Bird Watching (20 page)

I think our team spends more time on shooting than any team in the league. We have shooting drills in practice, but then after practice they’ll stay out there for hours and shoot. Dale and Antonio almost always shoot free throws. Mark and Reggie take three-pointers. I was happy to see them do that, because practicing your shooting is so important. I used to take hundreds of shots a day. Then, when my back started giving me trouble and I couldn’t practice, my shooting suffered, because so much of it is all about repetition. I got to the point, at the peak of my career, when I could hit sixty or seventy shots in a row, without any trouble. You don’t see as much of that today. I think it’s because players seem to spend more time on jumping and dunking than working on their jump shots.

I loved most of training camp. It was fun to watch a team working together and to be part of it. But the one part I was dreading was cutting guys. It was the toughest thing I had to do. I knew we were getting close to the point where I needed to have a roster set, so I’m thinking to myself, “I know this one guy has no shot of making it, so I should just cut him.” It was a veteran forward who had been overseas the past couple years. But I kept putting it off another day. I told Rick and Dick I was having trouble doing it. It was near the end of the camp, and guys were definitely wearing down, because we were running their butts off. Every day I’d talk to Dick and say, “That guy, he looks about a hundred years old,” and every day Dick would say, “You’re right, Larry. Pull him out, and I’ll cut him after practice.” I’d say, “That’s the right thing to do. That way he’ll have a weekend at home, and maybe a chance to pick up with somebody else.” Finally, on this one particular day, practice was over and I turned to Dick and Rick and said, “I’m going to do this.” Rick said, “You better do it today, because he’s looking worse every minute.”

So I take this veteran into the back area and he says, “Hey, Coach, how are you doing?” He’s smiling at me. So I say, “I just want you to know, we’re cutting our squad down, thank you for coming, and if there’s anything we can do to help you out, please let us know.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Hey, Coach, you’re just kidding me, aren’t you?” I said, “No, we’ve made our decision.” So this kid grabs my shoulder again, and he says, “Coach, you can’t do that. I’m just starting to come on. I’m just getting in shape, getting my legs under me. If you do this, it’s the biggest mistake of your life. I know you’re just starting out in this profession, but you don’t want to start this way.”

So now I’m getting a little annoyed, but I say, “Hey, listen. We decided to make cuts today, and you are the first to go because you really haven’t shown us anything that would help our team out.” He starts smiling again. He says, “Coach, I understand. Just give me one more day. I’ll prove to you I can make your team. I’m perfect for this team. You don’t want to start out by making a mistake.” The guy wouldn’t quit. He kept going on, and on, until finally I said, “You know what? You should get out of here.”

I’m getting ticked! He’s a sweetheart of a guy, but here he is—the first person I’ve ever cut—and he’s still telling me, “I’m going to hang around another day, okay, Coach? I know you’ll change your mind.” I walk out of the room, and I’m shell-shocked, and I still got another guy to cut. I see Dick and Rick and I say to them, “Is this some kind of setup? Are you guys in on this?” Rick said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So I tell them what just happened, and Dick starts going berserk! He was yelling, “Bring that kid in here! I’ll straighten him out! Who does he think he is?” At that point I said, “Rick, I’ve had it. You cut the next guy.” Rick was all set to do it, but then I changed my mind. It’s my job. So I brought in the next guy and I told him, as straight as I could, that he was gone. Well the next thing I know, the guy’s lip is quivering and his eyes are filling up, and that really bothered me. I felt bad, because I knew it was probably his last shot at an NBA job.

That was it for the day. I couldn’t handle any more than that.

Exhibition season is kind of a feeling-out process, especially when you have a new coach. In our case, it was a time for the guys to understand that I was dead serious about being on time. I laid out the rules for them: the first time you’re late, it’s a $1,000 fine. Strike two, it’s another $1,000, and strike three in the same month and you’re suspended for a game. No exceptions. That’s how it was going to be.

