duncan228
06-13-2010, 11:46 AM
Top NBA coach Gregg Popovich recognized 'strength, intellect' in Nets coach Avery Johnson years ago (http://www.nj.com/nets/index.ssf/2010/06/top_nba_coach_gregg_popovich_r.html)
Dave D'Alessandro/The Star-Ledger
A career — and a life — can turn on moments, and this one starts at a kitchen table in a small apartment in San Antonio on December 17, 1991.
It was there that Gregg Popovich, three years into his own NBA career as an assistant coach, told Avery Johnson that his services were no longer required by the Spurs. Popovich’s palms were sweating and his voice quavering when the words came out.
“Larry Brown sent me there to tell him,” the legendary coach said the other day. “And I’m sitting there at his table, with Avery and his wife, Cassandra, and I’m scared to death. I mean, it was awful. A few days before Christmas, and you tell a guy that he’s cut? Worst thing I ever had to do.
“The thing about it is, we’ve had a great relationship ever since, and now we can laugh about it. It’s kind of like we shared this traumatic experience. But if you ever need to know about this guy’s character and perseverance, how he bounced back from that kind of rejection tells you all you need to know about Avery.”
Life turns on moments — as do friendships. At that particular moment, during that shared trauma, Popovich and Johnson were somehow bonded to each other.
But you find that in every big moment in Johnson’s career, Popovich is somehow always there — standing somewhere in the same snapshot, right alongside his former point guard — and determination is their steadiest escort.
That perseverance is only one reason why Popovich believes Johnson is the perfect choice as new coach of the Nets. The other reason is more implicit: You get the impression that Popovich learned as much about the game from Johnson as Johnson did from Popovich, who is arguably the finest coach in the NBA.
“Pop recognized Avery’s strength and intellect before anyone,” said Spurs general manager R.C. Buford, who has been with the team since 1988. “He had been waived before — at least twice in San Antonio, I think — and he had to fight through a lot to get to where he was. Obviously, it’s something that Avery never forgets, because he’s so driven. But Pop never forgets, either.”
At every juncture of Johnson’s formative years as a respected basketball mind, it was Popovich who shepherded the step forward. Was it guilt? A sense of obligation? Maybe there was some of that.
But it was also loyalty and mutuality, because he’s received just as much as Johnson from this relationship, as every other moment illustrates:
Second moment: Oct. 25, 1993.
Johnson was unemployed, one week before a new season was to begin. Then came a bolt from the blue — a telephone call from an airplane, actually — with a Golden State assistant coach calling to tell him that Tim Hardaway had torn his ACL, that the Warriors needed another point guard, and that Johnson was his choice to fill the vacancy.
“If you’re ready, I’ll push for Nellie to sign you, because he’s thinking of Steve Kerr,” Popovich told Johnson, referring to Warriors coach Don Nelson.
Of course he was ready. And of course he was going to seize the opportunity. So at the age of 28, Johnson became an NBA starter for the first time, and he led the Warriors to an unlikely 50-32 season. Along the way, he turned Chris Webber into the Rookie of the Year and Latrell Sprewell into a first-team All-NBA guard.
As Johnson recalled, “That call from Pop changed my life. I’ll never forget it. My career took off from there.”
Why did Popovich push his boss into signing Johnson?
“You always maintain a respect for people who are that driven,” he said. “I just knew he’d be the right leader on the court for us.”
Third moment: June 22, 1994.
Popovich left Golden State after that ’93-94 season to become the general manager in San Antonio. His roster already had two guards who would later be head coaches (Doc Rivers and Vinny Del Negro), but they were no longer starting quality.
So his first act as GM was to fill a need, and right a wrong.
“I needed a point guard who was a leader, and who could command respect of the group,” Popovich said. “So Avery was home watching TV, without a contract again, and I called him and said, ‘Avery, get your butt down here right now — I’m going to give you your first multi-year contract.’
“And I knew it would be the best move I’d ever make, because I knew his heart. He was just a competitive SOB.”
Popovich even flew Johnson’s mother and other family members in from New Orleans to witness the signing. The Spurs won 62 games under coach Bob Hill that season. San Antonio would be Johnson’s home for six more years.
Fourth moment: Feb. 28, 1999.
The Spurs, in Year 2 of the Tim Duncan era, started the lockout season with a 6-8 record after a Sunday afternoon home loss to their nemesis, Utah. This was not the start Popovich envisioned, and he was out of answers.
