Jack’s Blog

In the latest Sports Illustrated, there is a absolutely sensational article regarding the “Core Four” - four New York Yankees who entered the majors in 1995 and have played together and been largely responsible for the enormous success the Bronx Bombers have had since that time.

One of the four, Mariano Rivera (the other three are Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte), made some poignant comments in the piece after the quartet was asked which one of them young players should ask for financial advice.  Posada replied, “Mo.”

Rivera’s statements should serve as advice that should be heeded by every young professional athlete.  Before quoting Rivera’s sound counsel, allow me to introduce a prime example of someone who ought to be listening -and listening intently. 

Jerome James just concluded his NBA career - sitting in street clothes on the Chicago Bulls’ bench.  He was obtained by the Bulls in a trade between them and the New York Knicks, mainly because of his enormous contract.  NBA trades now are as much, if not more, about money than acquiring talent.  To oversimplify current trades, the money of the players switching teams has to somewhat balance.  When the Bulls unloaded Larry Hughes, he of the 5-year, $70 million contract, James had to be thrown into the deal, even though he had sustained a career-ending Achilles tendon injury and would not play a second in a Bulls uni.  This change of address couldn’t have been too surprising to James since in each of the past two years, he’d played in only two games during each one.  One reason he needn’t fret was the contract he’d been offered by Isiah Thomas - someone many guys in, and now out, of the league ought to keep on their Xmas card list.

James contract, which he was offered after showing brief flashes of ability in eleven games of the 2005 NBA Playoffs (to quote Jim Mora, “Playoffs???” - not an entire season, but playoffs!!!), was for 5 years and $30 million.  His salary for this season, in which he even never suited up, was $6,600,000.  “What economic downturn?” Jerome must have been thinking.

But now his career is over.  And now is the proper time to invoke the wise words of Mariano Rivera regarding the longevity of a professional athlete’s career: “I understand we do this in a period of time.  We cannot do this forever.  So whatever you make, you’ve got to take care of it.”

A brief break during this bit of wisdom to reflect on a recent story I heard about James’ modes of transportation.  One is a Maserati and the other is a Rolls Royce.  Admittedly, this is second hand information, i.e. I have not actually seen either of these two vehicles but, as is said by real journalists, it does come from a “very reliable source.”

Back to Rivera’s sage guidance: “I’m going to do whatever it takes to save the money that I have made, because I know that I’m not going to be working after that, or making the kind of money that we are making now.”

I don’t claim to have any idea how much money Jerome James has stashed away but I’d venture to say that a 34-year-old with both a Maserati and a Rolls, coupled with a contract that just ran out, might want to think about the old proverb that says:

“Money talks, but all it ever says is goodbye.”     Â

On last night’s Lakers-Bulls telecast, they showed the “retired jersey” of Phil Jackson in the rafters at the United Center.  As always is the case, mention was made of Phil winning all those rings but . . . how he always had great players.  First, Michael & Scottie, then Shaq & Kobe and then Kobe and the cast of characters from last year’s team (with the emphasis on Kobe). 

It seems Phil Jackson’s championships can’t be mentioned without someone bringing up the “Yeah, but he had great players” line.  While it is true, there have been many coaches with great players who have failed to win championships - at all levels (remember the Phi Slamma Jamma Houston Cougars of Guy Lewis)?  It takes more than just great players.  And the way championships are won differ with the different personalities of the coaches who lead those talented squads.

There’s Phil and his Zen approach.  Imagine getting NBA players to understand Zen, much less embrace it?  There was a story of how he tried it on one of his early championship Bulls’ teams.  He told the guys to sit quietly and close their eyes.  The legend goes that a few (or more) of the players peeked - and saw Michael Jordan sitting with his eyes closed - and that sealed the deal.  Moral: Get your best player to buy into your philosophy and the others fall right into line.

Doc Rivers coached a team put together by Danny Ainge (with help from his best friend, Kevin McHale) which initially had perennial all-star, but perennial also ran (as far as his team went), Paul Pierce.  Ainge added Ray Allen, one of the best shooters in NBA history (and in case you haven’t noticed, scoring is more important in basketball than any other team sport) and superstar, but also mired on a mediocre team, Kevin Garnett.

