3rdCoast
05-20-2005, 03:20 PM
Commentary: Stan won't say he's the man
By Greg Stoda
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
He gets little joy and even less sleep in all this drama.
His life comes wrapped in packages of madness and torture, because that's how it is for any head coach in the NBA playoffs.
But that's especially how it is for Stan Van Gundy, because he has the Heat and the Heat has Shaquille O'Neal hey, never mind the sore thigh and, ohmigosh, it has Dwyane Wade, too, and those guys make Miami great and that greatness brings abundant pressure and... well, you get the idea.
Or maybe you don't get the idea at all, because you can't from anywhere outside the cocoon in which Van Gundy exists until everything ends amid disappointment or confetti.
So, here, try this Van Gundy quote on for size: "I won't be the reason we win; I just don't want to be the reason we lose."
How suffocatingly awful is that?
How unbearable must it be to consider potential team achievement not as the culmination of everyone's successes, but as the avoidance of your own personal failure?
That's the psychological cell in which Van Gundy, an otherwise well-adjusted and happy family man who would fit nicely as anyone's friendly neighbor, locks himself.
And the terrific part for the Heat, winner of the first two Eastern Conference playoff rounds in sweeps of New Jersey and Washington, is how well it's working.
Van Gundy, in fact, might himself be the best definition of what the team is.
There are vanities aplenty throughout the franchise, but the reflection and this is where Van Gundy makes his most significant mark is of a group without intrusive and destructive agendas.
Think about that with the famous Pat Riley as team president and with O'Neal and Wade as superstars and, heck, with Miami as a playground.
"It's an event city. It's a see-and-be-seen place," Van Gundy said.
The obvious irony is that Van Gundy is someone who cares not a bit about seeing the headliners or being seen as one.
Not that Van Gundy doesn't have an ego himself.
"I have a huge one," he insisted.
That's probably not true (reference: his own win-lose statement), but whatever ego Van Gundy does have doesn't show. And though any coach-player dynamic is fraught with potential for dangerous undertow that can drown a team, Van Gundy seems genuinely well-liked in his role.
"I think he gets it," said Wade, a second-year player of such skill he already is regarded among the best in the game. "He understands. He's very open-minded. You can tell him you see something you think we should run, and he'll do it. That kind of communication makes for a great relationship."
Two very different seasons
In two seasons as Riley's successor on the bench, Van Gundy has done a terrific job coaching two very different versions of the Heat.
"Better than I would have done," Riley told me during a conversation late in the regular season. "I really believe that."
Van Gundy started last year with Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and the rookie Wade as a nucleus. And they started 0-7.
Van Gundy not only held together a young core group through that difficulty, but nurtured it to home-court playoff status and a win in the first round. Everything looked so promising.
Riley then pulled off a stunning trade in getting O'Neal from the Los Angeles Lakers with Odom and Butler the main pieces sent away in the deal.
Promise went out the window. Pressure, in exponential dosage, rushed in.
Van Gundy, under whom Odom had blossomed, suddenly was faced wonderfully enough with the task of blending the size and strength of O'Neal with the emerging influence of the slashing and dashing Wade. Immediately came the general assumption that Miami would be one of the NBA's elite teams.
New territory and the need for new strategies awaited Van Gundy in his second season as an NBA head coach.
But look what happened. The Heat won 59 regular-season games and has gone 8-0 in the playoffs despite having O'Neal in diminished physical status or not at all during the post-season tests. Don't discount Van Gundy's hand in the shaping of the product.
O'Neal and Wade have formed a mutual admiration society complete with deferential nods to each other's excellence. (Think the Lakers might be the Heat right now if O'Neal and Kobe Bryant had maintained such an alliance?)
Eddie Jones, comforted by Van Gundy's unbending confidence in him, is playing the best basketball of his career. Damon Jones and Udonis Haslem, divergent personalities of similar anonymity, have filled out the starting lineup with distinct strengths.
"He lets us be us," Eddie Jones said. "Not every coach will do that."
A team-first attitude
Van Gundy says he has a "selfless" team, and points as example to reserve players who have responded without complaint to erratic playing time. It has been about as whine-free a season as anyone could imagine despite wild fluctuations regarding who plays when and how much given circumstances (the injury to O'Neal) and tactics (Van Gundy's situational use of his very versatile bench).
"I don't have a rotation," Van Gundy admitted. "That's hard on guys."
What helps is how goal-oriented the team is.
Alonzo Mourning, in recovery from an illness that could have ended his career, has come home for the sole purpose of winning a championship. The Christian Laettners and Keyon Doolings and Michael Doleacs and Shandon Andersons all have found ways to add their stitching to the Heat quilt.
There's a warm comfort to the patchwork, and Van Gundy seems always to know how and where to spread the blanket.
