How celebrity basketball trainer went from getting rejected from high school jobs to coaching NBA superstars

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Chris Brickley was exactly like everyone else growing up – he aspired to make it big in the sports world. He's done exactly that, but it didn't quite go the way he envisioned.

The 38-year-old basketball trainer walked on at the University of Louisville in January 2008 in an effort to go pro. But once he realized playing wasn’t exactly in his long-term future, Brickley took up coaching, becoming a grad assistant with Ole Miss ("it was rough," the Manchester, N.H. native said), and then an assistant with Fairleigh Dickinson. 

After that, Brickley said he couldn’t even get a high school coaching job in New Jersey, but he "out of the blue" scored an internship with the New York Knicks.

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Chris Brickley says LeBron James has been working out with him for at least five years. (Chris Brickley)

While working at MSG, though, he got the promotion of a lifetime – after ignoring the very locker room he worked in.

Brickley says during the preseason, Carmelo Anthony missed a game-winning shot, and he was told not to talk to him after the game.

But he went against the grain, which he said "changed my life."

"I played basketball, I know what it’s like to miss that shot, so I just told him how I felt," Brickley said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital. "The next day, he went into the office, and he said ‘I want him to be my trainer.’"

"It happened that quickly," Brickley says, "but I guess that’s the power of a franchise player." 

Brickley says he owes "everything" to Anthony – "without him… I don’t know what would’ve been next." He also owes plenty to Phil Jackson. When he came on board,