http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/2008-04-08-nba-assistants_N.htm


By Chris Colston, USA TODAY
ORLANDO — They should be sitting poolside somewhere reveling in their past glories, sunglasses perched on their noses, beginning conversations with the words, "Back in my day …"
Instead, in their subservient roles as NBA assistant coaches, former superstars Patrick Ewing, Bob McAdoo, Alex English and Adrian Dantley grip clipboards, stare at laptop screens and contend with the vagaries of pampered athletes.


FEEL THE PAIN: Magic's Howard among injured stars
As elite players unglamorously striving to become NBA head coaches for the first time, they're in select company. Of the league's 148 assistant coaches, only 13 are former NBA or ABA All-Stars.

With their high profiles, they don't need to be doing this. But each dreams of being a head coach. So on they toil, braving the league's 82-game grind, longer if their team make the playoffs.

And they actually seem to be enjoying themselves.

Still chasing a title

Ewing, 45, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a 1984 NCAA champion, an 11-time NBA All-Star and was voted one of the NBA's 50 greatest players. This week he was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. But today he's no more than the third option on the bench for the Orlando Magic, behind head coach Stan Van Gundy, who never played pro basketball, and veteran assistant Brendan Malone.

Ewing's dream of becoming a head coach comes as a bit of a surprise to even him. During his New York Knicks heyday, he says, he never considered a coaching future. His coach at Georgetown, John Thompson, didn't foresee Ewing's future, either. "But Patrick is so bright and works so hard," says Thompson, now an analyst for TNT. "If he sees himself as a head coach, I think he will do exceedingly well."

Unlike former Los Angeles Lakers Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a special assistant who does not travel with the Lakers and works primarily with the team's big men, Ewing is fully engaged with the Magic. "Patrick does everything we do," says Orlando assistant Steve Clifford. "The office work, the game-planning, the scouting, we break it up evenly."

As a player, Ewing mistakenly thought his coaches left the gym shortly after the players. Now he knows better.

"I have more free time than they do," Van Gundy says of his assistants.

Ewing presents the opponent's scouting report every fourth game. With video examples, he demonstrates how to defend the pick-and-roll or a center's favorite post move. He also hands out sheets analyzing players' tendencies. Drudgery? Not to Ewing.

"I'm still a young man," he says. "I could retire, but what would I do? I'd stay home and be the shuttle bus driver for my kids (daughters Randi, 11, and Corey, 7)."

Ewing did retire from coaching once, from the Houston Rockets in 2006, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. But he found he missed the game's competitive nature.

Now he's back, trying to accomplish what he never could in 17 years as a player: win an NBA title.

Avoiding bad situations

McAdoo, the 1975 league MVP with the Buffalo Braves, played for seven different teams and won two NBA titles with the Lakers before finishing his Hall of Fame career in Italy. But he's found a home in Miami, serving as a Heat assistant for 13 years. At 56, he hasn't given up on the idea of being a head coach. And because of the NBA's coaching turnover — since the beginning of the 2003-04 season, teams have made 49 head coaching changes — opportunities open with regularity.

The problem: Those are not always choice opportunities.

"If you get into a bad situation, it can follow you for a long time," McAdoo says. "Sure, you're not going to get a lot of perfect situations. Anybody who gets a head job, there's a reason why they're making a change. They're rebounding or they're down. You just don't want to get a situation that's totally impossible for you."

Basketball, really, is all McAdoo knows, so he can't imagine himself doing anything else. The toughest part of the job, he says, is being away from home. He and his wife, Patrizia, live in Miami with children Russell, Rasheeda and Ryan.

"You go on these 12-, 13-day trips. That's hard on a family," McAdoo says. "In the average household, the father is back by 6 or 7 p.m. eating dinner with everyone. But during the season, we're gone."

Do as I say, not as I did

As high-scoring players, McAdoo, Ewing, English and Dantley all demanded the ball, which can be discordant to team play. Now they must preach unselfishness.

Dantley played for seven different teams for 15 seasons, seven with the Utah Jazz, was a six-time All-Star and, like Ewing, this week was named a member of the Class of 2008 Hall of Fame. He led the NBA in scoring twice and ranks 18th on the league's all-time scoring list. But he also shot 54% from the field for his career and led the league in free throws made five times, so he says he has no problem preaching teamwork and shot selection. "That, I feel good about," he says. "People think I was a one-on-one player. But I never was a volume shooter."

