The other thing I know about Pat Riley is that he’s very, very demanding. I’ve never been to one of his practices, but I’ve talked to Dick Harter a lot about him. Dick coached with him in New York, and he said guys would walk into camp a little overweight, and by the time Riley was done with them in one month’s time, they’re thin. Dick says he works them really hard in practice. If somebody was hurt and couldn’t practice, they were expected to spend the whole workout on the exercise bike, which isn’t much of a break, especially the way Riley expected you to ride that thing. I’m sure some of his players get tired of all those tough practices, but if you notice, he hardly ever yells at his players during a game. It’s rare that you’ll see him get mad at one of his guys on the sidelines. My guess is he takes care of that stuff in practice.
As much as I respect Pat Riley, I never have really talked to him. I don’t like it when coaches go out before a game and start acting like it’s some kind of social hour. I can tell he doesn’t like it either. Besides, to me Pat Riley will always be a Laker, and I’m sure to him I’ll always be a Celtic. And the two don’t mix.
I don’t need to talk to Pat Riley about coaching. I see what goes on out there, and so does he. Besides, our styles are very different. From what I understand, Pat Riley is famous for his halftime speeches. People tell me he’s kicked trash cans and punched blackboards, but not before he’s checked those trash cans before the game to make sure there aren’t rocks in them. That’s not something I’ve done—at least not yet. I remember once when I was with the Celtics, we were playing like crap, and Jimmy Rodgers was our coach, and we got into the locker room at halftime and he was mad. He was so mad he hit the blackboard and shattered it. It was hilarious. I’m sure it wasn’t supposed to be, but I had trouble looking up at him, because I knew he was mad, and I was trying not to laugh about this blackboard he had just destroyed.
There aren’t very many good stories about me and my halftime speeches. I guess my feeling is if you go into the half of these games and your team is losing, you have to realize they aren’t going to play great every single time. So as long as they are giving me an effort and playing hard, I’m not going to go in there and go crazy on them. The way we do it is Rick starts off with his talk first on where the offense is going wrong, then Dick stands up and chews them out if they aren’t playing the kind of defense he wants, then I go in there and say, “Look, we’re playing bad. We’ve got a chance to win this game. If we all leave here tonight with a loss, we’re going to feel like idiots because we have an opportunity to win this game.” Some nights, that’s all you need to say. Other nights, you need to get a reaction from them, and that’s when I turn it up a little bit, to make sure what we’re doing wrong gets corrected. But I don’t overdo it. Too many times, coaches get all riled up at halftime and start screaming at these guys, and they spend the first five minutes of the third quarter recovering from that.
That’s no good. I’ve always felt that the third quarter is the key to the game. If you do it right, you can come out after halftime and change the whole complexion of the game. That’s also when conditioning starts kicking in. Well-conditioned teams start showing themselves in the third quarter.
To tell you the truth, I don’t worry much about other coaches. That’s not my game. My first season, when we played Chicago in the Eastern Conference Finals, people kept asking me about Phil Jackson. He was doing a lot of talking about how crafty I was as a player, stuff like that, trying to soften me up, I guess. We had to play a little cat and mouse with the officials in that series. We both took turns blasting the refs. I don’t really like to play those games, but sometimes you gotta look out for your team. I think some people were disappointed after the series that Jackson wouldn’t at least acknowledge that we had played them tough and given them all they could handle, but hey, they beat us. He doesn’t have to say any of that. I’m kind of glad he didn’t, because it will motivate my players in the future.
There’s been a lot of talk about Phil Jackson and his Zen and meditation, which all sounds like a bit much to me. You can get away with a lot of stuff when you’ve got the best player in the league on your team. But I really did feel for Phil Jackson. I can’t understand why his organization treated him the way they did, trying to kick him out the door. All the guy did was win for them, and they did him wrong. The thing that really got me was when I heard about Jerry Krause bringing in a draft prospect for a workout and not letting Phil know about it, because he hadn’t signed a new contract with them yet. That’s bull. I tell you what: if Donnie Walsh ever did that to me, I’d be outta there. Who needs that? And the pressure they put on Jackson was ridiculous. One thing I’ll give Phil credit for: he said he was going to quit at the end of the 1998 season, and that’s just what he did, even though he knew he could probably have almost any job he wanted.
