Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  This wasn’t news to the players. They knew it. They understood it. They supported each other. In some ways, it was a pure form of basketball because no one’s contract was at stake. No one was going to have to negotiate based upon how many points he scored in the Olympics. There was no reason to become obsessive about playing time. So they had every reason to be very team-oriented, to be willing to sit and watch if the guy playing ahead of them was having a good day. I know that you can’t do this for a whole year in an NBA setting, but this wasn’t for a whole year.

  “Look, this will go by fast,” I told the players. “So if we all put the team first, we’ll be glad we did at the end. You are special people and this is a special situation. That’s why you’re here. So let’s stay together.”

  I knew these were men of great pride, and I wasn’t going to bury anyone on the bench. They all wanted their moment in the Olympics, and I understood that. I made sure that each guy started at least one game. I never used the same starting lineup twice. The guys bought into it. They wanted to win the gold medal as much as I did, and they certainly didn’t want to be on the first Dream Team to lose in the Olympics. Both Reggie Miller and Shaquille O’Neal had gone into the summer as free agents and were negotiating contracts during the practice period, but they didn’t seem distracted; they really concentrated and made me proud to coach them.

  I was very impressed with Miller. Even though I had coached against Reggie and had a lot of respect for him, I was surprised that he was such a pleasure to have on my team. He showed up in great shape with tremendous enthusiasm. I knew he was a super shooter, but he worked very hard for me on defense. He is very competitive; he’s one of those guys you really don’t fully appreciate until he’s on your team, because he just burns with desire to win.

  I always knew that Richmond was an incredible shooter, but I never realized what a good defensive player he was until I coached him, and he responded to our challenge to defend. Hakeem has great, great footwork. Stockton and Malone run the pick-and-roll as well as any two players I’ve ever seen. I had heard stories that Payton wouldn’t always work hard in practice, that he was difficult to coach, but he was great with me. David Robinson is rapped for being soft, which is unfair. That’s why I was happy to see him win an NBA title, because he’s just such a good person.

  Shaquille O’Neal gets criticized a lot, but I’ve seen a lot of growth in him as he’s been in the league. There was some discussion about Shaq not playing in the Olympics, or being unhappy because he had an endorsement deal with Pepsi while Coke was one of the big Olympic sponsors. But Shaq worked that out, and I never worried about that being a problem.

  Some of the players kidded Shaq about an All-Star game where I was coaching and he was on the team. I was watching Shaq shoot around, and I told him that he should work on a drop-step move to the basket. I showed him a few things.

  “You’re so strong,” I said, “even if they foul you on this move, you’ll still score.”

  He was very attentive.

  Then Shaq asked, “Coach, did you ever play at this level?”

  Scottie Pippen was listening, and he just broke up laughing. He started telling the other guys what Shaq had said.

  “Yes,” I told Shaq, “I played a little bit.”

  Now Scottie was really laughing.

  The next day, Shaq came in and said he had asked his dad about me.

  “He said you were pretty bad, man,” said Shaq, which I knew was a sincere compliment. Shaq also had a camera, and he got one of the guys to take a picture of us together, which I thought was a nice touch.

  I wasn’t shocked that Shaq was unaware of my career. I hadn’t played since 1975. Why would players of Shaq’s generation know? It would be nice if they had that sense of history, but most don’t—and I’m not hung up about that. I liked having Shaq on my team. I’m telling you, I really enjoyed all the guys. Yes, even Charles Barkley. I know he says some really off-the-wall things, but Charles doesn’t mean any harm. He plays very hard. He brought some spice to our dressing room, because he’d tease people. He just had so much joy about playing the game, his spirit lifted up the other guys. He also wasn’t afraid to challenge the other players to step up the intensity. Charles and I were together on the 1992 team, and I wanted him back in 1996 because I knew that he was a veteran with a strong personality, a real warrior.

