He was once a power forward for coach Greg Tynes at Clifford Scott High School where he was a teammate of then future George Washington University stars Mike Brown and Troy Webster before graduating in 1981.
Brown went on to an 11-year career in the NBA and Webster was a draft choice of the Nets.
And, even if his high school alma mater no longer exists since Scott merged with East Orange in the fall of 2001 to form East Orange Campus High School, Tony Jones is still going strong today both as a longtime, popular Science teacher and -when the 2026-2027 winter hoops seasons commences in December – as the 27th year head basketball coach at Montclair Kimberley Academy.
He has the current second-longest tenure of any hoops coach in Essex County. The ageless Sandy Pyonin of NJ Roadrunners AAU fame, has been guiding Golda Och (formerly Solomon Schechter) for more than 50 years, while right behind Jones in the Essex longevity chain are Eric McElroy at Verona and Shawn McCray at Newark Central who will be heading into their 25th and 21st seasons, respectively, later this coming fall.
While Jones continues to enjoy teaching and coaching at MKA, he’s also quite pleased with an extra nugget for his hoops squad this month as for the first time in four years he has just enough warm bodies around on most July evenings to have his Cougars together in summer basketball league action.
In fact, like its public-school neighbor Montclair, MKA is playing this summer in both the Bloomfield High School and Bloomfield College summer leagues.
Helping to make it all possible is the fact that MKA will return a legitimate ‘core-4’ of talented underclassmen from last winter’s 13-13 squad (7-5 in the Super Essex Conference-Freedom Division) which finished the season with gusto winning seven of its final nine games, while playing very competitive basketball with a number of seemingly superior teams.
“Our guys wanted to play a little more together after the school year ended, and while there are other commitments for our 2-sport kids, we’ve been fortunate to have enough players ready to go each night in the Bloomfield leagues,” said Jones, who was once an assistant to Chuck Colaiacovo at the old Essex Catholic High School. “We have a strong group which loves to play basketball and are willing to put in the extra work to keep improving both as an individual and as a team.
“We had some good performances last season, including beating a solid Glen Ridge team and playing well vs. a very talented Shabazz team in both of our conference games with them, and I am excited about what can continue to happen for our players next winter.”
Jones’ 2025-2026 MKA team was his youngest yet with no seniors on the roster and one which, whiles going through the inevitable growing pains in the SEC, kept competing at a high level and getting better overall.
“We were definitely young last season, but we have a bunch of good kids who came to practice ready to work and yearning to learn,” continued Jones. (335-299 in 26 seasons). “I still enjoy doing all of this, just as I did way back when I arrived at MKA in the fall of 2000, and a quarter century later I’m definitely older (63) but I hope wiser!”
He’s definitely has had a variety of players to work with through the years, some of whom have moved on to be successes as lawyers, doctors, teachers or in the investment and banking worlds, or as coaches themselves.