"It doesn't mean they're always happy," he said.
What it does mean is the Heat has a for-the-greater-good mind-set overriding all else. A quiet self-discipline has been imposed on the group by the group.
The head coach, who somehow is appealingly miserable as an affable curmudgeon, makes it work. Hubie Brown, a television analyst with his own considerable background as an NBA coach, thinks he knows why.
Van Gundy "stays within his personality," Brown said. "That's what all good leaders do. They're not chameleons. He doesn't care about evaluations by the naive."
Van Gundy, instead, is given to constant worry and no small amount of self-deprecation.
"I'm not sure it's true the players like me as much as they're saying they do," Van Gundy said. "I can be a pain and too harsh in criticism. I think they put up with me, because they have to. It's their job."
Except, of course, players get coaches fired all the time.
"I know," Van Gundy said, "but I'm sure what happens is they smooth things over among themselves when I get on them too hard about something."
Probably true. It's the nature of the team beast. But an underlying respect for Van Gundy is obvious. It was O'Neal, for example, who said he has "never played for a coach as prepared" as Van Gundy.
"He knows the other teams' plays without looking" at the scouting report, said O'Neal, who, by the way, won three championships under the direction of a coach named Phil Jackson.
And so Van Gundy is in constant fret about the X-factor or the O-factor he might have missed.
"My job is to put the game in the hands of the players the best I can," he said. "My job is to give them a chance."
Coach important in playoffs
Next up come either the Detroit Pistons or Indiana Pacers in an Eastern Conference championship round as the Heat chases its first NBA Finals appearance. The Pistons are reigning NBA titleholders coached by the legendary Larry Brown; the Pacers and coach Rick Carlisle bounced Miami and Van Gundy out of the playoffs a year ago.
It's a players' game, for sure, but coaching matchups become increasingly important the deeper teams advance into the playoffs.
"My belief is players win games, (but) I recognize the importance of the position I'm in," Van Gundy said.
And so late Friday afternoon in Washington on the day before the Heat finished off the Wizards in a four-game elimination, Van Gundy turned to step into an elevator at the team hotel to head to a room where he would find little joy and less sleep.
Because the search strangely and powerfully satisfying in its private suffocation never ends for someone looking to find every possible way not to be the reason the Heat might lose.
LINK (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/heat/content/sports/epaper/2005/05/17/a1c_PBP_STODA_0517.html)
By Greg Stoda
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
He gets little joy and even less sleep in all this drama.
His life comes wrapped in packages of madness and torture, because that's how it is for any head coach in the NBA playoffs.
But that's especially how it is for Stan Van Gundy, because he has the Heat and the Heat has Shaquille O'Neal hey, never mind the sore thigh and, ohmigosh, it has Dwyane Wade, too, and those guys make Miami great and that greatness brings abundant pressure and... well, you get the idea.
Or maybe you don't get the idea at all, because you can't from anywhere outside the cocoon in which Van Gundy exists until everything ends amid disappointment or confetti.
So, here, try this Van Gundy quote on for size: "I won't be the reason we win; I just don't want to be the reason we lose."
How suffocatingly awful is that?
How unbearable must it be to consider potential team achievement not as the culmination of everyone's successes, but as the avoidance of your own personal failure?
That's the psychological cell in which Van Gundy, an otherwise well-adjusted and happy family man who would fit nicely as anyone's friendly neighbor, locks himself.
And the terrific part for the Heat, winner of the first two Eastern Conference playoff rounds in sweeps of New Jersey and Washington, is how well it's working.
Van Gundy, in fact, might himself be the best definition of what the team is.
There are vanities aplenty throughout the franchise, but the reflection and this is where Van Gundy makes his most significant mark is of a group without intrusive and destructive agendas.
Think about that with the famous Pat Riley as team president and with O'Neal and Wade as superstars and, heck, with Miami as a playground.
"It's an event city. It's a see-and-be-seen place," Van Gundy said.
The obvious irony is that Van Gundy is someone who cares not a bit about seeing the headliners or being seen as one.
Not that Van Gundy doesn't have an ego himself.
"I have a huge one," he insisted.
That's probably not true (reference: his own win-lose statement), but whatever ego Van Gundy does have doesn't show. And though any coach-player dynamic is fraught with potential for dangerous undertow that can drown a team, Van Gundy seems genuinely well-liked in his role.
"I think he gets it," said Wade, a second-year player of such skill he already is regarded among the best in the game. "He understands. He's very open-minded. You can tell him you see something you think we should run, and he'll do it. That kind of communication makes for a great relationship."
Two very different seasons
In two seasons as Riley's successor on the bench, Van Gundy has done a terrific job coaching two very different versions of the Heat.