Doc knew he had an abundance of talent, but none of these guys had ever won.  He came up with the rallying cry/mantra, “Ubuntu” which (some thought meant “Help me, I’m in my contract year”), but actually, according to none other than Nelson Mandela, meant a concept made up of traits like unselfishness, caring and enabling others.  They rode it to a championship, to the point that when many of the Celtics were asked what their championship secret was, they claimed, “Ubuntu.”  That’s buying in.

Speaking of the Celtics, Red Auerbach had his run of championship after championship.  Bill Russell wound up with more rings than fingers.  What Red did was clever.  He made everybody else hate him, thus taking all the pressure off his guys.  It’s not like he had a bunch of slouches, but the shenanigans he pulled at the old Boston Garden (dead spots in the floor, turning up the heat in the visitor’s locker room, no hot water, and the piece de resistance - the victory cigar).  Plus, he did subtle things, like going to Big Russ and telling him not to pay attention when he yelled at him in practice, but if the rest of the players saw Russell getting an earful, they’d have no right to complain when Red jumped their cases.

The master of massaging egos (and in the NBA, there’s no shortage of that commodity) was the late Chuck Daly.  He took a team and gave it an image.  The “Bad Boys” aka the Detroit Pistons won back-to-back championships with nasty (dirty?) Bill Laimbeer; tough guy Rick Mahorn; bordering on lunatic, Dennis Rodman; if-you-need-a-score, call-me, Vinny Johnson; classy Joe Dumars (how did someone so respected, with so much class become a - vital - part of this team?) and Mr. Hidden Agenda, Isiah Thomas. 

I was working at the University of Toledo (less than an hour from Detroit) during those championship years and a little known fact is that the Pistons’ owner, Bill Davidson, made his early (and big) money in glass - and Toledo was known as the Glass Capital of the World.  We’d get choice seats (Mr. Davidson’s own - right behind the basket at the Pistons end of the floor) because there were many people in Toledo who were quite friendly with Mr. D. 

One of his confidantes told me a story that was not allowed to be leaked (so how did I find out)?  Mr. Davidson was so fond of Thomas that he pledged to him a million dollar bonus if the team won a championship.  Imagine what that kind of dissent that would have caused if it got out.

That’s how good Chuck Daly was.  Because he knew and, yet, had the ability to mold this apparent group of misfits into not one, but two championship teams.  His main strength was that he possessed so little ego.  Winning was his goal and he focused on working individually with each player on the team. 

Many people have said he knew how to handle players, but as Wilt Chamberlain told his new coach, Alex Hannum, when the coach said to the Big Dipper, “I heard you’re hard to handle.”

“You don’t handle people.  You handle animals,” said the player who caused more rule changes than any other in the history of the game.  Talk about making a statement early in a relationship.

When it comes to winning championships, sure, great players are needed, but as the late & great coach Chuck Daly (coach of the Original Dream Team - talk about egos!) said:

“It’s harder to take a group of really talented players and make them a championship team than it is to take a group of average guys and make them competitive.” 

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Chuck Daly, the Hall-of-Fame coach of the back-to-back NBA World Champion Detroit Pistons (aka the “Bad Boys”) and the coach of the 1992 Olympic Gold Medalists (aka the original “Dream Team”), died yesterday.  I had the honor of meeting Chuck during the 1972-73 season when he was the head coach at the University of Pennsylvania and I had just entered the world of intercollegiate coaching as a graduate assistant at the University of Vermont.  It was very brief encounter, so when I saw him the next time, I certainly didn’t expect him to remember me. 

The year was 1976 and the site was the campus of the college at which I was employed, Robert Morris College.  RMC also happened to be the home of “Five-Star West,” a summer basketball camp for high school kids who hoped to earn scholarships or, if they were good enough, intended to show the school they wanted to attend how good they were.  A major selling point for the camp was its famous list of guest speakers. 

One of the original Five-Star clinicians was Chuck Daly.  I was introduced to Chuck (again) and when he shook hands, I reminded him of our first meeting a few years back when I was working at the University of Vermont.  “Oh yeah, I remember, you were with Pete,” he said, referring to our head coach, Peter Salzberg.  I had just turned 28, Robert Morris College was my first full-time assistant job (after two years as a high school coach and four years as a grad assistant - at three colleges) and I had made such an impression on Chuck Daly that he remembered me!