  One of the areas I discussed with the players was being patient with people and making sure none of us embarrassed ourselves in any way. In the 1994 World Games, some of the NBA players were accused of trash-talking, putting down the opponents, things like that. I told the guys that I didn’t expect that to be a problem, but to be extra careful. Everyone was watching us, I mean the whole world. Anything we did reflected not just on us, but on our country.

  “We want to show everyone that we’re not only the best at what we do, but we want to show everyone that we understand sportsmanship,” I said. “We can’t do anything that looks like we’re showing up the other team.”

  I had so many good people that I wasn’t very worried about that, but I wanted to make sure the players were clear about what was expected from them.

  Our biggest challenge happened off the court, when the bomb went off in the downtown Atlanta park. I was back at the hotel, and I felt the building shake. The first thing we did was make sure all the players and their families were accounted for, that none of them were in the park when the pipe bomb blew.

  This was another time I realized how much things had changed. When I broke into the NBA, I never imagined a day when the pros would play in the Olympics. That’s why I was so upset at being left off the team in 1960: You had one shot at playing in the Olympics and mine was gone. I never imagined that there would be anything like the 1992 Dream Team, where thousands of fans lined up just to see us step off the bus and walk into a building through a police barricade. I never imagined that the whole world would know the names of the top NBA players; I doubt a similar team would have all been recognized at home in 1960.

  And I never thought about terrorism.

  Even after the 1972 Olympics and the kidnapping and killing of the Israeli athletes, I didn’t think something like that would happen—not to us, and not in Atlanta. Granted, the bomb wasn’t directed at the athletes, but it could have killed anyone who happened to be walking in that park. And it made you wonder what else would happen, or could happen.

  We had tremendous security. The team hotel was sealed off, except for those who had the proper credentials. After the bomb, the coaching staff spent a lot of time reassuring the players that things were under control.

  Some guys were like Charles Barkley, who didn’t care.

  “No SOB terrorist is gonna intimidate me,” he said. “I came here to play the games, period.”

  Karl Malone was worried about his family. The bombing so upset him that he had a friend fly in from Utah, then escort his family home. Other guys were talking about doing the same thing. I said that was their decision, but I believed everything was going to be fine. We had protection. Our families were protected, so I didn’t want this to spoil the Olympics for our players or their families. Charles Barkley was a big help, supporting what I had to say, and after a while everyone calmed down.

  A few days later, there was a bomb threat. Supposedly someone had left a suitcase in the lobby of our hotel. They quickly escorted everyone out of ground level, and told everyone else on the upper floors to stay in their rooms. It turned out to be a false alarm; they found a bag, but no bomb. That got everyone a little uptight again. I just thanked God that no one was hurt. We’d already had enough damage after the first bomb in the park. That’s the most frightening part of terrorism, how innocent people always suffer. Here were some people in the park during the Olympics, listening to the music, enjoying the atmosphere, and a bomb blows up. Things like that can make you paranoid, but you also can’t go through life always worrying about it. If you did, you’d never leave your house.

 
; When I was coaching in Cleveland, I think it was in 1989, we had a game in Detroit. We were on a hot streak, and when we arrived at the hotel, we discovered someone had called in a bomb threat. Then I received a death threat, saying someone would take me out if I coached the team that night. NBA security was called in. They made us ride around for forever on the team bus, I’m not sure why. Some of the players got nervous. A few said they wouldn’t coach the game if they were in my shoes. I never thought about doing anything but coaching. I wasn’t going to let the bad guys intimidate me, but it was a little unnerving having the extra security around, moving to a different hotel and seeing that some of my players were thinking about it. The temptation is to sort of duck every time you walk into a public place, but you can’t live like that. I was just angry that there are people who take delight in calling in threats, in ruining something fans enjoy.

  I thought of this when the bombing happened in Atlanta. It helped me because I had been through something like it before. You can’t live your life in fear. You can’t sit around going through all the horrible things that can happen, because that will paralyze you—which is exactly what the terrorists want. I was not about to give in to them, and I was proud none of the Olympic athletes from any of the other countries did, either.

