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| KCC Jeon Chang-jin and new director Lee Sang-min. Photo courtesy =KBL |
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| Lee Sang-min (left) and Lee Kyu-sup as Seoul Samsung coach-coach. Photo courtesy =KBL |
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Men's professional basketball Busan KCC will start anew with Lee Sang-min system.
According to Sports Chosun's report on the 18th, KCC will complete the formation of a new coaching staff focusing on Lee Sang-min (52) and Lee Kyu-sup (48) as head coach Jeon Chang-jin ends his term in late May and officially announce it on the 19th. In addition, coach Shin Myung-ho (42), who assisted former coach Kang Yang-taek, will also remain in office and join the Lee Sang-min Division.
As a result, Jeon, who has led KCC since the 2019-2020 season, will drop the baton after winning the regular league for the first time in five seasons (2020-2021) and becoming the champion of the first regular fifth-ranked team in the Korean Basketball League (2023-2024 season).
The new coach Lee Sang-min will be in charge of reviving the prowess of the 'defending champion', who ended the 2024-2025 season in ninth place. He returned to KCC in June 2023 with 'Second Coach' and became a big topic. Coach Lee is the most popular star in basketball that has led to the original 'Oppa Unit' boom, and he was a leading KCC franchise player from 1995 to 2007 as a member of Hyundai Electronics (the predecessor of KCC).
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| Lee Sang-min, KCC's new director. Photo courtesy =KBL |
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Lee Sang-min hoped to retire from KCC, but when the free agent market opened after the 2006-2007 season, KCC moved to Samsung as a compensation player in the process of recruiting Seo Jang-hoon (then Seoul Samsung). The KCC club permanently retired Lee Sang-min's number '11', and Lee Sang-min retired from active duty after playing for Samsung for three more seasons from the 2009-2010 season.
After two years of training as a U.S. leader, Lee began his leadership career as a Samsung coach (2012-2014) and took over as an official manager of Samsung from the 2014-2015 season. He led Samsung for nearly eight seasons until January 2022 and succeeded in rebuilding the team that had fallen into a weak position in the early days of his inauguration, leading the semifinal playoff (2015-2016 season) and the championship game (2016-2017 season).
However, since then, Samsung in professional basketball has also declined along with the atmosphere of reducing support for Samsung-affiliated professional sports teams (including Suwon Samsung and Samsung Lions in professional baseball). In the meantime, coach Lee resigned on January 26, 2022, in the middle of the 2021-2022 season, taking responsibility for Cheon Ki-beom's drunk driving incident.
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| Commentator Lee Kyu-sup. Photo courtesy =KBL |
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| 신명호 코치. Photo courtesy =KBL |
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Now, coach Lee has returned to the coach after 16 years from his original former team KCC and has been promoted to the coach in two years, starting his `second leader life.' Coach Lee recruited basketball commentator Lee Kyu-sup, who had been in Samsung with the appointment of the coach, as the head coach. Head coach Lee has been a coach since 2014 when Lee led Samsung, and after Lee resigned after being promoted to head coach in 2017, he left Samsung and turned into a commentator after completing the remaining 2021-2022 season as an acting coach.
He joined Lee as a "best junior" when he recorded three consecutive successful seasons (2 championship matches and 1 semi-final PO) while playing his last three seasons at Samsung. The head coach, who joined Samsung in 2000 and retired in 2013, also worked as an acting coach and manager at Samsung, making it the first time in his life to change his team. Attention is focusing on what synergy effect the 'e-e-e' combination, which is in sync again at KCC, will produce.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
