bowen plenty of times during his career as an NBA assistant coach.
“People used to ask me all the time, ‘So, do you want to be a head coach? Is that what you're working toward?’” Bowen said. “And I would honestly tell them, ‘No, I'm happy being an assistant. I'm just trying to work my way up and kind of see where it takes me.’”
The thought, though, had crossed his mind in the last couple of years, Bowen said. And now he’s getting his chance.
Bowen was officially named last week as the head coach of the Grand Rapids Gold, an NBA G-League affiliate of the Denver Nuggets.
Bowen, a 1994 graduate of Fort Madison High School, had been a Nuggets’ assistant since 2015, winning an NBA title with the team in 2023. Now, he gets a chance to work from the head coach’s seat on the bench.
“It’s exciting. I'm looking forward to the opportunity,” Bowen said Tuesday. “It's not exactly how I  thought things were going to happen, in all honesty. But when it was presented to me, it was just a really exciting opportunity, and a new challenge, kind of the next step in my career.”
Bowen’s NBA coaching career began as an assistant with the Nuggets from 2011-13. He then was an assistant with the Sacramento Kings before moving back to the Nuggets.
Bowen was offered the opportunity with the Gold earlier this summer as the Nuggets reorganized their staff under new coach David Adelman.
Most G-League teams are close to their NBA parent teams. With the distance between Denver and Grand Rapids, Bowen said, the Nuggets want more cohesion between the two coaching staffs.
“What they really want to do is make it more together,” Bowen said. “If a guy goes there to play, let's make sure we have the same terminology. Make it a true minor-league system so guys can kind of freely go up and down without missing a beat. And I think my background with the Nuggets, working with David Adelman for as long as I had, I think it was kind of one of those easy transitions, that I could be a person that can kind of bridge that gap maybe a little better than we had in past years.”
Bowen said he has learned plenty from working as an assistant under coaches like George Karl and Michael Malone, and with other assistants who have gone on to head coaching jobs. Still, he said, he’ll get a chance to put his personal touch on the team.
“We have three two-way players that are actually Denver players that go back and forth a lot,” Bowen said. “So if one of our players is down playing a game with me, and the next night someone gets hurt with the Nuggets, and he has to play in a game in Denver, he needs to know the terminology. Obviously things will be a little bit different, and I'll be able to put my own stamp on things. But for the most part, it's, it's trying to do it as similar as possible to what we do in Denver.” 
Bowen’s lone head coaching experience came with the Nuggets’ NBA Summer League team three seasons ago.
“Like I said, the head coaching aspect is something I hadn't thought a whole lot about until the last couple years,” he said. “In honesty, there were a couple things that came up this year that got my wheels spinning on being a head coach, and I'm thinking about it. So when this opportunity came up, I'm like, ‘Hey, let's do this.’ And so at least from now on, I can say I have head coaching experience, so that won't be something that I need to check a box down the road.”
The move is the latest step in the long basketball career for Bowen. He was a four-year starter at Iowa before beginning a professional career from 1998-2019 that included NBA stops with the Nuggets, Houston Rockets, New Orleans Hornets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. He also played for three different teams overseas.
Bowen was on Fran McCaffery’s staff at Iowa for a little more than a season as video coordinator before taking the job with the Nuggets in 2011.
Bowen said the opportunity to help players make it to the top level of basketball was also a draw to the job.
“There are a lot of guys that decide to go to Europe and make their money and play that way, but there are a lot of guys that stick around and they want to play in the NBA,” he said. “They want their chance in the NBA and if we can give a kid that opportunity, I think that's the greatest thing that the G-League can do.
“I'll look at our success more so in terms of that, our growth as opposed to wins and losses, because that's what the name of the game is in the minor leagues. Maybe I’ll get to see a guy in a couple of years and I’ll be like, ‘I had that guy when he was scratching, plugging away, trying to get to the NBA, and look at him now.’ Those are the kinds of things I’m really looking forward to.”