Killer Crossover, page 24
But they weren’t the only one. Along with Beilein at Michigan, Frank Martin, the often red-faced coach at Kansas State, also reached out. But I talked with Frank, letting him know that Tim wouldn’t be an especially great candidate for his program. Not because Tim wasn’t great or that Frank was a bad coach, but I knew Tim wouldn’t respond to his in-your-face style. Tim never liked when my wife or I yelled at him, so I knew he wasn’t going to take to Frank’s mode. Frank said he appreciated my candid talk and, as time passed, it seemed more and more like Michigan was the spot. Tim visited the school as a junior and saw Michigan beat Duke in a big upset on campus.
247 But despite Michigan’s interest, he thought about other schools closer to home. I liked coach Beilein because he gets the most out of his team, and in a reasonable and respectful manner. He likes guys who can play multiple positions and who can switch on defense. You have to know how to fit in. I encouraged Tim to go there, but he also held out hope for the University of Miami, Florida, or Florida State. Miami, though, was recruiting guard Brandon Knight hard and passed over my son (Knight later went to Kentucky). Their coach, Frank Haith, said Tim couldn’t hang in the ACC (that made us stop attending their games). At the eleventh hour, Billy Donovan at Florida called. But at that point it was too late.
* * *
Tim had made his decision. He was first-team All-City in 2009 and 2010, and for his senior year averaged 31.7 points per game. In the state championship, he scored 42 points against Brandon Knight. With that performance, ESPN ranked him the 93rd overall prospect. And he picked Michigan. As a freshman, Tim had an up and down season, but that was to be expected. But toward the end of the year, he picked it up, winning several Freshman of the Week awards and averaging 20-plus points in his final seven games. That allowed him to earn honorable mention All-Big Ten that season. And in the NCAA Tournament, Michigan beat Tennessee before losing to Duke.
As a sophomore, Tim was named to the preseason to the watchlist for Player of the Year, and during the season his scoring increased from 13.9 points per game to 14.6. But his Wolverines team wasn’t quite as strong. They made the NCAA Tournament, 248but lost to Ohio in the first round. After the year, he told me he wanted to declare for the NBA Draft, but I knew it wasn’t the right time. It pained me to have to tell him that. No parent wants to defer their kids’ dreams. But I had to tell him that he wasn’t ready to come out. “Look, son,” I said, “I know the NBA like I know you. If you come out, you won’t make the NBA like you want to.” I knew he needed to work on his ball-handling and defense. His shot, while solid, needed to get better, too. “I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you that.” Like I said, it’s important to encourage your kids, but if they ask you your opinion, you have to be honest with them. “No matter how bad it hurts me to see you disappointed now, I know this will help you in the long run.” Oh boy, was he mad at me after that! He cried. That’s how bad he wanted it. He called me every name in the book. But I said, “Son, if I let you go to the NBA, it won’t be what you want. And you don’t want to go to the G-League and play yourself out.”
He needed another year, I was sure about that. I didn’t know why he was so eager to leave. It wasn’t like we needed the money. He had everything he needed at school. But I also know that young people always want to get their life started. I wasn’t hating on him. I was just trying to be honest, given what I knew. So I told him we should compromise. “Go to sleep tonight,” I said, “and just think about it. Think about what I’m saying to you. And you know what? The next day he said, “I understand.” He agreed to stay one more year. The following season, he had a great year and so did his team. His rebounds and assists went up. So did his three-point percentage. Plus Michigan made the NCAA Finals, putting him on the big stage. He and his teammate Trey Burke were called the best backcourt in college. Michigan won 249five straight NCAA Tournament games, beating bluebloods like Kansas, Florida, and Syracuse. But in the Finals, I believe, they got robbed, losing 82–76. I believe the refs cheated them out of the game, calling early fouls on Burke, including a questionable call on a blocked shot. Playing against Louisville and coach Rick Pitino, I thought the officials were biased. Pitino had them in his pocket! Maybe it evens out because Michigan beat Kansas in a two-point game that could have gone either way.
