tlongII
10-26-2008, 12:44 PM
http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindblazersbeat/2008/10/impatient_but_doing_the_right.html
Nate McMillan strolls into the Trail Blazers practice facility shortly before 8 a.m., flicks on the lights in his office and plops down in a chair at his impeccably neat desk.
He takes a sip of his Starbucks coffee and peeks at his daily schedule before grabbing a remote and turning on a flat-screen television set, which instantly broadcasts NBA TV. This morning, an old-school Finals matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers is playing, and McMillan, who competed against some of these players during his 12-year playing career, can't help but marvel at the skill, precision and basketball IQ he sees roaming the floor.
"I mean these teams, they could play; look at how many All-Stars are in this game," he says, before reeling off a who's who of the NBA's past, including Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Moments later, work -- and reality -- beckons. McMillan pops in a DVD of a Blazers practice, and the skilled talent that was just on the screen is replaced by raw potential. He points out several highlights, but McMillan also laments his team's deficiencies, almost all of which involve basic basketball principles like spacing, screening and merely running the offense.
The irony of the moment is thick. Pundits believe the Blazers have the potential to be as successful as those Celtics and Lakers teams of old, but McMillan can't focus on what his team might become. It's his job to mold this group into that juggernaut, and he goes about the task by living in the moment, focusing on the monotonous daily tasks and minute details that convert potential into production.
Later, during practice, Portland State basketball coach Ken Bone remarks that in the 15 years he's peeked in on NBA workouts, as he's doing this day, he's never seen more teaching and work on rudimentary fundamentals. Welcome to McMillan's world.
The 44-year-old coach is the engineer of a battery-powered sports car of the future amid a league loaded with gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden have the capacity to propel Rip City to unprecedented heights. But how McMillan helps them improve during this season of great expectations will in large part determine how quickly it all comes to fruition.
Seemingly everyone in the organization, from management to Rose Garden vendors, insists there is no better coach to steer this up-and-coming team. McMillan possesses a blend of conviction, work ethic, big-picture understanding and confidence that give him the credibility to lead. And it all comes out as he zigzags the Portland area in his Range Rover, darting from practice to radio interviews to errands, during a lively 14-hour day.
Up-and-down season
With R&B music humming in the background, McMillan pulls his SUV off the freeway and heads downtown for an appointment with his barber. At a red light, he warns that parking is hard to come by so he might have to drive around the block a few times.
Suddenly, McMillan spots a car pulling out of a space on the street to the right. "Ah, see, you gotta be patient," he says, grinning, before waiting out traffic, veering across two lanes to turn right and easing into the spot.
It's as if McMillan were lecturing himself. Patience was vital as the Blazers navigated through a top-to-bottom roster makeover and the forgettable seasons that accompanied it. But even though the rebuilding is in the final throes, McMillan says patience is needed more than ever while his players develop into winners.
There's just one problem.
"I don't have an ounce of patience," McMillan says. "I'm totally the opposite. If I go buy furniture, I want it now. Go get it out of the back and bring it to me. My wife (Michelle), she wants that stuff that you have to go build and it takes four to six months. That drives me crazy."
The Blazers have four rookies and three third-year players. Just three veterans with more than four years of NBA experience will start the season in the playing rotation. There will be games this season, McMillan points out, when his team plays like a bunch of rookies. A daunting early-season schedule loaded with road games and 2007-08 playoff teams certainly won't help.
Which is where the patience comes to bear.
"I don't have a choice," McMillan says. "I'm going to coach this team the best way I see fit. You can't rush it. You can't force it. When you force it, you end up losing, and I think you slow the growth down even more. There's a good chance we're going to go through rough times. You hope you don't, but my best guess would be it's going to be like this (he motions his hand up and down like a wave) because of who we are, where we're playing and what the expectations are.
"If we start out 13-2, great. But what are the chances of that? And what are people going to say if we don't? So, for the team, I have to be patient."
One basic tenet
At work, McMillan is all business, all the time, a stoic and focused presence who rarely cracks a smile or breaks his concentration. But away from the basketball court, outside the limelight, he loosens his guard and opens up about a host of issues, ranging from politics to the economy to family.
And through it all, no matter the subject, he preaches one basic tenet: Doing the right thing. The mantra guides his life and, in particular, his coaching. It was instilled in him early by his mother, Jeanette Tyson, and it has trickled down to his players and coaches.
