While baseball and soccer dominated the interest of many kids in Laredo, Texas, basketball took over as his top interest when his family moved to start middle school.

A little more than 35 years later, Canales entered the Dee Events Center wearing a black hat with purple trimmings and a hoodie with a large, white Go W logo on the front.

Handling a few items of business while briefly away from a recruit visiting campus, he sat next to empty chairs with signed basketball jerseys draped over the backs. Among them, a Dallas Mavericks throwback from Dirk Nowitzki and a custom, red Portland Trail Blazers top the organization had gifted him — soon to be decor on currently bare walls.

One whiteboard held clues to basketball philosophies and another names, the makings of a roster.

Photos supplied, Kaleb Canales

Canales is in his office; the placard next to the door signifies the possession. He’s a Division I head coach, Weber State’s 11th. It’s not a job Canales expected to have, or a path he foresaw, but it recently and quickly became his desired destination, one that made too much sense.

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Perhaps limited facilities once kept Canales from a wholesale commitment to basketball.

“My elementary, we had a playground with two courts but no rims,” he recalled. “I’d always ask the PE coach, ‘Where are the rims?’ Just a wooden backboard on two ends. I’d grab that red kickball and shoot it at a pretend rim.”

When his family moved across town in sixth grade, it set Canales on a path that made basketball his life.

“I made the sixth-grade team and I fell in love with the game, and it hasn’t stopped,” he said.

Matt York, Associated Press

Canales loved to hoop and thought he was pretty good at it, putting together, in his estimation, a good high school career.

“I thought I was the best player ever. I was delusional, like, ‘I’m really good,'” he laughed.

Then came one summer in the mid-’90s.

“We’re in this random tournament — a good tournament, but not one of the elite ones. I’m in the corner and I look at the other players on the floor, and I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m the worst player on the floor right now,'” Canales said. “People don’t see how good you have to be to play in college. Division I, Division II — any next level you have to play in is very difficult. There’s a lot of talent, a lot of grit that goes into it.

“So I just told myself I’d enjoy my senior year, have fun with it and just play.”

Rick Bowmer, Associated Press

After one year at Laredo College, his best friend — someone who was a threat to score 30 points on any night, he says — got a recruiting visit lined up at UT Arlington.

Canales, ever thinking about the next step to keep basketball in his life, went along merely to support his friend. When he got there, head coach Eddie McCarter and assistant Scott Cross told him the Mavericks needed a new student manager next season. Would he want to do that, perhaps?

“I didn’t know what it meant or what the job description was, but I said yes. I was all-in. So I registered for class,” Canales said.

That eventually made Canales a UT Arlington alum. (Coincidentally, with Joe Cravens, he’s now the second WSU head coach to graduate from Arlington.)

He got a teaching position in Texas and coached high school basketball for two years while starting his master’s degree in sports leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University, feeding his dream to one day work on an NBA bench.

Then he got a call: McCarter needed an assistant coach to join him and Cross. Canales again said yes. The Mavericks then won their first Division I conference title, sharing the Southland championship in 2004 with Canales back at his alma mater.

But the young coach had been studying how a guy like him, who didn’t play college basketball, could break into the Association. Poring over any printed team directories he could get his hands on, he concluded his next step was the video room.

“I was like, ‘I can do that. I can work hard and figure that out,'” Canales said. “I started applying, old-school writing letters, and got a couple interviews.”

The Miami Heat, who had Erik Spoelstra making himself into a superstar in their video room, said no. But the Portland Trail Blazers said yes and Canales had his first shot: an unpaid video coordinator, working as an intern for college credit to finish his master’s degree.

“I was a high school teacher making like $35,000, then my first year in college I made $13,000, then I went to zero as an intern,” he recounted. “My parents were like, ‘You went from 35 to zero in two years, and it’s better?’ And I was like, ‘It’s way better.'”

Canales turned that opportunity into his dream.

Over 10 years, he held every position you could on an NBA support and coaching staff: video intern, assistant video coordinator, head of video, player development coach, assistant coach and then, for 23 games in 2012, interim head coach — the first of Hispanic or Latino heritage to be an NBA head coach.