In the end, what matters is Tim did everything he needed to get the attention of NBA scouts. I was so proud. What was incredible—and you couldn’t script this—was that he was selected 24th in 2013 by … the New York Knicks! The team that I’d battled against in four straight playoffs. The team that caused me more nightmares than Freddy Krueger was my son’s new home! Wow. As a rookie in the Big Apple, Tim stood out. He made the All-Rookie team and finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting, averaging double-digit points for a solid Knicks squad. My son was in the NBA and beginning to flourish! Now it was my turn to make it back to the league.
* * *
As a point guard, I was an extension of the coach on the floor. When I got a chance to prove that fact in the NBA as an assistant after I’d retired, I jumped at the chance. I’d heard that my former coach, Stan Van Gundy, had been recently hired by the Detroit Pistons. So I called Stan up and asked him if his coaching staff had been completed. He said it hadn’t, so I pitched myself to be one of his assistants. Stan flew down to Miami to talk with Pat Riley about it. At the time, I was working as a scout 250for the Heat, so if Stan was going to take me on, he’d have to ask them for permission to interview me.
Pat granted him permission, and Stan and I talked about what my responsibilities would be. He offered me a series of tests, if you will, like putting together a scouting report and a practice plan. To draw plays up and explain how other teams ran theirs. In the end, I passed the tests and he hired me on August 7, 2014. It was actually my second coaching gig after I’d hung up my sneakers. In 2006, I took a brief job with the now-defunct ABA. Back then, investors were trying to revive the brand that had meant high-flying dunks and red, white, and blue basketballs in the 1970s, and hired me on for the new iteration.
I was the short-lived head coach for the Florida Pit Bulls, playing our games at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida. I even played in them a little like a player-coach. Sometimes I’d start, sometimes I’d come off the bench (but I never played in back-to-backs). Our players were from the Fort Lauderdale and Miami areas. It was good experience for them to be in a professional environment, and it was fun for me to get back on the court and get some run in. I’d done a little volunteer coaching with my son’s high school squad, but now I was getting paid for the responsibility. With the Pit Bulls, we had a good record, finishing 19–8 and first in our division.
We had to fight Florida hurricanes, too, which forced us to cancel a number of games. But the league folded, and we didn’t even play in the playoffs. With that minor league stint over, I was glad to be back in the NBA to share my knowledge with a new generation, just like guys had done for me when I was coming up. Coaching the guys was a lot like coaching my son—shoot, they were the same age as him! Part of me had 251hoped I’d be coaching at home in Miami, though. I’d worked for the Heat as a team ambassador and scout after I retired, but the Heat never extended a formal offer. I’d hoped I might join Erik Spoelstra’s staff like several other of Riley’s players had, but it never materialized. (I love Spo, he’s an educator and a very personable guy.)
Riley told the newspapers after I went over to Detroit, “We were coming very close to making a decision with Tim to have him work with our point guards. Look, he’s one of the greatest players that I ever coached, one of the greatest point guards that I ever coached. He’s a great competitor. He knows the position. He’s very smart. But we always had a plethora of coaches, a lot of ’em. He did a great job for the organization in being an ambassador with Zo, and then he went out and scouted. I think he learned a lot when he went to summer leagues and stuff with our guys. But it just wasn’t happening right now.” Alright, so be it!
It was okay. I didn’t really mind. Even though I’d been inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame just prior to getting the gig in Detroit, it turned out that moving my family up from Miami to Michigan was a great decision for us all. We still live in the area today, and we love it. I’m a hoops junkie and was grateful to get back in the game. I’d have worked wherever would have me. But to be with my former coach in SVG was terrific. I loved picking the brains of the other assistant coaches, too, including Bob Beyer. A longtime NBA assistant, Beyer knew how to connect with players and coaches. He’s with the Lakers now, but he even worked under Bob Knight at Texas Tech. I learned a lot from him in Detroit. Beyer reminded me of a young Stan Van Gundy—always prepared and always pushing to get better.