"Some people say I'm too serious and I need to smile and relax," McMillan says. "I'm relaxed. I think what I try to do is do things the right way. I know that hard work is a big key to being successful. And doing things the right way will pay off for me. There are certain things that I expect from my team. We're going to come in and we're going to play hard and we're going to play together and we're going to play unselfish basketball. We're going to take care of the ball. We're going to work on the defensive end of the floor."
The Blazers could crumble under the weight of expectations and the challenging Western Conference. But with McMillan as coach, it won't be for lack of effort. After all, his players are a reflection of his tenacity.
"He inspires me because I consider myself a hard worker and he's a guy that works so hard it raises your level of work," assistant coach Monty Williams says. "And to me that's always been key. Can your leader raise your level? Well, he raises the level. He's prepared, he's honest and he diligently works every day."
A no-nonsense guy
During his playing days, McMillan was a coach's dream. He practiced hard, played harder and according to Denver's George Karl, who coached McMillan in Seattle, displayed coaching traits throughout his career as a defensive-minded, pass-first point guard.
"I never had a player that just played the game to win as much as Nate did," Karl says. "He never had any other agenda except to do what had to be done to win. He was a no-nonsense guy in practice, a professional preparer who wanted to know everything he could about the opposing team. On the court he didn't care if he scored one point or fifty points. Of all his basketball habits, I never felt there was a selfish habit. It was just about the team and winning, and I think that's the coaching personality. Coaches will sell their souls to win games."
But before his final season as a professional in 1997-98, McMillan never once envisioned getting into coaching. He missed all but 18 games with injuries that season, and Karl, who saw the coach in McMillan before he saw it in himself, routinely asked McMillan for his opinions on strategy and game plans. Karl even invited McMillan into coaches' meetings.
A season later, when Karl was let go and replaced by Paul Westphal, Seattle management made McMillan an assistant. Less than two years later, the organization dropped a bombshell.
"After a year and a half, they fired Westphal and they come into my office and they say, without any notice, 'We want you to be the head coach,'" McMillan says. "And I look at them like," he tilts his head back, opens his eyes as wide as possible and points at his chest. "Who? Me? You crazy? I'm looking at them like: Who? Can I call my mommy? You think I'm lying? I did. I said, 'I need to make a phone call. I need to call my mommy.' And I did."
Actually, McMillan called his wife and his older brother, Randy, before unsuccessfully attempting to reach his mother.
"I told them what was going on, and they were shocked," McMillan says. "They couldn't say anything. So I thought about it and I'm saying, '(Assistant) Dwane Casey has been here longer. He has experience. The right thing to do is hire Casey.' So I went back to the office about 15 minutes later and said, 'I think Dwane Casey should be the coach. I think he's ready to go. Don't look at me because of where I was, because I've been with the organization for 12 years. Get the right guy.
"So they went to Casey ... and Casey immediately threw it back at me. He was like, 'Nate needs to be the head coach.'"
After spending 15 minutes coming to grips with his unfathomable situation -- at 36, he was the youngest coach in the NBA and he was about to lead many of the players he played alongside two seasons earlier -- McMillan headed to practice.
"I sat in my office," McMillan says, "and I thought about it and I just said, 'Do what you know. You know how to play basketball. You're going to have to learn some things, but you've got some coaches. Go do it.' And I put the whistle over my head and went downstairs and that was my team."
He led the SuperSonics to a 38-29 record the rest of the season, plus one Northwest Division title and two playoff berths before coming to Portland in 2005.
Rip City coming back
Back in the Range Rover, it's early afternoon and McMillan heads back to the Blazers practice facility in Tualatin. After getting his hair cut and dropping by a radio station for an interview, it's time for some more film review -- and a 15-minute nap -- in preparation for an evening scrimmage.
As he drives through Portland's suburbs, fall leaves changing colors in the background, McMillan spots a man sitting at a bus stop wearing a black Trail Blazers jersey. He immediately smiles.
"See that," McMillan says, pointing at the man. "It's coming back. Rip City is coming back."
And he is a big part of the renaissance.
"When he came here, he created this foundation of, look, we are going to be hard working, we're going to have good people around here and we're going to be about doing things the right way," Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard says. "And every decision we've made moving forward has trickled down based on those decisions. That's our foundation. We have fun, but we're no-nonsense and it all starts with Nate. He's the leader of this organization."