  As a coach, I had a real challenge that had very little to do with basketball. Because we were the Dream Team, a lot of people wanted to be around us. Famous people.

  One day, Bishop Tutu wanted to come to our practice. I admire Bishop Tutu. He is an important international figure, so he came. Former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young wanted to speak to our team. I like Andy Young, so I let him talk to the team. I was impressed at how respectful our players were to our guests. That meant a lot to me.

  But it never ended. Bruce Willis and some other show business people wanted to come to practice and meet the players. Other celebrities wanted to get into the dressing room after games. We had to control that, and I know some people were disappointed.

  A few people criticized us for not living in the Olympic Village with most of the other athletes. They said we were pampered prima donnas who thought we were too good to be with the rest of the Olympians, which was just ridiculous. Our guys couldn’t even walk the street without being mobbed. In 1992, when we went to the Olympic Village to pick up our credentials, we were swarmed—by the other athletes! They wanted our autographs! Pole vaulters, shot-putters, they all wanted to meet our guys. We never would have gotten any rest if we’d stayed in the Olympic Village. If anything, some of our guys felt they were prisoners in the hotel because it was virtually impossible for them to venture outside without having to deal with a never-ending stream of fans. Some said the 1996 Dream Team lacked glamour, but you couldn’t prove it by the fans; there was a mob of them waiting everywhere for us, staking out the hotel and even the places we practiced to tune up for the Olympics.

  When we practiced at Moody College in Chicago, a guy held up signs about the violence in Nigeria. He wanted Hakeem to do something about it. After a couple of days, Hakeem went over and talked to the guy. He handled it with class, and during our last day of practice, the guy held up a sign saying, WISHING HAKEEM WELL. Our players were smart enough to stay away from political questions. For the most part, athletes aren’t very political people, so they often don’t want to make their opinion public anyway. But I was glad we didn’t get into the middle of any social or political controversies.

  By the end of the Olympics, I felt just like Chuck Daly had in 1992: I was relieved it was over, relieved we won, and very proud of how the players held up under the pressure. I was happy that we won my way, by playing all the guys, playing different lineups every game, and we still won big. But with some people, we couldn’t win: If we beat a team by only 20 points, then we were flat and just going through the motions; if we won by 40 or 50 points, we were pouring it on. I thought the media criticism we got early in the Olympics was unfair; they kept putting us up against the 1992 team, and there was no way we’d ever win that comparison. Then they said the crowds weren’t as responsive. Well, we were drawing close to forty thousand a game and the fans seemed happy to see us—and we were playing in Atlanta, not in Europe where the NBA is more a novelty.

  When the Olympics were over, there was some discussion about us not using the NBA players in 2000. That would be a mistake. The players from the rest of the world want to play against our best, especially now that they’ve seen our guys. And whether we want to admit it or not, basketball worldwide keeps improving. Our college players couldn’t win in 1988, and they sure won’t win in 2000. It’s fine to use college players in the Goodwill Games, the Pan-American Games, and other international competitions like that. But in the Olympics, we have to stay with the pros. We can’t turn back the hands of time.

  Just because our 1996 team supposedly lacked the glamour of the 1992 Dream Team is no reason to drop the concept. We couldn’t recreate the 1992 Dream Team because there will never be another team like that one. It was the first time the greatest NBA pros ever joined together to take on the world, and there was a real curiosity about how that would play out. They set the standard of excitement so high, no one could compare. Our critics missed the main point: We were there to win the gold medal and to represent our country with honor, and we did exactly that.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I’VE ALWAYS RESPECTED the great Buffalo Bills teams, those same Bills teams that never won a Super Bowl. To many fans and writers, that means they can never be great, never be special: Only champions are great, and everyone else is a loser, or at least falls short. I’ve never believed that. The true measure of a team is how it answers this question: Did they play as well as they possibly could?