252 But part of me struggled working with the twenty-somethings on the roster. At times, though I was a five-time All-Star, I felt a bit like a dinosaur.
When I was in Detroit, we were a young team. Stan, who had success as an assistant and head coach in Miami and then as the head man in Orlando, was hired to turn the team around. Detroit had won an NBA title a decade prior, but the franchise was in one of its lower states in a while. We had fresh faces to go along with vets—that’s the kind of balance you want when rebuilding a team. Promise, potential, and experience. My job role included coaching in practices, as well as conducting a lot of scouting from film, writing reports on teams we’d be playing in the coming days.
For example, if we were about to play the Lakers, I’d write about what I thought their strengths and weaknesses were, what plays they ran, how they trigger their offense, how we should run plays against them, what our practice plan should be in shootaround before the game, etc. I learned quickly what the team needed from me. But what Stan—who was both head coach and head exec in Detroit—taught me most was how to understand personalities on a team. Putting together a roster is as much about meshing personalities as it is meshing talent. That’s something I’d made a priority on when playing, but this was the big-picture vision before players even got onto the court. One guy I kept trying to pump up was our big center. He was a lively player who was solid down low. I knew that, if he’d have set his mind to it, he could’ve been a regular 20/20 guy. Shoot, he was already a double-double guy. He was a Moses Malone–like player. Maybe he didn’t have Malone’s overall skillset, but he could get to the ball quicker than anybody. He moved his feet, 253he was agile. He could jump three times before you got off the floor. Another guy I tried to inspire was our point guard. He was a dynamic guy who I thought could have been unstoppable if he put his mind to it. I don’t know what he was worried about or where his mind was at the time, but I felt that, if he concentrated, he could have been an All-Star instead of just a starter.
The roster just wasn’t clicking. If you want to have a good team, you can’t have players with individual agendas. But when you have guys worried about what other people think, worried about social media and what people are saying about them, you get into trouble. Players need to worry about what’s happening on the court and let the rest take care of itself. You have to pay attention to detail—that’s the top priority. It’s hard work to win. Everyone thinks they’re almost there, but when you see a winning franchise then you really know how much further most other teams are. Everyone has to be pulling in the same direction.
It’s a different thing to be a coach who’s a former player. I played the game at a high level and loved every minute of it. But when you see someone just going through the motions on the court, just waiting to get their next check, it’s frustrating. I couldn’t say much at the time, since I was only an assistant (and a young one at that). But I wanted to say something, to address the young guys who were slacking. You want your players to play like you did and you can’t understand it when they don’t make the same effort. You also have to realize you grew up differently than they did.
You might even talk to someone on the team and he’ll nod his head, “Yeah, yeah, Coach, I got you.” But then he’ll do the same damn stupid thing on the court. The same stuff you went over 254in film and showed him directly was hurting the team. That’s the difficult part of the job. The wisdom going in one ear and out the other. That was never me. Even as a young player all I wanted to do was learn more and get better.
Being the head coach, you have to lay down the law. You have to make sure everybody knows how we are going to run things, how we are going to approach winning, and what they need to accept to get playing time. We’re playing a game, but it’s also all business. The year before we arrived, Detroit was 29–53. In our first year in 2014–15, we were 32–50. In our second, after adding Tobias Harris, we jumped up to 44–38 and made the playoffs (losing in a competitive sweep to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers). We went 37–46 in our third year, and were 39–43 in our last season in 2017–18. Then Detroit’s ownership fired the entire staff.
I don’t think Stan got enough time to turn the team around. But I also know that he may have been more of an old school coach than the new era could handle. Sometimes I think the new generation of players—especially those who are young and aren’t as hungry to win—need more of a babysitter than they do a signal caller. We had a chance to do something in Detroit, but there wasn’t always the attention to detail that the team required of its players. It wasn’t there for 48 minutes. Stan is a superb coach and had won wherever he was prior to Detroit. But even though we didn’t get the results we set out for, I learned a lot on the job.