Nate McMillan strolls into the Trail Blazers practice facility shortly before 8 a.m., flicks on the lights in his office and plops down in a chair at his impeccably neat desk.
He takes a sip of his Starbucks coffee and peeks at his daily schedule before grabbing a remote and turning on a flat-screen television set, which instantly broadcasts NBA TV. This morning, an old-school Finals matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers is playing, and McMillan, who competed against some of these players during his 12-year playing career, can't help but marvel at the skill, precision and basketball IQ he sees roaming the floor.
"I mean these teams, they could play; look at how many All-Stars are in this game," he says, before reeling off a who's who of the NBA's past, including Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Moments later, work -- and reality -- beckons. McMillan pops in a DVD of a Blazers practice, and the skilled talent that was just on the screen is replaced by raw potential. He points out several highlights, but McMillan also laments his team's deficiencies, almost all of which involve basic basketball principles like spacing, screening and merely running the offense.
The irony of the moment is thick. Pundits believe the Blazers have the potential to be as successful as those Celtics and Lakers teams of old, but McMillan can't focus on what his team might become. It's his job to mold this group into that juggernaut, and he goes about the task by living in the moment, focusing on the monotonous daily tasks and minute details that convert potential into production.
Later, during practice, Portland State basketball coach Ken Bone remarks that in the 15 years he's peeked in on NBA workouts, as he's doing this day, he's never seen more teaching and work on rudimentary fundamentals. Welcome to McMillan's world.
The 44-year-old coach is the engineer of a battery-powered sports car of the future amid a league loaded with gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden have the capacity to propel Rip City to unprecedented heights. But how McMillan helps them improve during this season of great expectations will in large part determine how quickly it all comes to fruition.
Seemingly everyone in the organization, from management to Rose Garden vendors, insists there is no better coach to steer this up-and-coming team. McMillan possesses a blend of conviction, work ethic, big-picture understanding and confidence that give him the credibility to lead. And it all comes out as he zigzags the Portland area in his Range Rover, darting from practice to radio interviews to errands, during a lively 14-hour day.
Up-and-down season
With R&B music humming in the background, McMillan pulls his SUV off the freeway and heads downtown for an appointment with his barber. At a red light, he warns that parking is hard to come by so he might have to drive around the block a few times.
Suddenly, McMillan spots a car pulling out of a space on the street to the right. "Ah, see, you gotta be patient," he says, grinning, before waiting out traffic, veering across two lanes to turn right and easing into the spot.
It's as if McMillan were lecturing himself. Patience was vital as the Blazers navigated through a top-to-bottom roster makeover and the forgettable seasons that accompanied it. But even though the rebuilding is in the final throes, McMillan says patience is needed more than ever while his players develop into winners.
There's just one problem.
"I don't have an ounce of patience," McMillan says. "I'm totally the opposite. If I go buy furniture, I want it now. Go get it out of the back and bring it to me. My wife (Michelle), she wants that stuff that you have to go build and it takes four to six months. That drives me crazy."
The Blazers have four rookies and three third-year players. Just three veterans with more than four years of NBA experience will start the season in the playing rotation. There will be games this season, McMillan points out, when his team plays like a bunch of rookies. A daunting early-season schedule loaded with road games and 2007-08 playoff teams certainly won't help.
Which is where the patience comes to bear.
"I don't have a choice," McMillan says. "I'm going to coach this team the best way I see fit. You can't rush it. You can't force it. When you force it, you end up losing, and I think you slow the growth down even more. There's a good chance we're going to go through rough times. You hope you don't, but my best guess would be it's going to be like this (he motions his hand up and down like a wave) because of who we are, where we're playing and what the expectations are.
"If we start out 13-2, great. But what are the chances of that? And what are people going to say if we don't? So, for the team, I have to be patient."
One basic tenet
At work, McMillan is all business, all the time, a stoic and focused presence who rarely cracks a smile or breaks his concentration. But away from the basketball court, outside the limelight, he loosens his guard and opens up about a host of issues, ranging from politics to the economy to family.
And through it all, no matter the subject, he preaches one basic tenet: Doing the right thing. The mantra guides his life and, in particular, his coaching. It was instilled in him early by his mother, Jeanette Tyson, and it has trickled down to his players and coaches.
