Justin Gainey swelled with pride when Rick Barnes joked that he would fire him to get his son Jordan out of the transfer portal.
For the Tennessee associate head coach, it was validation and the culmination of a basketball journey he had both been a part of as a father and had to watch from a distance as a coach.
Being the son of a major college basketball coach gave Jordan Gainey few opportunities to cement himself in one place for long. The 6-foot-3 guard played at three different high schools across three states and never played for the same AAU team for more than two years.
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Jordan initially signed with Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona coming out of South Kent School in Connecticut but opted instead for a postgraduate year. Then he held one offer from USC Upstate.
He spent the next two years in Spartanburg, South Carolina where he started 58 of 61 games and scored in double figures 49 times, totaling 929 career points. Jordan entered the transfer portal on April 4 and Barnes wanted him.
He committed to Tennessee two weeks later.
“It made me feel good just because of his journey, his story,” Justin Gainey said. “In large part, because of me, we moved around a lot...his path was different. Coming out (of high school), he didn’t really have anything. He went to prep school and really had maybe one situation where it was committable. He went there and made the most of it. Now, to see him get to the point where somebody like a coach (Rick) Barnes at Tennessee valued what he did in his game, as a dad, that feels great. As a coach in the business and a dad, it amplifies it. It’s amazing. It made me feel really good.”
Jordan maintained those visions of playing at a higher level of basketball before his days at USC Upstate. That was always the goal, even coming out of high school.
“Just being able to play at a higher level is just amazing,” Jordan Gainey said. "Playing at a school like (Tennessee) is just a dream come true. Definitely, it was always on my mind just to be able to play at a school like this and an atmosphere like this.”
Tennessee wasn't the only offer Jordan had.
A number of high profile programs reached out to the 2023 All-Big South First Team selection, who averaged 14.6 points and 42.8% shooting in two seasons with the Spartans.
Naturally, the son leaned on his father in the process with Justin offering both support and advice as the calls came in almost daily.
Arizona, where Justin was an assistant coach under head coach Sean Miller from 2018-20 was among the offers, as was NC State where he was a point guard in the early 2000s.
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Justin wanted Jordan to weigh all of his options and not make an immediate jump to Tennessee because he was coaching there. It also gave him new insight into the process of recruiting the transfer portal.
“It made me reevaluate what I do as a coach,” Justin Gainey said. “It was nuts, man. I mean, my phone was blowing up, his phone was going crazy (with) schools from every league. It wasn’t a no brainer out of the gate. I think some people might have thought that, but he had some really good interests and I thought some guys did a really good job recruiting him. I just think that coach Barnes really connected with him, really showed him his vision for him and the passion of ‘hey, we want you here’ and ‘we’ll fire your dad if I have to.’ (Barnes) worked mom, too. All of that played into it. It wasn’t ‘Hey, I’m jumping in the portal so I can come to Tennessee.’ It was never that. And I wouldn’t have let him do it.
"I wanted him to kind of get a feel for everything and also get a feel for different situations and look at different programs because I never wanted him to come back and say, ‘I did it because of you.’ I never wanted that.”
Barnes gives the assist to Lamonte Turner and Jordan Bowden in getting Jordan to Knoxville.
The two former Vols, who were a part of Tennessee's 2019 Sweet 16 run, shot around with Jordan in previous off-seasons while he was at USC Upstate and were the first to tell Barnes about how valuable of a player he could be.
"The fact of the matter is, I think our two best recruiters there were Lamonte Turner and Jordan Bowden," Barnes said. "They said if he ever does go into the portal, he’s a guy that you would want in your program. They were absolutely right about it. He had options. He could have gone to Arizona or NC State, a lot of different places. He was a target right from the beginning, no question. That was something from a coaching staff standpoint, we knew we wanted him to be a part of our program.”
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"(Turner and Bowden) taught me a lot of things," Jordan Gainey added. "Playing one-on-one and all kinds of stuff with them and just really soaking up what they had to say and really being able to pick up what they said and put it on the court has been great.”
Now Jordan is fitting in with Tennessee's current players.
A veteran-laden roster that includes the Vols' top scorer from last season in Santiago Vescovi and Josiah-Jordan James who is entering his fifth season in the program has helped him improve since joining the team in May.
That improvement was evident in Italy where Tennessee played three exhibition games in August. Jordan averaged 12.7 points and played more minutes than any other player.
“(The veteran players) have helped a lot,” Jordan Gainey said. “Especially (Vescovi) just being able to control the offense and do certain things, certain tricks on the offense to get off good shots. He’s been teaching me alot. The same with (James), he’s been teaching me incredible things throughout my time here. Just being able to pick it up has been amazing.”
Aside from his father, Jordan had already formed a bond with guard Zakai Zeigler. The two worked out together before Jordan arrived at Tennessee and it has carried over into a friendship outside of basketball that was helped along by the Italy trip.
"I feel like that Italy trip helped a lot," Zeigler said. "Me and Jordan, we hang out off the court a lot. That's my guy. Once I see him out there on the court, he's just going. He's a really good shooter. He can handle the ball, he can get to the basket. He's a really good player."
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Jordan's dreams of playing at the highest level of college basketball have come true and so has his father's.
Justin never wanted to force the game on Jordan. He wanted it to come natural, which meant watching from the stands when he was a kid. But Justin admits he was envious when he saw other fathers coaching their sons.
Following two separate journeys that have covered six states, five conferences and more than 10 teams, they now have the opportunity at Tennessee.
“It’s been good. It’s been really cool. Initially I had anxiety about how it would be because I’ve never formally coached (Jordan),” Justin Gainey said. “I never wanted to be that parent that just wanted it more than him as he was growing up. When he asked me, we would work out and we would get pretty serious about it, but to this level, never really had that chance to coach him. So, for me, it’s been great. It’s been like a dream come true. I’ve always, when he was growing up, wanted that opportunity. I’d see the other parents with their 10-year-old, 11-year-old, getting to coach (and thinking), ‘man, I wish I could do that. I wish I had time to do it. I wish the rules allowed me to do it.’ It’s been like a dream come true. It’s been great.”
“We’ve been able to have our two minds come together and really connect on the court," Jordan Gainey added. "Our roles go together well, I think. It’s just been amazing.”
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