With my time in Detroit over, the family and I were in no rush to head back to Miami. Nina still had two years of high school left and we didn’t want to uproot her, so we stayed in the Detroit area (where we’ve been ever since). My wife and I love 255the area, and Detroit has an incredible basketball tradition, from Isiah Thomas to George Gervin to Spencer Haywood. I even went to India in the summer of 2018 to hold camps and teach kids the game. These days, other than camps like that, I have no desire to get back to coaching. Shoot, I’m almost sixty! I don’t want to say the new players are knuckleheads, but they don’t seem as hungry as the guys from my era. It’s okay—I’ll just hang out with the other stegosauruses!
* * *
The blessing of not coaching anymore was that I could watch my son with a father’s eye and not have to scout or root against him when we played his Knicks team or the new squad he’d been traded to after his second season, the Atlanta Hawks. It’s very weird scouting, rooting, and coaching against your own son. I couldn’t even call him my son in the coach’s rooms, I just called him, “Tim Jr.” But I had to do my job and so I said things to our guys about running him off the three-point line to get him out of his shooting rhythm. I had to devise defenses against him despite watching him play my whole life!
After my coaching stint was over in Detroit, Tim was back with the Knicks and then traded again to Dallas in a deal that also sent the big Latvian center Kristaps Porziņģis to the Mavericks to pair with the up-and-coming All-Star Slovenian point guard Luka Dončić. In his fifth season now, Tim was really coming into his own as an impact player. In 2017–18, he averaged 17.5 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 2.7 assists. He’d also signed a massive four-year, $71 million contract in 2017. I was very proud of him. Proud of the man he’d become. And I was equally 256glad I didn’t have work to hamper his game when he played the Pistons.
Because of that, I made sure to discuss money with him. Growing up, I talked to all three of my children about the subject. My parents had told me no so many times and I’d learned the benefit of patience and being frugal that I knew I had to instill that in them, too. They learned to work for what they got, how to rely on themselves when they were old enough. These days, I’ve seen how Tim handles his money, and I think he’s done a hell of a job. It can be a lot of pressure to make that much money (he’s since signed another four-year, $75 million contract in 2021). People want handouts, or you think you have cash burning a hole in your pocket.
He’s smart with it, though. He invests and saves what he needs to save. His money is growing, and that’s all you can hope for. He and his agent have been smart. Sometimes people ask me if I’m upset at the bloated contracts young players get these days. I say, “Why be upset?” It is what it is. When I was in the league, we got paid well. Now that’s just grown for the new generation. I just hope they know that their success came on our backs and that they should be respectful about that fact. Many are. But don’t get me wrong, just because their bank accounts are bigger doesn’t mean I wouldn’t whoop their ass on the court. That’s for sure!
Kidding aside, I’m so happy for Tim. And so is his mother. In his five seasons in Dallas, he’s averaged 15.1 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 1.9 assists. He’s a scorer, a slasher. He’s started and he’s come off the bench. He’s done whatever the team has asked him. He’s even shot 37.5 percent from three-point range, which is crucial in today’s game. To me, he reminds me of another 257former Maverick, Michael Finley. “Fin Dog” may have scored a bit more than Tim, but they have the same body type and move the same way on the court. They’re similar one- or two-dribble guys who can shoot, get to the rim, make good plays, and play strong defense.
But don’t try to watch one of Tim’s games with his mom. Oh boy! She’ll talk your ear off. Like any mother, she wants him to succeed. She feels his pain when he’s struggling and is over the moon when he’s on top of the world. But sit next to her on the couch during one of her games and she’ll ask you question after question. She talks up a storm! It’s very loving—she’ll wonder why a certain thing happened, what’s wrong with this player, why did that player do that, what is the coach thinking here. But sometimes I can’t take it. That’s why she’s upstairs and I’m downstairs when one of Tim’s games is on TV.