"Better than I would have done," Riley told me during a conversation late in the regular season. "I really believe that."
Van Gundy started last year with Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and the rookie Wade as a nucleus. And they started 0-7.
Van Gundy not only held together a young core group through that difficulty, but nurtured it to home-court playoff status and a win in the first round. Everything looked so promising.
Riley then pulled off a stunning trade in getting O'Neal from the Los Angeles Lakers with Odom and Butler the main pieces sent away in the deal.
Promise went out the window. Pressure, in exponential dosage, rushed in.
Van Gundy, under whom Odom had blossomed, suddenly was faced wonderfully enough with the task of blending the size and strength of O'Neal with the emerging influence of the slashing and dashing Wade. Immediately came the general assumption that Miami would be one of the NBA's elite teams.
New territory and the need for new strategies awaited Van Gundy in his second season as an NBA head coach.
But look what happened. The Heat won 59 regular-season games and has gone 8-0 in the playoffs despite having O'Neal in diminished physical status or not at all during the post-season tests. Don't discount Van Gundy's hand in the shaping of the product.
O'Neal and Wade have formed a mutual admiration society complete with deferential nods to each other's excellence. (Think the Lakers might be the Heat right now if O'Neal and Kobe Bryant had maintained such an alliance?)
Eddie Jones, comforted by Van Gundy's unbending confidence in him, is playing the best basketball of his career. Damon Jones and Udonis Haslem, divergent personalities of similar anonymity, have filled out the starting lineup with distinct strengths.
"He lets us be us," Eddie Jones said. "Not every coach will do that."
A team-first attitude
Van Gundy says he has a "selfless" team, and points as example to reserve players who have responded without complaint to erratic playing time. It has been about as whine-free a season as anyone could imagine despite wild fluctuations regarding who plays when and how much given circumstances (the injury to O'Neal) and tactics (Van Gundy's situational use of his very versatile bench).
"I don't have a rotation," Van Gundy admitted. "That's hard on guys."
What helps is how goal-oriented the team is.
Alonzo Mourning, in recovery from an illness that could have ended his career, has come home for the sole purpose of winning a championship. The Christian Laettners and Keyon Doolings and Michael Doleacs and Shandon Andersons all have found ways to add their stitching to the Heat quilt.
There's a warm comfort to the patchwork, and Van Gundy seems always to know how and where to spread the blanket.
"It doesn't mean they're always happy," he said.
What it does mean is the Heat has a for-the-greater-good mind-set overriding all else. A quiet self-discipline has been imposed on the group by the group.
The head coach, who somehow is appealingly miserable as an affable curmudgeon, makes it work. Hubie Brown, a television analyst with his own considerable background as an NBA coach, thinks he knows why.
Van Gundy "stays within his personality," Brown said. "That's what all good leaders do. They're not chameleons. He doesn't care about evaluations by the naive."
Van Gundy, instead, is given to constant worry and no small amount of self-deprecation.
"I'm not sure it's true the players like me as much as they're saying they do," Van Gundy said. "I can be a pain and too harsh in criticism. I think they put up with me, because they have to. It's their job."
Except, of course, players get coaches fired all the time.
"I know," Van Gundy said, "but I'm sure what happens is they smooth things over among themselves when I get on them too hard about something."
Probably true. It's the nature of the team beast. But an underlying respect for Van Gundy is obvious. It was O'Neal, for example, who said he has "never played for a coach as prepared" as Van Gundy.
"He knows the other teams' plays without looking" at the scouting report, said O'Neal, who, by the way, won three championships under the direction of a coach named Phil Jackson.
And so Van Gundy is in constant fret about the X-factor or the O-factor he might have missed.
"My job is to put the game in the hands of the players the best I can," he said. "My job is to give them a chance."
Coach important in playoffs
Next up come either the Detroit Pistons or Indiana Pacers in an Eastern Conference championship round as the Heat chases its first NBA Finals appearance. The Pistons are reigning NBA titleholders coached by the legendary Larry Brown; the Pacers and coach Rick Carlisle bounced Miami and Van Gundy out of the playoffs a year ago.
It's a players' game, for sure, but coaching matchups become increasingly important the deeper teams advance into the playoffs.
"My belief is players win games, (but) I recognize the importance of the position I'm in," Van Gundy said.
And so late Friday afternoon in Washington on the day before the Heat finished off the Wizards in a four-game elimination, Van Gundy turned to step into an elevator at the team hotel to head to a room where he would find little joy and less sleep.
Because the search strangely and powerfully satisfying in its private suffocation never ends for someone looking to find every possible way not to be the reason the Heat might lose.
LINK (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/heat/content/sports/epaper/2005/05/17/a1c_PBP_STODA_0517.html)