So we have one more practice before we head out to this exhibition game against Charlotte. This is cruel, but here’s how it happened. The guys are on the court stretching, and I walk onto the floor and I notice one of our point guards, Travis Best, isn’t out there. I ask Reggie Miller, “Where’s Travis?” He says, “He had to go to the bathroom.” I blew the whistle and said, “That’s a thousand dollars Travis owes us.”

That wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except the next day we’re on the plane heading to Nashville, Tennessee, for this game against the Hornets, and Travis and Dale Davis aren’t on the plane. They’re late. I wait until it’s exactly four o’clock, and I tell my guys, “Okay, let’s lock it and go.” Three minutes later, Dale and Travis pull into the parking lot, but the doors to the plane were already closed. The pilot shut down the engine, but I told him to fire it back up again. “We’re not waiting,” I said. As Dale and Travis began running toward the plane, lugging their bags, we took off and left them standing there on the runway. Nashville isn’t the easiest place in the world to get to, and those guys had to scramble to find a commercial flight. They wound up getting a connection through Atlanta, but when they got to Atlanta they got stuck there because of bad weather. They were fogged in. That meant having to stay overnight and take an early-morning flight. They didn’t get into Nashville until late the next morning, and they got there about halfway through shootaround. For Dale it was two strikes, but for Travis it was three. Three strikes, suspension. So he had to sit out the game.

I would have liked Travis to play that night, but there was no way I was changing the rules. I wanted everyone thinking about being on time, and I was prepared to do whatever it took to prove to them I was serious about it. I remember later in the season, Dale Davis had two strikes on him for the month, and we were getting ready for a game, and he was in the locker room for some reason. Dick Harter was so concerned about not having him that night that he ran in there and said, “Now Dale, remember, you’ve got two strikes. Hurry up and get out there. You know Larry, he’ll make you sit.”

It didn’t matter to me who it was. The rules were the same for everyone. Reggie Miller used to get to places forty-five minutes early. I told the team, “If Reggie can do it, why can’t you?” Early in the season, we were getting ready to go on a bus trip somewhere, and we were leaving at three o’clock. At three I gave the signal to lock and go, and just then, Haywoode Workman, one of our guards who was hurt at the start of the season and was really struggling, because his career might have been over, comes chugging up to the bus limping, hauling his bags, trying to get on the bus. I told him, “Woody, if you’re going to the game, then you’re driving there yourself. You’re late.” The bus driver closed the door and we left him standing there. If I say three o’clock, I mean three o’clock, not 3:01. One minute late, and it’s a $1,000 fine. One second late, it’s a $1,000 fine.

We had a big game at home against Chicago in March, when Reggie Miller and Antonio Davis ran into a problem and they were late. I was really upset. It’s one of the few times I really chewed them out. I told them, “You just blew any chance we had of winning this game tonight. You are playing one of your biggest competitors, you’re going to be battling these guys in the Eastern Conference Finals, and you’re gonna show up late today? Come on! You just don’t do that.” That night my team went out and got their butts kicked. I knew it was going to happen. I told them it was going to happen. The only good thing about it was it stayed in their minds after that.

When I played for the Celtics, I was never late for anything. I was usually one of the first guys on the bus. Kevin McHale was always the last guy, every time. It drove me crazy. He was hardly ever late, but he’d walk on the bus at the exact time we were leaving, with maybe a second or two to spare. I always said he was hiding around the corner, waiting until there was only fifteen seconds to go. That’s Kevin. It never affected the way he played, though.

Once we finally had our roster set, the next challenge was to find enough minutes for everyone on the team. Ideally, most coaches seem to favor a rotation of eight players, but our team was a lot deeper than that. Early in the season, we really didn’t have a set substitution pattern. My feeling was, “We’ll go with who is getting the job done out there.” Sometimes that meant in the fourth quarter of a really close game, we might have reserves like Fred Hoiberg and Mark Pope out there instead of Reggie Miller and Chris Mullin, our starters. Early on, I was playing ten guys, and I was thinking to myself, “How are you going to find time for ten guys?” It was hard to do. But I thought it would help us down the road. I thought I showed enough confidence in those ten guys so that if I went to them in a crucial situation later in the season, they’d be ready. You like to play guys who have worked all year. They’ve earned a chance at some time. That’s not to say I didn’t sweat out some of those early substitutions I made. Of course I did. I know Donnie Walsh was having a heart attack about it. I’m sure there were days he was thinking, “What is Larry doing?” But give him credit. He never said anything to me. He told me from the beginning that when it came to the coaching he would leave me alone.

