Most people think of Bob Harbison as a baseball coach thanks to the great success Nutley had during his 18 years in the Maroon Raiders’ dugout. In truth, Harbison’s greater passion came in the winter, coaching boys basketball.
“I always thought as a basketball coach you have a little more control of what happens. Baseball you don’t have that kind of control,” Harbison said, adding there was some additional freedom from coaching a team not under the top 20 microscope that his baseball teams often faced. “You can produce things on a basketball court that could flip the odds of winning and losing based on how you play the game and how you play together. There’s a lot more strategy and that’s a lot more that you can do (as a coach). I just found that a lot more interesting.”
After 26 seasons, Harbison decided the time had come for him to step away from the Nutley sideline. Harbison’s retirement became official following the conclusion of the Raiders’ season in the first round of the state tournament.
According to Harbison, he knew that this would be his last year before the start of the season.
“My buddy Phil Baccarella (the longtime baseball coach) from Bayonne, I remember him talking about when he retired, he said you just kind of know (when it’s time) and want to make sure you’ve given what you can,” said Harbison, who will also be retiring as a special education math teacher at Nutley High School. “And I thought that somebody else could probably give a little bit more at this point than I could.”
For Harbison, a 1984 graduate of Nutley, his coaching career started as an assistant basketball coach at Manchester Regional while he was still playing baseball at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He later coached as an assistant basketball coach for Bloomfield, Cedar Grove and Bayonne before becoming the head coach at Nutley in 1999.
Harbison later became Nutley’s head baseball coach from 2004 through 2022 and was also an assistant football coach through 2021.
While boys basketball never enjoyed the success of baseball, where he went 288-195 with a Greater Newark Tournament title and made six GNT finals, Harbison looks back fondly at the times Nutley held their own against the likes of Passaic, Paterson Eastside and Kennedy, and Montclair in the old, defunct Northern New Jersey Interscholastic League.
Nutley didn’t enjoy the same level of success when realignment led to the creation of the Super Essex Conference. However there were some memorable moments, including a run to the Round of 16 in the Essex County Tournament after defeating West Orange in 2019.
I can remember winning a game as Passaic around 2007 where I don’t think had any business beating. Or when we beat Montclair in a county game,” Harbison said. The battles we used to have with Don Bosco where you by like eight to a team with a couple of Division 1 kids. It was the battles in basketball, more than just the wins and losses.”
This past season was one of the more successful ones in recent years as Nutley went 15-11, including 10-4 in the SEC – National Division.It also won the Charlie Dolan Holiday Tournament in Kearny with a senior-heavy roster led by Jordan Small and Ryan Ibrahim.
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Jason Bernstein | Observer Sports Writer
Jason Bernstein joined The Observer as its sports writer in March 2022, following the retirement of Jim Hague. He has a wealth of sports-writing experience, including for NJ Advance Media (nj.com, The Jersey Journal, The Star-Ledger.)