All that sacrifice (especially on the monetary side - I had made a combined total of $8,200 - the past four years) was all paying off.  The truth of the matter was that Chuck was the head coach at Penn and, prior to being named head coach at UVM, Peter had been an assistant at Columbia, both schools being members of the Ivy League, at a time when all the coaches in a league knew, and usually were friendly with, all of the other coaches in the league.  Chuck knew Peter was the head coach at Vermont and made an educated guess.

But that was the beauty of Chuck Daly.  He made you feel as though he not only knew you, but that he was truly glad to know you.  In the late 1980’s, I was associate head coach at the University of Toledo, a 45 minute to an hour drive to Detroit.  Because Detroit was so close, and our head coach, Jay Eck, had previously worked at Bradley for one of Chuck’s assistants, Dick Versace, our TU staff used to make an annual trip to the Pistons’ training camp in Windsor, Ontario to watch their preseason workouts.

Every time I was in Chuck’s company, he would be engaging and always asked some kind of question to show an interest in what was going on in my life, e.g. “Did you guys have a good recruiting class?” or “Do you have a family?” or “How’s the MAC (our conference) look this year?”  He made you feel, without getting too psychological, like you mattered.

Whenever he was asked about his success in coaching, his answer was in general terms, not in what he did or strategies he invented or perfected.  One of his quotes regarding coaching in the NBA was, “The NBA is a “players” league.  The players allow you to coach them and when they stop allowing you to coach them, it’s time for you to move on.”

One incident I distinctly remember was a ritual the Pistons had.  It was their timed mile run.  The “mandatory” time  the players had was , I think, 5:00 for perimeter players (or guards) and 5:30 for the posts or (or big guys).  Some of their guys - Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas, Vinnie Johnson, John Salley, had no problem making the time, but Bill Laimbeer couldn’t come close - and didn’t seem too bothered by it.  One year we attended, the guards finished the run, and went back to run with the big guy, exhorting him on. 

Laimbeer was up to the challenge.  He really wanted to make that time.  So, . . . he cut across the track - and sprinted the last three steps.  His teammates cheered.  As everybody was heading back to the practice facilty, I happened to be walking behind their coaching staff and one of Chuck’s assistants seemed pretty upset about the physical condition Laimbeer was in and how he had just made a mockery out of a team drill.  Chuck looked at his lieutenant, smiled and said, “I’ll deal with Lam.”

Another of Chuck’s traits was he was the eternal pessimist.  Once asked why he wasn’t an optimist, his reply was “A pessimist is an optimist . . . with experience.”  Knowing how he always expected, or at least planned for, the worst, it was remarkable that he revealed (of course, it wasn’t until the Olympics were finished and they’d won the Gold) his goal for the Games: not to call a time out.  Asked if he ever considered wavering, he admitted there was an instance in one game when the opposition had cut the lead and he normally would have taken one to stop the momentum, but he said to himself something to the effect, “If I can’t win with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, John Stockton, David Robinson, . . . I have greater problems than can be fixed with a time out.”

The part of this blog that may upset many (although I know it wouldn’t upset Chuck - in fact I’m certain he’d be pleased with it) is ever since 1995 (when I started working for him), I’ve thought numerous times how alike Chuck Daly and Jerry Tarkanian are.

Both have amazing people skills, leaving those they meet feeling important.  Obviously, each was a huge winner throughout their respective careers.  Each one coached in a way that let the people they coached be themselves.  This is where all the anti-Tark’s will jump up and say, “Tark coached in college where there are rules and kids need to held accountable.”  There’s some validity to that.  Where Jerry was crucified for having Avondre Jones, he of samuri sword fame, on the team, Chuck wasn’t attached to any of Dennis Rodman’s craziness because Jones was a college kid, where Rodman was an adult.  Try saying that with a straight face.

My point is that the two of them each possessed the ability to connect with people in their profession, be they the players who performed for them, the other coaches in the sport or the fans.  The other similarity they shared is what my friend, mentor and former boss, George Raveling, used to say quite often:

“You can get a lot done in coaching if you don’t let your ego get in the way.”Â

There’s a story in my book, Life’s A Joke, in the chapter entitled, Humbling Experiences.  that happened during the one year I spent at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh, PA.  The gist of the story is that the year in question, 1976-77, was the first year of Robert Morris being in Division I.  Not only was that move difficult, but the year prior, RMC was a junior college!  This story about that transition begs the question, “Why?”

