The name on the door is the man teaching the class.
Most academies are named after a philosophy, or a franchise, or nobody at all. This one is named after the coach who's actually on the floor — and here's why he's there.
The player
Teddy Dupay put up numbers Florida had never seen. 3,744 career points — still the most any Florida high-school player has ever scored. A 1998 McDonald's All-American. A Final Four All-American at the University of Florida, on some of the best teams the program ever fielded. In 2026, the FHSAA put him in its Hall of Fame. He was, by any measure, one of the best to ever come out of this state.
The part that matters more
Here's the thing about a résumé like that: it means the coaching your kid gets is the real thing. Not drills copied off the internet. Not a college kid with a whistle filling a summer job. The footwork, the shooting, the reads, the confidence — it's coming from someone who did it at the highest level the game offers, and who has spent years since learning how to teach it, which is a different skill entirely.
Teddy's own path through the game wasn't a straight line — few real ones are. What he'll tell you is that basketball gave him everything, that he learned some lessons the hard way, and that coaching kids is how he pays the game back. That's not a slogan on a wall here. It's the reason the academy exists.
"Help kids." That's it. Not build a franchise, not chase trophies, not sell roster spots — help kids get better at basketball and, in the process, get better at showing up, working hard, and believing in themselves. Everything TDBA does runs through that.
Why downtown Tampa
Because every kid in this city deserves a real place to learn the game — not a rented gym an hour away for one Saturday a month, but a home floor with a real coach on it. TDBA sits in the historic Carlton Building at 302 W Kennedy Blvd, the only branded basketball-training facility in central Tampa. When a parent walks their kid in, the coach who greets them is the one on the sign.