If there was one thing that surprised me, it was how bad a rebounding team we were. That was frustrating to me, because rebounding was such a big part of my game. I want these guys to be aggressive on the offensive glass, even if it hurts us sometimes. I always felt I was a great offensive rebounder. As soon as the ball left my hand, I was after it. I was running to it like there was no tomorrow. But then, my rookie season with Boston we had our training camp in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and we were playing outside, and I took a shot and took off after the ball like I always do, even though I was pretty sure it was going in. Well, Bill Fitch was there, and so was Red Auerbach, and he blows the whistle and stopped everything, and then Red turned to me and said, “Hey, while you’re going toward the basket like that, your man is going the other way for a layup. You’ve got to stay with your man.” From that day on, I was never a good offensive rebounder. Here was one of my best attributes, chasing that ball, and now they were telling me I shouldn’t do it.

In college, when I went to the boards like that, the guard picked up my guy. I thought it should be the same in the pros. But once Red said that to me, I got out of the habit of chasing the ball down. I just didn’t go at it like I used to. Red said the reason the guard could pick up my man so easily in college was because we played a lot of zone defense, which isn’t allowed in the NBA. But I would never get on one of my guys if he went hard after an offensive rebound. To me, it’s one of those plays that is devastating to the opponent. If you get caught once in a while, well, that’s the price you pay.

I’m not sure why my Pacers players aren’t better rebounders. Part of it, unfortunately, is because they don’t pursue the basketball. Part of it is because they don’t box out. They’re usually jumping, trying to go up over people. I could never outjump anybody, so I learned very early on in my career to follow the flight of the ball on the offensive end, and to put a body on somebody and box them out on the other end. You take a guy like Antonio Davis. He jumps so well, but if you put your body into him he might still get up, but he won’t explode like he usually does. I don’t care who it is; anytime you stick your body on them, you take away their lift. That’s what other teams did to us all year long in my first season. They took away our lift.

I used to practice watching the flight of the ball all the time. It started when I was a little kid, and I used to rebound for my brother Mark. He’d do all the shooting, and I’d try to anticipate whether it was going to be short, or long, or off to the left, whatever. I always thought it was the easiest thing to do. It was really instinctive for me, I guess. I could go out and watch a guy shoot for two seconds and be able to tell—not every time, but most of the time—whether he was going to be short or long, and then get right to the ball. The problem with guys nowadays is they just stand there and look at it. They know it’s going to be short, but they don’t react.

It goes back to stressing the fundamentals. Like the bounce pass. I used to throw ’em all the time, because Coach Jones, my high school coach, showed me how to do it right. With these Indiana guys, I don’t want them throwing a bounce pass, because they don’t do it properly. It should be done hard, with one hand. Sometimes Reggie Miller throws these soft, two-handed bounce passes, and it frustrates me, because I think every one of them is going to get picked off.

The biggest difference between being a coach and a player is that as a player you only had to worry about getting
yourself
ready to play. A coach has to prepare twelve guys. The one thing I learned real quickly was to keep these guys moving. No long speeches, no long explanations. That’s when they lose their concentration. Just work them hard and don’t let them stop and lose focus. Some days I might have planned a two-hour practice, but if they are really going at it and they’ve paid attention and got things done, then I’ll consider quitting while I’m ahead. It might have only been an hour and fifteen minutes, but I’ll blow the whistle and tell the guys, “Hey, we’re outta here!”

The other side of it is when the practice is flat no matter how long you go, and the guys aren’t moving well, and the coaches are getting frustrated. You can go either way. You can keep them there and let it get worse, or you can close her down. If I choose to do that, I say to them, “Look guys, you’ve got to give me something today. So far, this has been crap. We’ve got fifteen more minutes. I want to see bodies flying.” That usually works.