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21 November 2025  5 min read

'A pillar of the community and inspiring' - BE's Darren Taylor on his inspiration Clive Allen

Prior to his current role, Taylor had been BE’s camp director for the Yorkshire Aspire region and North Super Region.

His resumé also includes heading up the University of York basketball programme (Men’s Tier 2 runners-up; Women’s first season in Tier 1) and clubs including York Vikings, York Eagles, and Leeds Demons, achieving multiple promotions and titles. 

A Level 2 coach (Level 3 in progress), he holds a BA (Hons) in Sports, Recreation & Development and serves as vice president of charity United Through Sport Mauritius, supporting their U17 national teams.

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Thirty years of my life have been dedicated to basketball because of Clive Allen.

Clive is from Dudley in the West Midlands and so am I.

Some of my first touch points of basketball were watching the Birmingham Bullets and Clive, so we cheered him on because he is one of our own.

I’m from a dual heritage background, my dad’s English and my mum’s Mauritian. She came over to work in the NHS as part of the Windrush Generation – albeit from the Indian Ocean as opposed to the Caribbean.

School was tough, there was a lot of racism and prejudice, so my parents took me to Mauritius to live for a year. I attended an international school where they had three basketball courts, which is where I learnt to play.

My father was denied a visa to stay in Mauritius long term, so we had to return to England and I went back to the same school.

BE RTM Darren Taylor as a 15-year-old prospect selected to play for the Birmingham Bullets

One of the best players in England

It was then, however, where my confidence and appetite for basketball started to grow. The PE teacher played for Bourneville, and he applied for the school to receive coaching from the Birmingham Bullets players once a week. That’s where I met Clive and we built a rapport.  

Eventually, trials for the Bullets’ junior team came up and Clive encouraged me to go for it.

Back then, there were only a handful of junior national league teams to play for in the county, so making the junior Bullets' squad confirmed that you were one of the best players for your age group in England.

Being community-minded Clive also wanted us to play community basketball too and we would go to Claughton Youth Centre to play some additional basketball and create a connection with the local people and amongst each other.

That time was quite surreal.

Every week I would be training at Claughton, and then on the weekends training with the Bullets and then sit in the bleachers at the National Indoor Arena with 5-6,000 other people and watch Clive, Tony Dorsey, Nigel Lloyd do their thing, with Nick Nurse shouting from the sidelines.

One thing I couldn't refute is how everybody loves Clive. He lights up every room he walks in.

Clive Allen (right) was Darren Taylor's (left) coach and mentor when he played for the Birmingham Bullets' junior squad

Career ending injury

Unfortunately, the game was ripped away from me at 17 after a freak accident. It was pretty much career ending. Confidence gone; psychologically gone.

After the injury, I found it hard to go back to Birmingham and Dudley, it felt like a missed opportunity.

But I still felt connected to basketball, so I ploughed on, doing a sport and development degree at Leeds University and playing in BUCS.

In the early years of my working career, I helped Dudley get 11 outdoor basketball courts installed as part of the Outdoor Basketball Initiative, which was a huge moment and it felt great to give back to my hometown.

After stints in Australia and America, I came back to Leeds and picked up coaching a newish team, Leeds Demons, who were playing in the Leeds and District Basketball League in West Yorkshire. It was that exposure of playing and coaching at local league level that helped me fill in the gaps of my coaching knowledge and spurred me on to do more of my coaching badges.

RTM Darren Taylor (middle, back to camera) reunites with Clive Allen at the NBA's 2025 Basketball Without Borders coaching clinic in Manchester

Full circle moment

This summer at the Nick Nurse coaching clinic at Basketball Without Borders was the first time I saw and spoke to Clive since I was a teenager.

It reminded me of how much I identified with him. He is a pillar of our community, knew his responsibility as a professional player and inspired us.

It’s like a domino effect. He inspired me and then I’ve gone onto run three clubs, making each a success, with 40-50 players playing week in, week out.

Also in Mauritius, for the last three years I have been developing players through the United Through Sport Charity. There is so much talent there and I want to connect with my roots and grow the game there too.

It would be great to know in 20 years’ time that my players had been inspired by basketball, and I had played a little part in shaping their lives.

My grandad always said to me, ‘it's not what you do for yourself, it's what you do for others’.

It’s a profound feeling that right now my role is to give talented young basketball players inspiration to be part of the sport long term, which is exactly what Clive did for me.

That's the full circle moment.

Thank you, Clive.

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