"Some people say I'm too serious and I need to smile and relax," McMillan says. "I'm relaxed. I think what I try to do is do things the right way. I know that hard work is a big key to being successful. And doing things the right way will pay off for me. There are certain things that I expect from my team. We're going to come in and we're going to play hard and we're going to play together and we're going to play unselfish basketball. We're going to take care of the ball. We're going to work on the defensive end of the floor."
The Blazers could crumble under the weight of expectations and the challenging Western Conference. But with McMillan as coach, it won't be for lack of effort. After all, his players are a reflection of his tenacity.
"He inspires me because I consider myself a hard worker and he's a guy that works so hard it raises your level of work," assistant coach Monty Williams says. "And to me that's always been key. Can your leader raise your level? Well, he raises the level. He's prepared, he's honest and he diligently works every day."
A no-nonsense guy
During his playing days, McMillan was a coach's dream. He practiced hard, played harder and according to Denver's George Karl, who coached McMillan in Seattle, displayed coaching traits throughout his career as a defensive-minded, pass-first point guard.
"I never had a player that just played the game to win as much as Nate did," Karl says. "He never had any other agenda except to do what had to be done to win. He was a no-nonsense guy in practice, a professional preparer who wanted to know everything he could about the opposing team. On the court he didn't care if he scored one point or fifty points. Of all his basketball habits, I never felt there was a selfish habit. It was just about the team and winning, and I think that's the coaching personality. Coaches will sell their souls to win games."
But before his final season as a professional in 1997-98, McMillan never once envisioned getting into coaching. He missed all but 18 games with injuries that season, and Karl, who saw the coach in McMillan before he saw it in himself, routinely asked McMillan for his opinions on strategy and game plans. Karl even invited McMillan into coaches' meetings.
A season later, when Karl was let go and replaced by Paul Westphal, Seattle management made McMillan an assistant. Less than two years later, the organization dropped a bombshell.
"After a year and a half, they fired Westphal and they come into my office and they say, without any notice, 'We want you to be the head coach,'" McMillan says. "And I look at them like," he tilts his head back, opens his eyes as wide as possible and points at his chest. "Who? Me? You crazy? I'm looking at them like: Who? Can I call my mommy? You think I'm lying? I did. I said, 'I need to make a phone call. I need to call my mommy.' And I did."
Actually, McMillan called his wife and his older brother, Randy, before unsuccessfully attempting to reach his mother.
"I told them what was going on, and they were shocked," McMillan says. "They couldn't say anything. So I thought about it and I'm saying, '(Assistant) Dwane Casey has been here longer. He has experience. The right thing to do is hire Casey.' So I went back to the office about 15 minutes later and said, 'I think Dwane Casey should be the coach. I think he's ready to go. Don't look at me because of where I was, because I've been with the organization for 12 years. Get the right guy.
"So they went to Casey ... and Casey immediately threw it back at me. He was like, 'Nate needs to be the head coach.'"
After spending 15 minutes coming to grips with his unfathomable situation -- at 36, he was the youngest coach in the NBA and he was about to lead many of the players he played alongside two seasons earlier -- McMillan headed to practice.
"I sat in my office," McMillan says, "and I thought about it and I just said, 'Do what you know. You know how to play basketball. You're going to have to learn some things, but you've got some coaches. Go do it.' And I put the whistle over my head and went downstairs and that was my team."
He led the SuperSonics to a 38-29 record the rest of the season, plus one Northwest Division title and two playoff berths before coming to Portland in 2005.
Rip City coming back
Back in the Range Rover, it's early afternoon and McMillan heads back to the Blazers practice facility in Tualatin. After getting his hair cut and dropping by a radio station for an interview, it's time for some more film review -- and a 15-minute nap -- in preparation for an evening scrimmage.
As he drives through Portland's suburbs, fall leaves changing colors in the background, McMillan spots a man sitting at a bus stop wearing a black Trail Blazers jersey. He immediately smiles.
"See that," McMillan says, pointing at the man. "It's coming back. Rip City is coming back."
And he is a big part of the renaissance.
"When he came here, he created this foundation of, look, we are going to be hard working, we're going to have good people around here and we're going to be about doing things the right way," Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard says. "And every decision we've made moving forward has trickled down based on those decisions. That's our foundation. We have fun, but we're no-nonsense and it all starts with Nate. He's the leader of this organization."