Instead he struggles to preach the things with which he struggled: asking a defender to deny his man on the wing, or demanding somebody run hard at practice after playing 42 minutes the previous night.

In his fifth season as a Denver Nuggets assistant, Dantley, 52, also wants to be a head coach. "They say the best coaches weren't the best players," he says of the theory that the game comes too easily to the mega-talented. "Maybe one day I can prove them wrong."

English, a Toronto Raptors assistant, is the NBA's 11th all-time leading scorer and eight-time All-Star for the Nuggets. A Hall of Famer, he shot 50.7% from the field and averaged 3.6 assists with four teams in 15 NBA seasons, so he, too, feels no sense of hypocrisy urging his players to pass the ball.

"That's how I was able to get open shots," he says. "I would hit the open man if they double-teamed me."

English, 54, owns two Wendy's franchises in his hometown of Columbia, S.C., but laughed aloud at the idea he could be doing something else. He wants to be an NBA head coach. He got a taste of it in the NBA's Developmental League, leading the North Charleston (S.C.) Lowgators to the 2002 finals.

Dealing with today's players

Tim Frank, NBA vice president of basketball communications, said the league does not disclose coaching salaries. However, as assistants, these former superstars probably don't land multi-million dollar contracts like today's big-name head coaches and players.

They also have to deal with changing times. Portland Trail Blazers assistant Maurice Lucas, a four-time NBA All-Star who helped lead the Blazers to the 1977 NBA title, acknowledges players are different.

"What can you say? They're spoiled as hell," Lucas said at this year's Legends Brunch in New Orleans. "It's a reflection of our whole culture. You travel on your own plane. You stay at the Four Seasons. You don't get to meet people; they usher you to your hotel room. (Security) guards are around. You never get to express yourself or learn other people's opinions. It's a self-contained world."

English, who played from 1977-91, remembers traveling on commercial planes, waking at 4 a.m. to catch a 6:30 flight.

Says Dantley of today's players, "There will be some trips where they start chirping about a (plane) delay, and you hear about certain players who do this and that or don't play hard. Some might have envy or jealousy about some contracts, but that's true generation to generation.

"The great ones, though, come out and play regardless of the money they make."

Being a former superstar doesn't guarantee success in dealing with today's player — but it helps.

"I think they'll listen to ya," McAdoo says. "They know you've been through the wars. I'll go out here and shoot with them, too. Even though I'm a middle-aged man, they see I still got the shot."

Magic players say there's no "back in my day" stuff with Ewing, who rarely brings up his career. But his legacy makes them feel comfortable, more trusting. "We're convinced he knows what he's doing," says Orlando guard Jameer Nelson.

"I never dreamed of having someone like Patrick Ewing being my coach — let alone talking to him every day," Magic All-Star center Dwight Howard says. "He inspires me to work extra hard."

Avoiding coach stereotyping

Ewing coached for the Washington Wizards and the Rockets — where he helped develop Yao Ming into an All-Star performer— before arriving in Orlando, the franchise where he ended his 17-year career.

Under Ewing's tutelage, Howard's scoring average has risen from 17.6 to 20.8 per game, his rebounds from 12.3 to 14.4 and his blocks from 1.9 to 2.2. But despite his success with Yao and Howard, Ewing doesn't want to be pegged as just a big-man's coach.

"I am what I am — a center," he says. "But I'm a coach just like anybody else. If somebody played the guard position, you don't categorize him as just a guard's coach."

And Van Gundy treats him accordingly. "He wants his opinion heard, which is want I want. I want him to think like a head coach."

Says Thompson, "The biggest thing Patrick has to overcome is the stereotype that great players don't make great coaches. People say, 'The game came so easily to them, they don't understand what lesser players are going through. The hardest-working player I ever saw was Michael Jordan."

Until Ewing's time comes, Van Gundy says he plans on having him coach the Magic's summer league team. "He certainly has the credibility to be a head coach, and he has the knowledge of the game to do it," Van Gundy says. "Now it's just a matter of gaining experience and making those kinds of decisions."

While Ewing continues to soak up everything he can, he also understands the bottom line.

"You might be Einstein," he says, "but if you don't have the players to get the job done, you won't win."

A player like Patrick Ewing, perhaps.


[Edited by - playa2 on 03-07-2008 09:22]