People talk a lot about Chicago’s triangle offense, but the one thing the Bulls never got enough credit for was their defense. You’ve got Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, probably the best two defensive players in the league, and Dennis Rodman, who can hold his own by just playing his position all the time and not even thinking about scoring. What coach wouldn’t love having those three on the defensive end? As for the triangle offense, it’s great if you have the right players, which Chicago did, up until 1999. Take Jordan and Pippen out of the equation, though, and I’m not sure how effective it would be.
Next to Pat Riley, Cleveland coach Mike Fratello is one of the best I’ve seen. He would have been on the list of names I gave to the Celtics for their coaching job the summer they hired Rick Pitino, except I knew he was under contract and wasn’t really available.
My first season of coaching with Indiana we drew Cleveland in the first round of the playoffs, and I was really concerned, because they are so well coached. I was expecting a real dogfight, but although their star forward, Shawn Kemp, played well, our team was playing great at that point. One of the things Fratello’s teams do really well is flood off the weak side of the ball. All his teams, including the ones that Dominique Wilkins played for in Atlanta, did that. That’s fantastic. It takes a team that is committed defensively, and one that is well disciplined. Fratello is like Pat Riley in that his teams seem to score after every time-out. It drives me nuts. Plus, he’s always got his players moving exactly where he wants them to move. A lot of times he’s getting ready to isolate, or pick and roll, and he’s trying to string us out, and he does that better than anyone else in the league. It hurts us, because we’re not real quick, and when Rik Smits is out there trying to help the guards off the pick and roll, it’s hard for him to get back. That might create an opening for Cleveland center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who is one of the bright, bright young stars in the league, although he broke his foot last February and nobody was sure about his future.
There’s another characteristic that Fratello teams almost always have, and that is an ability to penetrate the defense, then kick the ball back out to the shooters at just the right time. I know he must spend a ton of time on it, because Cleveland executes that very well. I’ve taken some notes on it, in case I want to try to implement something like that myself. I study a lot of things Fratello does. I would not enjoy playing for him, because he’s a screamer, but that’s the only reason I wouldn’t want to play for him. As far as knowledge of the game is concerned, I have not seen any other coaches in the league, other than Riley, who have more than he does.
When people started talking to me about possibly being named Coach of the Year, I told them that if I won, it would be a joke. I meant that. Guys like Pat Riley and Mike Fratello can run circles around me. That’s where my assistants came in. I used my assistants a lot, so yeah, if you put the three of us together, we had a pretty good coaching team. But Coach of the Year is supposed to be an individual award, and that’s why giving it to me was a joke.
The person who should have won that award in 1998 was Jerry Sloan. I felt his Utah team was the best I had seen all year, hands down. Take a look at how Jerry Sloan does things. He runs about four plays a game, and has been doing that for ten years. So you think, “What’s so great about that?” I’ll tell you. Nobody seems to be able to stop those four plays. Sure, Sloan has Karl Malone and John Stockton on his team, but hey, he makes sure those other guys chip in too. Look at how much Sloan has helped Shandon Anderson. You post that kid up and he can’t be stopped, because Jerry Sloan makes sure he gets the ball in the right places.
There are some young coaches out there who I think are worth watching. I’m a fan of former New Jersey coach John Calipari. I really get a kick out of that guy. He’s a screamer too, but he got the Nets into the playoffs, and that’s worth something. I like him because he’s fiery, and his players always seem to play hard for him. I used to scout his college teams all the time, and you could tell they were well coached. It’s just like Pitino’s teams; they were always well prepared, and everyone knew where they were supposed to be. I’ve always liked coaches like that, who have their guys ready to go. People feel Cal screams too much, but that’s his style, that’s the way he coaches, that’s how he gets his players to play like they’re playing. He brought a lot of enthusiasm to New Jersey. He brought a lot of confidence there too.