“That night, Avery is in my living room, and he says with that voice of his, ‘Pop, we’ve got to peck and roooollll.’ Pick and roll. I was running all this motion stuff, the stuff that looks so pretty on paper. But Avery said, 'This is the NBAyyyyy, we have to play peck-and-roooollll, we have to use Tim like this, and David (Robinson) like this.' ...
“So the very next day, we start pick-and-rolling like a sonovagun. We went from a handful a game to about 30 a game. And even though Avery can’t shoot a lick, and defenses are going under the screen, he still finds a way to get something out of it every time.”
The Spurs won nine straight, finished the season riding a 31-5 avalanche, and coasted through the postseason on a 15-2 party train for their first title.
To this day, Popovich believes it was a result of his point guard — a fellow he was already calling ‘Coach Johnson’ — having the courage to speak up. Appropriately, the title became official the moment Johnson stuck a baseline jumper in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden with 47 seconds left.
“I still have a photo of that shot in my study,” Popovich said. “It’s a defining moment for me, because they said Avery can’t shoot, and there he is, winning a title with his jumper. He proved them all wrong. All of them. He’s made a career out of that.”
It didn’t exactly hurt Pop, either: Just one year earlier, the San Antonio Express-News ran a poll in which 93 percent of the respondents wanted him fired. Now Popovich had given the townsfolk one title, with three to come.
Those are four moments out of a decade, during which a friendship was forged from trauma, loyalty, and mutual respect.
It was Nelson who would officially make Johnson a coach for the first time, during the 2004-05 season — in Dallas, where the latter was a player-coach, then a full-time assistant, then the head coach who led the Mavs to a 16-2 record over the final month.
But that wasn’t really the genesis of a coaching mind. That all happened in San Antonio — with Popovich.
“He’s got a special mind — you’re going to see it in New Jersey, even if they’re going to be young,” Popovich said of Johnson. “He taught himself what it takes to be successful in the league, and since then he’s taught others. He’ll get a defensive mentality established with the group. He’ll get Devin (Harris) in attack mode. He’ll adjust regardless of what personnel they get there.
“You know I hate superlatives, and how people exaggerate. I mean, the only ‘geniuses’ I know are people who do medical research. So I don’t want to overstate this, but Avery has a brilliant basketball mind. I knew it way back when, and I know it now.”
Dave D'Alessandro/The Star-Ledger
A career — and a life — can turn on moments, and this one starts at a kitchen table in a small apartment in San Antonio on December 17, 1991.
It was there that Gregg Popovich, three years into his own NBA career as an assistant coach, told Avery Johnson that his services were no longer required by the Spurs. Popovich’s palms were sweating and his voice quavering when the words came out.
“Larry Brown sent me there to tell him,” the legendary coach said the other day. “And I’m sitting there at his table, with Avery and his wife, Cassandra, and I’m scared to death. I mean, it was awful. A few days before Christmas, and you tell a guy that he’s cut? Worst thing I ever had to do.
“The thing about it is, we’ve had a great relationship ever since, and now we can laugh about it. It’s kind of like we shared this traumatic experience. But if you ever need to know about this guy’s character and perseverance, how he bounced back from that kind of rejection tells you all you need to know about Avery.”
Life turns on moments — as do friendships. At that particular moment, during that shared trauma, Popovich and Johnson were somehow bonded to each other.
But you find that in every big moment in Johnson’s career, Popovich is somehow always there — standing somewhere in the same snapshot, right alongside his former point guard — and determination is their steadiest escort.
That perseverance is only one reason why Popovich believes Johnson is the perfect choice as new coach of the Nets. The other reason is more implicit: You get the impression that Popovich learned as much about the game from Johnson as Johnson did from Popovich, who is arguably the finest coach in the NBA.
“Pop recognized Avery’s strength and intellect before anyone,” said Spurs general manager R.C. Buford, who has been with the team since 1988. “He had been waived before — at least twice in San Antonio, I think — and he had to fight through a lot to get to where he was. Obviously, it’s something that Avery never forgets, because he’s so driven. But Pop never forgets, either.”
At every juncture of Johnson’s formative years as a respected basketball mind, it was Popovich who shepherded the step forward. Was it guilt? A sense of obligation? Maybe there was some of that.
But it was also loyalty and mutuality, because he’s received just as much as Johnson from this relationship, as every other moment illustrates:
Second moment: Oct. 25, 1993.
