ODDS and EVENS | Tomoya Higashino Brings Basketball Passion and Smarts to His New Job

After nearly a decade as the Japan Basketball Association's technical committee chair, Tomoya Higashino is embarking on a new challenge.

At the end of June 2025, Higashino left his position at the JBA after, according to his own official calculations, 3,330 days.

Tuesday, July 1 marked the start of the next chapter of Higashino's career in basketball. He is the new president and general manager of the B.League's Nagoya Diamond Dolphins. The team had a 35-25 record in the 2024-25 season, finishing in fourth place in the Central Conference.

"I feel a sense of responsibility for the future of the club, which is rooted in this region and has been supported for many years by the local community, fans and partner companies, and I feel a sense of responsibility for the future," Higashino, who turns 55 on September 9, said in a statement. 

He continued: "I am convinced that basketball is an extremely attractive sport that combines speed, strategy and teamwork, and that it has a very strong affinity with the vibrant city of Nagoya."

Higashino brings to Nagoya a wealth of experience from various basketball leadership roles over the past two-plus decades.

From 2004-06, for example, he was an assistant coach for the Japan men's national team, working under Croatian bench boss Zeljko Pavlicevic. And he led the JBL's Rera Kamuy from 2007-10.

He also led the bj-league's Hamamatsu Higashikawa Phoenix from 2013-15. With Higashino patrolling the sideline, the Phoenix won the league title in May 2015.

Those experiences ― along with several other coaching gigs since the early 1990s ― prepared him well as he began to put his stamp on the Japan Basketball Association's identity and the hallmarks of its national teams' play.

The Role of the Technical Committee Boss

In his position as the technical committee chair, Higashino was in charge of identifying and hiring coaching candidates for national teams. He was also an important voice in working with head coaches to make player selections for top tournaments.

Based on his experience and basketball acumen, the JBA's executive board relied on and trusted Higashino's decision-making ability.

His dedication to the job paid off.

"Simply put, the technical committee takes initiative to develop the competitive power of Japan's basketball," Higashino told reporters in September 2021. "Under the five pillars of 'promotion, discovery, development, training, and strengthening,' the personnel in charge work together to make improvements and accumulate know-how."

And he made some important coaching hires, paving the way for success for the men's and women's national teams.

Argentine Julio Lamas became the men's coach in April 2017. A well-respected coach in international basketball circles, he led his home country's squad to a fourth-place showing at the 2014 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

In January 2017, Tom Hovasse was promoted from assistant to women's national team head coach.

Both coaches raised the standard of play for the national teams.

Although the Japan men were winless at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, team-building tactics and Lamas' leadership during his tenure were important in planting the seeds for future accomplishments.

Most notably, Hovasse guided the Japan women to a silver medal at Tokyo 2020, the nation's best-ever result in a major international basketball competition.

Tomoya Higashino Reflects on His Former Job

Years ago, plenty of people were skeptical that the Japan Basketball Association was positioned to climb in relevance on the global scale. But Higashino embraced that challenge when he began his former job in May 2016.

He took the job during a period of transition for basketball, following years of infighting among Japan's stakeholders. It was, after all, less than two years after FIBA, basketball's world governing body, had suspended the JBA (in November 2014) for its failure to restructure based on FIBA's general statutes and to merge the bj-league and the NBL (the JBL's successor) before a deadline.

Looking back, Higashino recalled that he wanted to be at the center of the challenge: to overhaul JBA operations.

"Still, I believed that we had to aim for a higher standard — to align our everyday basketball culture with global expectations," Higashino wrote in a letter to friends and colleagues. "With this in mind, I led reforms focused on strengthening domestic players, identifying young talents abroad, raising the standards of youth development, and building sustainable systems for coaching education.

"The path was not always smooth. But together with passionate colleagues, I remained committed to moving Japanese basketball forward, one step at a time."

Noteworthy Accomplishments in the Higashino Era

For the JBA, there were four primary achievements during the years in which Higashino oversaw the technical committee.

Higashino outlined those feats in his farewell letter.

Looking back, I take great pride in the milestones we achieved together:

• The men's national team qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympics on their own merit through the [2023 Basketball] World Cup
• The women's team earning a silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
• The rapid rise of 3x3 basketball
• And the success of our youth national teams on the world stage

Pavlicevic's Perspective

In hiring Higashino to lead the technical committee, the JBA made a "good decision," according to Pavlicevic, a successful hoop mentor in the former Yugoslavia, Spain, Greece and elsewhere.

The Croatian coach said Higashino made the most of the opportunity to work for the Japan national team in the run-up to the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan.

He was "very systematic and serious and helped me a lot," Pavlicevic recalled in an interview with Odds and Evens. "In that time, I feel he started to prepare for top positions like head coach or top management. After a few years, the JBA picked him for the technical committee chief."

In Pavlicevic's assessment, Higashino did a "great job" in that role. He cited the Ishikawa Prefecture native making solid decisions in selecting big import players for the men's national squad (including Gavin Edwards, Nick Fazekas and Josh Hawkinson) and coaching hires.

Hovasse replaced Lamas as the men's team bench boss after the Tokyo Olympics and strengthened the team. 

And after Toru Onzuka's stint ended as the top coach of the women's squad, Higashino hired former WNBA title-winning head coach Corey Gaines in early 2025 to fill the vacancy. Gaines was on Hovasse's men's team staff at the 2023 Basketball World Cup and the Paris Olympics.

"Many young players developed due to the good sports policies of the JBA," Pavlicevic told me. "And the national team, season by season, is getting better."

Parting Thoughts from Tomoya Higashino

Since the 1976 Montreal Summer Games, the Japan men's team qualified only once as a non-host to compete in the Olympic basketball tournament. But the Paris Games are now in the rearview mirror.

So it's time to keep moving forward.

But Higashino, even as he stays busy in his new job with the Nagoya Diamond Dolphins, remains passionate about the future of Japan's national basketball landscape. It was never just about one tournament or one team for him.

"My vision has always remained the same: to make Japanese basketball strong, to make it mainstream, and to build an environment where everyone involved can pursue it with joy and passion," Higashino underscored in his letter to friends and colleagues. "That dream continues to guide me, even as I take on new roles."

He went on: "This transition also marks an opportunity for generational change and fresh ideas to take root within the JBA. I look forward to watching the next generation of players soar even higher — this time, from a step removed, but with the same heartfelt support.

"To everyone I met and worked with over these past nine years: thank you again from the bottom of my heart. I will forever be grateful for your trust and support. [And] I sincerely hope our paths will cross again — perhaps at a gym or arena somewhere down the line."

In 2011, he wrote an award-winning master's thesis at Waseda University on Argentine basketball, studying and researching everything about it. Years later, that project helped him outline how he wanted to improve Japanese basketball.

Tomoya Higashino's love of basketball and deep knowledge of the game were assets for the Japan Basketball Association. 

Expect the same to be true for the Nagoya Diamond Dolphins.

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• [ODDS and EVENS] Basketball World Cup Showed That Japan is Headed in the Right Direction
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Author: Ed Odeven

Find Ed on JAPAN Forward's dedicated website, SportsLook. Follow his [Japan Sports Notebook] on Sundays, [Odds and Evens] during the week, and X (formerly Twitter) ＠ed_odeven.