  Those Buffalo Bills teams did just that. When they lost in the Super Bowl, they were beaten by teams with better talent, period. The remarkable story wasn’t that the Bills lost year after year in the Super Bowl, it’s that those players came together each year, sacrificed and overachieved, and made it back to the Super Bowl. They didn’t get discouraged, and they won a lot of games they never should have just to put themselves in position to play for a title. With the Bills, the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts.

  I believe that was true of most of my teams with the Atlanta Hawks.

  But to most fans and writers, the Bills were stuck in a rut. Their rut was losing in the Super Bowl, but it was a rut.

  And so were my Hawks.

  Our rut was we’d win 50 games in the regular season and be near the top of the Central Division, but in the playoffs we’d lose in the second round. The fact that we lost to a more talented team in the second round—or that we never should have won those 50-some games in the regular season… well, none of that mattered.

  We were good, but not good enough. We won, but we didn’t win enough—or at least, we didn’t win at the right time, in the playoffs. In a sense, we were convicted in the court of public opinion for overachieving during the regular season. I thought about the unfairness of that after I resigned as coach of the Atlanta Hawks in May of 2000. I looked at my record for my first six years coaching the Hawks: Our typical season was 50-32, advancing to the second round of the playoffs. This is a franchise that had been in Atlanta for twenty-five seasons before I arrived, with only five seasons of at least 50 wins. It hadn’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs in the five seasons before I arrived in Atlanta in the summer of 1993.

  On paper, those three 50-win seasons in my first six years looked pretty good, especially since there would have been a fourth if the strike hadn’t shortened the 1998-99 season. Our team was praised for playing hard, playing smart, and usually winning more games than expected. We had some All-Stars in Steve Smith and Dikembe Mutombo, but no superstars. No great players. No Rookies of the Year. In my seven years with the Hawks, the only player to make All-NBA was Mutombo, who was picked to the third team in 1998. With all respect to Mutombo, he is a great rebounder and shot blocker, but never considered a
force on offense. He was a 12-point scorer for us, and we worked with him a lot to develop some inside moves to help him at least be a factor when he caught the ball near the basket. But 12 points was all that was reasonable to expect from him.

  This isn’t meant to denigrate my players, but to praise them. It shows how these guys squeezed out every ounce of their talent and blended together to consistently win those 50 games. Our teams had solid pros such as Grant Long, Mookie Blaylock, Tyrone Corbin, and Craig Ehlo surrounding Smith and Mutombo. But we weren’t considered flashy. We were a team that appealed more to the basketball purists than the MTV generation.

  Exactly how J. R. Rider was supposed to cure all this, I’ll never know.

  The fact that Rider ended up in Atlanta tells you all you need to know about the mindset of both the Hawks franchise and the NBA in general. It shows what happens when a front office sees a team “stuck in a rut,” even if that rut is 50 victories and a decent showing in the playoffs. It also reveals how even shrewd men such as Hawks president Stan Kasten and general manager Pete Babcock can become so desperate that they do something they know in their heart of hearts will never work.

  That something was the J. R. Rider trade.

  But first, you need to understand what Atlanta was like during my first six years with the Hawks. I took over a team that had missed the playoffs and then didn’t have a great draft when I arrived, our number-one pick being Florida State’s Doug Edwards, who barely made a ripple in the NBA before sinking out of sight. I took the same basic team that had won 43 games, and our record improved to 57-25. With Michael Jordan playing minor league baseball that season, we filled the gap by winning the Central Division. And we did it despite making a major trade at midseason, sending Dominique Wilkins to the L.A. Clippers for Danny Manning. This was an excellent deal for us, because Dominque was nearing the end of his career. His mentality was always to score first, and he still had the ability to put the ball in the basket, but Manning’s unselfishness and passing skills fit well into our game plan.