Alex Compton

Alexander M. Compton (born March 16, 1974) is a Philippine-born American retired basketball player and coach. He also served as the head coach of the Alaska Aces of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA).

Early life and college career

Born in Makati in the Philippines, Compton and his family spent a year in northeastern Thailand when he was ten years old. His parents, both Southeast Asian Studies scholars, were researchers there.

Compton moved to Madison from Ithaca, New York in 1988, when his parents began working at the University of Wisconsin. He was a starting guard on the 1992 Madison West High School basketball squad. There he helped lead the school's only state championship team since 1945. In recognition of his prep basketball career, he was inducted into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2023. After high school, he played for St. Joseph's University and Cornell University.

Although Compton dreamed of playing in a foreign league, he had no clue how to get into one until his junior year at Cornell.

Playing career

Compton played four seasons in the defunct Metropolitan Basketball Association with the Manila Metrostars and the Batangas Blades. However, he still could not play in the PBA due to the league's eligibility rules, which do not allow naturalized Filipino citizens to play. Instead, he appeared on television as a basketball analyst, but was finally allowed to play for a short period of time for the Welcoat Dragons in the PBA. He led the Jewels to its only PBL crown in the 2005 PBL Open Championship.

Coaching career

Being an assistant In the 2006–07 PBA Philippine Cup, Compton was hired as one of the assistant coaches of the Dragons before being allowed by the PBA to play as the team's second import for the 2007 and 2008 PBA Fiesta Conference, his only PBA appearance as a player.

After the Powerade franchise was sold to GlobalPort, he became an assistant to Luigi Trillo of Alaska. He helped the squad win the 2013 PBA Commissioner's Cup, their 14th title and the first in the post-Tim Cone era. During this time, he also received offers to become the head coach for the Ateneo Blue Eagles and the GlobalPort Batang Pier.

Alaska Two games into the 2014 PBA Governors' Cup, Compton was appointed the head coach of Alaska Aces, replacing Luigi Trillo. In his first head coaching stint, he led the Aces to the semi-finals, losing to Rain or Shine in full five games.

In the following season, Compton together with his former coach at Metrostars Louie Alas, the team abandoned triangle offense in favor of fast paced offense with combination of full court press defensive system. Those are used because the utilization of guards in the bench rotation, plus citing innovation at international scene. Also, the hybrid system got positive reaction from the players, especially from their star Calvin Abueva.

With the hybrid system is played, it helped them to steer the Aces to the 2014–15 Philippine Cup finals where he went up against coach Leo Austria, who had been his head coach when they were still with Welcoat. Alaska went on to lose to the San Miguel Beermen in seven hard-fought games. He then got to coach the South All-Stars during the 2015 All-Star Weekend. He also guided the Aces to the 2015 Governors' Cup finals only to be swept by the Beermen in four games. In a rematch of the previous season's Philippine Cup finals, the Beermen once again beat the Alaska Aces in 7 games, completing the Beermen's historic comeback from down 0–3 to win the series. Alaska returned to the finals once again in the 2015 Commissioner's Cup, where they lost 4–2 to Rain or Shine.

In 2018, Compton led Alaska to another finals appearance, where they lost to the Magnolia Hotshots.

National team In 2015, Compton was invited by Philippines men's national basketball team head coach Tab Baldwin to be one of his coaching staff as assistant coach. He helped the national team to win two silver medals from 2015 William Jones Cup and 2015 FIBA Asia Championship respectively.

Compton officially returned to the program in early 2020. In October of that year, he left the program, returning to the US to be with family.

Career statistics

College

Head coaching record

Professional

Commentary Compton started being a color commentator in PBA on NBN/IBC. He was notably did it in 2005 for UAAP Basketball coverages of ABS-CBN Sports with Sev Sarmenta. After that, he also served as a color commentator for PBA coverages in 2009 for Solar TV and returned to commentary in 2016 PBA Governors' Cup Finals on TV5. In 2019, he was a commentator for PBA Rush.

Personal life

Compton is currently married to a Filipina, model Michelle Astudillo. They have two sons and a daughter. As of 2025, Compton is based in Wisconsin and is now a book author writing self-help books for parents who have sports-inclined children.

Compton is fluent in Filipino. He also appeared on Coffee Mate commercials in early 2000s, where he has some Tagalog lines.