To make this incredible undertaking all the more difficult, we were an independent, i.e. no conference affliation and had to play something like 18 of our 26 games on the road.  Even our home games were played at three different sites - the band box on campus (which, if packed - something we never did get to see - and the fire marshall looked the other way, might have had a seating capacity of 1,000), the Beaver County Auditorium (a nice 4,000 seat facility about 20 minutes from campus) and the downtown Civic Arena (a 17,000 seat monstrosity where we played a couple games, including our home opener).

The one thing they did know at the Robert Morris was marketing.  Being in the Pittsburgh area, it was a real struggle for any kind of identity because 1) the Steelers, in their true glory days - Chuck Noll, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mean Joe Greene, Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert and Super Bowls - were there and their season didn’t usually end until January, followed by a minimum of two weeks of either celebration or postmortem; 2) the Pirates of “We Are Fam-i-ly,” led by Willie Stargell were fan favorites; 3) the Penguins were there for people wanting a hockey fix; 4) that year, they even had Team Tennis, an experiment that the locals seemed to think was more exciting than watching our Colonials play, and 5) add to the fact that we had to battle head-to-head on the college basketball level, Pitt (who won the National Championship in football in ‘76 behind Coach Johnny Majors and Tony Dorsett) and Duquesne, which was much more of a basketball power then than they are now (having boasted of players like SiHugo Green and Norm Nixon).

Well, we were opening the season at home against Delaware State (hey, who else could we get to open with?) in the Civic Arena and we made our entrance to the game (all media, naturally, alerted well in advance) in helicopters!  After we finished our warm ups, the guys came over to the bench and prepared for the pregame introductions.  First, Delaware State’s starters were announced - and then the big moment, announcing the starters for Robert Morris’ first game as a Division I squad (it had been a national powerhouse under legendary coach Gus Krop, one of the greatest human beings I ever had the pleasure of knowing, and who had just retired as coach but remained in his full time job as head of campus security).

The guy on the microphone screamed (before a crowd of about 800), “And now, the starters for . . . Phillip Morris!  I think this guy can say without a doubt, that tobacco was harmful to his health - and career.

The reason I am including this story in today’s blog is because Isiah Thomas, one of college basketball’s best ever point guards and voted one of professional basketball’s 50 greatest players, but someone who, recently, has been, as the saying goes, ridden hard and hung up wet, has faced humiliation once again.  His trials and tribulations date all the way back to being the leader of the Detroit Pistons’ Bad Boys, a big-time winner, but also the team who, after they were beaten by the Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson-led Chicago Bulls, refused to shake hands with the new champs - a scenario allegedly organized by “Zeke.”

This show of low (or no) class was followed by his aborted takeover of the CBA (the NBA’s “minor league”), only to be trumped by his being handed over the reins of the most storied franchise in the NBA (c’mon, I’m from Jersey) and totally ruining the entire organization - from making horrific personnel decisions, be they draft picks or giving Allan Houston a seven-year contract for a guaranteed zillion dollars and having him play just two years of it (don’t even mention “Starbury”) and losing as big as his college team at IU and the aforementioned Pistons won (a college National Championship and two NBA World Titles), to being sued for sexual harassment by a young, female employee of Madison Square Garden, to a botched (take your pick) suicide attempt or the home version “Throw Your Daughter Under the Bus.”

The final chapter of “go ahead, throw another pie of shaving cream in my face” may have happened at the press conference announcing his latest job (this guy must have some agent), being named the head basketball coach at Florida International University.  Vice President and Provost of FIU, Ronald Berkman, proudly standing in front of a crowd, composed of several hundred fans and media members, uttered the words that are bound to be replayed hundreds, if not thousands of times: “I’d like to personally welcome Isiah Thompson as the new FIU basketball coach.”  He would have done better if he had said, “And now, I’d like to present a man who needs no introduction,” and then sat down.

When it comes to the height (or depths) of being a charter member of the School of Total Humiliation, Isiah Thomas must feel like Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in Godfather II when he said:

“Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in!”   Â