Danny Ainge is another person I believe is going to be a great coach. We knew that from way back. He’s another guy who is just 100 percent consumed by the game, and I think as a coach, even more than a player, you really have to be that way. He’s got the energy, and he’s always got something to say. I remember when he was with the Celtics you could hand him a clipboard and he could draw up a play he ran in high school.
Danny is the head coach in Phoenix, and he got them playing that small ball really well. His team lost to San Antonio in the 1998 playoffs, and Danny took some criticism for not double-teaming Tim Duncan in certain situations, but I don’t think that’s fair. If you’ve got a game plan, you should stick to it. Duncan scored a bunch of times in a row out of the single coverage, and people were calling Danny stubborn, but I can relate to that. We don’t like to double down on teams either.
People said I couldn’t be a good head coach because ex-superstars don’t make good coaches. That doesn’t make any sense. I’m glad I was able to prove that wrong. Now it seems like other ex-players are thinking they want to try it. Someone told me Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wants to get into it. But the one that surprised me was Robert Parish. I never thought he’d be interested in doing this, but that’s what people said about me too. If Robert really wants to be a head coach, I would tell him, just like I would tell anybody, “Make sure you get yourself two good assistants, and do your research on the league.” It’s the little things that are major in this business. I made a lot of mistakes in my first season of coaching, but thank God I had two guys who knew what they were doing to help me through it.
I remember the first week I took the coaching job with Indiana. Chris Ford was quoted as saying, “Larry has no idea what he is getting into.” Chris was right. When you are a player, if you lose a game or have a bad night, you go home and forget about it. Coaches agonize over it until the next game. The first time I did that, I knew I was just like the rest of them.
On Coaching Philosophy
E
verybody asks me how I developed my coaching philosophy. Most of it comes from things I did as a player that worked for me. The most important thing, I always felt, was to develop good conditioning habits. If you couldn’t get yourself into shape, you had no chance of winning anything. I remember when our Celtics team was playing in the 1984 championship, somebody asked me if I ever got tired during a game. I said the only ones that I got tired in were the really big games, like against Philadelphia in a sixth or seventh game of the playoffs, because I used to get so hyped up and it took a lot out of me. And that was even before the game started!
But when it came to a regular game, I never got tired. The way the NBA has it worked out, you have so many time-outs, you should be able to run as hard as you possibly can, because you know another time-out is coming any second. There’s no excuse for any player to say he’s tired. One full game is only 48 minutes long, and nobody plays an entire game anymore. Besides, with all the extra television time-outs, you should be able to play two games.
My younger brother Eddie, who played at Indiana State, asked me once about conditioning. He said he was tired all the time. I told him that’s because he had never been in shape. He got mad and started telling me how he runs and lifts weights and all that, but I said, “No, you don’t have any idea what being in shape is.” The only time I ever felt any fatigue was in the first two minutes of a game. That’s right about when the second wind kicks in, and once that happens I could run forever. That’s one thing I’ve always felt very strongly about. If you take pro athletes and condition them well, they’ll stay away from most injuries, unless it’s just a freak thing. If you get them in top shape, they will play at a higher level. I think I proved that with the Pacers my first season, when they went from winning 39 games the year before to winning 58 games and almost making it to the Finals. Also, we made it through the season with very few major injuries. I think a big part of that has to be credited to our players, who worked their butts off to be in the best shape of their lives.
I had watched a lot of Pacers games the season before, and I knew something was wrong by the way they always seemed to fall apart down the stretch. It seemed to me their conditioning was off, but instead of just telling them that, I wanted to be able to show them how important it was to be in top shape. I wanted evidence.
Rick Carlisle and I put together charts of all their games from the year before. We took a closer look at the 39 games they had won, and realized there were actually 48 games in which they were ahead going into the final quarter. Then we broke it down, quarter by quarter. In the first quarter they were ahead by an average of six points, proving they were good starters. By halftime they were usually even. In the third quarter they would be up by an average of four points, yet by the time the fourth quarter was over, they had lost by an average of eight points a game. I saw that, and I got ticked off, because it just proved what I already knew: they should have been much better that previous season.