Johnson was unemployed, one week before a new season was to begin. Then came a bolt from the blue — a telephone call from an airplane, actually — with a Golden State assistant coach calling to tell him that Tim Hardaway had torn his ACL, that the Warriors needed another point guard, and that Johnson was his choice to fill the vacancy.
“If you’re ready, I’ll push for Nellie to sign you, because he’s thinking of Steve Kerr,” Popovich told Johnson, referring to Warriors coach Don Nelson.
Of course he was ready. And of course he was going to seize the opportunity. So at the age of 28, Johnson became an NBA starter for the first time, and he led the Warriors to an unlikely 50-32 season. Along the way, he turned Chris Webber into the Rookie of the Year and Latrell Sprewell into a first-team All-NBA guard.
As Johnson recalled, “That call from Pop changed my life. I’ll never forget it. My career took off from there.”
Why did Popovich push his boss into signing Johnson?
“You always maintain a respect for people who are that driven,” he said. “I just knew he’d be the right leader on the court for us.”
Third moment: June 22, 1994.
Popovich left Golden State after that ’93-94 season to become the general manager in San Antonio. His roster already had two guards who would later be head coaches (Doc Rivers and Vinny Del Negro), but they were no longer starting quality.
So his first act as GM was to fill a need, and right a wrong.
“I needed a point guard who was a leader, and who could command respect of the group,” Popovich said. “So Avery was home watching TV, without a contract again, and I called him and said, ‘Avery, get your butt down here right now — I’m going to give you your first multi-year contract.’
“And I knew it would be the best move I’d ever make, because I knew his heart. He was just a competitive SOB.”
Popovich even flew Johnson’s mother and other family members in from New Orleans to witness the signing. The Spurs won 62 games under coach Bob Hill that season. San Antonio would be Johnson’s home for six more years.
Fourth moment: Feb. 28, 1999.
The Spurs, in Year 2 of the Tim Duncan era, started the lockout season with a 6-8 record after a Sunday afternoon home loss to their nemesis, Utah. This was not the start Popovich envisioned, and he was out of answers.
“That night, Avery is in my living room, and he says with that voice of his, ‘Pop, we’ve got to peck and roooollll.’ Pick and roll. I was running all this motion stuff, the stuff that looks so pretty on paper. But Avery said, 'This is the NBAyyyyy, we have to play peck-and-roooollll, we have to use Tim like this, and David (Robinson) like this.' ...
“So the very next day, we start pick-and-rolling like a sonovagun. We went from a handful a game to about 30 a game. And even though Avery can’t shoot a lick, and defenses are going under the screen, he still finds a way to get something out of it every time.”
The Spurs won nine straight, finished the season riding a 31-5 avalanche, and coasted through the postseason on a 15-2 party train for their first title.
To this day, Popovich believes it was a result of his point guard — a fellow he was already calling ‘Coach Johnson’ — having the courage to speak up. Appropriately, the title became official the moment Johnson stuck a baseline jumper in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden with 47 seconds left.
“I still have a photo of that shot in my study,” Popovich said. “It’s a defining moment for me, because they said Avery can’t shoot, and there he is, winning a title with his jumper. He proved them all wrong. All of them. He’s made a career out of that.”
It didn’t exactly hurt Pop, either: Just one year earlier, the San Antonio Express-News ran a poll in which 93 percent of the respondents wanted him fired. Now Popovich had given the townsfolk one title, with three to come.
Those are four moments out of a decade, during which a friendship was forged from trauma, loyalty, and mutual respect.
It was Nelson who would officially make Johnson a coach for the first time, during the 2004-05 season — in Dallas, where the latter was a player-coach, then a full-time assistant, then the head coach who led the Mavs to a 16-2 record over the final month.
But that wasn’t really the genesis of a coaching mind. That all happened in San Antonio — with Popovich.
“He’s got a special mind — you’re going to see it in New Jersey, even if they’re going to be young,” Popovich said of Johnson. “He taught himself what it takes to be successful in the league, and since then he’s taught others. He’ll get a defensive mentality established with the group. He’ll get Devin (Harris) in attack mode. He’ll adjust regardless of what personnel they get there.
“You know I hate superlatives, and how people exaggerate. I mean, the only ‘geniuses’ I know are people who do medical research. So I don’t want to overstate this, but Avery has a brilliant basketball mind. I knew it way back when, and I know it now.”