“I’ve been so blessed, man. The people that have influenced me, the people that I have encountered in my life, I know God’s put them there for special reasons. It’s very humbling and it’s awesome,” Canales told The Oregonian in 2012. “It’s something that I’ve always prayed and dreamed about doing. This truly is a blessing.”

Portland wanted to come out of the lockout-shortened year with a new head coach, a process that stretched through the summer because the Blazers were also hiring a new general manager. In the meantime, Canales was tasked with coaching the Blazers in NBA Summer League.

His point guard that summer: Damian Lillard.

Canales was one of two finalists to be Portland’s permanent head coach but the job went to the other, Terry Stotts. Canales remained on the Blazers’ bench for Lillard’s Rookie of the Year campaign, then spread his wings by switching spots with Stotts to work for Rick Carlisle in Dallas.

After five seasons with the NBA Mavericks, Canales went to the Knicks for two years and the Pacers for one.

Then, his old friend had a job.

Canales and Cross have been close since the former was a student manager at Arlington all those years ago. Cross was entering his fifth season as head coach at Troy and needed a veteran coaching presence.

“We’d always talked about getting back together,” Canales said. “I didn’t know if I was going to bring him to the NBA or he was going to bring me to college but … we’d always wanted to.”

Just as chance that developed, though, so did another: his former team in Dallas had a job as associate head coach of their G League team, the Texas Legends. As it turned out, Canales and his wife, Cristie, had put down roots in Frisco, Texas.

“Our practice and our games were 10 minutes from our house, so I could drop off my kids and pick them up for school. Just a great family situation, so I had to tell Scott Cross I couldn’t come. And he understood,” Canales remembered.

Two years later, though, Cross called it in.

“This last year he was like, ‘I’m bringing you here, and you can’t tell me no this time,'” he said.

Back on a college bench for the first time in 21 years, this time as associate head coach, Canales felt at home and felt productive. In his estimation, never has college basketball looked as much like the NBA in terms of play style, schemes, and even the ages of the players.

Just like he’d done at Arlington, Cross built Troy into a yearly contender and, after sharing the Sun Belt title in 2025, the Trojans won the league outright this season — the program’s first outright title in the conference and first overall since 2004.

The veteran Cross got his big call-up to Georgia Tech, taking over the Atlanta program that was a regular factor in the 2000s but is now five years since its last winning season. Canales was all-in, excited even, about going with Cross and continuing as an associate head coach in the ACC. Troy also had interest in perhaps promoting him to take over the Trojans.

Except he’d heard of something else, one opening that really spoke to him.

Weber State, an easy drive from Salt Lake City where he’d visited so many times over 18 NBA seasons, was making a change at head coach — yes, the program that produced the stellar rookie he’d coached in Portland 14 years ago. Canales wasn’t seeking any head coaching jobs this spring, but he felt he needed to get in the mix at Weber.

“Dame played here, so I’ve kind of watched some games over the years and was familiar with some players,” Canales said. “I’m a big believer in fit and it’s got to align. It felt like (Weber) was where I wanted to be.”

One of seven to get a video-call interview, Canales kept in touch with Cross and athletic directors at both Troy and Georgia Tech.

“(Cross) said he’ll wait for me and wanted me to go all-in on Weber, and see what happened,” Canales said. “He knew I was ready to be a head coach.”

Part of his pitch to Weber State was that there’s no better coach to handle the new, fluid era of college sports than someone who knows constant change. Whether in the NBA or the G League, rosters are always changing — sometimes daily, when a key staple to your G League lineup gets called back to the parent club on a moment’s notice, for example.

Among a group of college assistants with ties to Utah, Canales got the nod in the end.

So he’s replaced his NBA dream with another: bring a mid-major program at one dot in the West back to its highest heights. Not only that, but put down roots and make a place where he and his family can stay.

“Just a phenomenal basketball opportunity,” Canales said. “There’s a rich history here. Weber has won, and won big. I know they haven’t won big recently but I know if we bring in the right student-athletes, we can get the Purple Palace rocking again.

“I believe in our vision and our plan. We’re going to have a standard of excellence, and I believe in the work we’ll put in. It’s going to be a lot of work; it’s a challenge for sure. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m so excited about it.”