Nellie stories

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Playoff Daily: Mavs' attack is perfect for Nelson
April 25, 2002
By Mike Kahn
SportsLine.com Executive Editor

The theories continue to abound about Dallas Mavericks coach Don Nelson; why a coach with more than 1,000 career wins in 24 seasons and his pedigree as a player with the Boston Celtics has never coached in the NBA Finals.

In fact, nobody else has coached that long and not been in the Finals.

And though he didn't coach the 1992 Olympics Dream Team, he now unquestionably has a Dream Team that fits his style of play. There are those who believe that style is the reason none of Nellie's teams have made the Finals because he insists on being so untraditional.

This season's version still plays his small-ball style, but they also have big people causing damage in the racetrack offense.

Since the midseason deal that brought guard Nick Van Exel and 6-foot-11 center Raef LaFrentz from Denver, Nelson has been playing them more together with incumbent shooters Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Finley and Steve Nash. The result is five players who can run the floor, pass, shoot 3-pointers and go to the rim.

Just ask the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were run out of the gym Wednesday night 122-110 to fall behind in the series 2-0 heading into Sunday's game in Minneapolis.

"They can put as many scorers on the floor as anybody," Minnesota coach Flip Saunders said. "When they're making shots, you've got problems. You have to hope three of them have off nights. Maybe we'll have snow in Minnesota. Maybe that will slow them down."

Maybe not. The top-scoring team (105.2 points per game) that also set an NBA record for fewest turnovers in a season, the Mavs are averaging 111.5 per game in the playoffs. That's 11.5 points higher than the Orlando Magic, who are second.

Wednesday, the Mavs were 11-of-22 from 3-point range, 19-of-23 from the free throw line and had 27 fastbreak points. Nowitzki, their 7-0 forward, is averaging 30.5 points, 15 rebounds and three steals in the two games to offset anything the T-Wolves can throw out there, including Kevin Garnett.

"That's the reality of that team, so we have to deal with it," Garnett said. "It's on us."

Or maybe they should just deflate the basketball.

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Mavs' Nelson remains one of NBA's successful innovators
Steve Aschburner
Star Tribune
Published Apr 28, 2002

Mad scientist. Innovator. Outside-the-box thinker and world-class tinkerer. Every so often, someone even drops the G word.

They're tossing the labels again, and Don Nelson is around -- happy, healthy, engaged and winning -- to laugh them off. His Dallas Mavericks team that will try to snuff the Timberwolves this afternoon at Target Center in Game 3 of their best-of-five playoff series is the most unconventional, multicultural, high-scoring, defense-optional bunch in the NBA. And because of them, his reputation as one of the league's true individualists has come roaring back, belly first.


"Nellie always has been a creative builder of things, whether it was my science projects growing up or model airplanes," said Donnie Nelson, a Mavericks assistant coach and director of player personnel. Like everyone else, the son usually calls his dad "Nellie."

"I used to have those Matchbox cars, and one was a beat-up old dump truck. He told me, 'I'm going to take this truck and come back in an hour and beat your fastest car.'

"He got a stone to weigh down the truck bed and he put some Vaseline on the wheels and straightened them out, and I'll be darned if it didn't beat my fastest car."

Nelson, who will turn 62 on May 15, still is at it, throwing paint Jackson Pollock-style at a picture no one else yet sees, on a grander canvas than his kid's toy cars. After 38 NBA seasons, 14 as a player and 24 as a head coach and general manager, he is one victory away from advancing and 13 away from a finish that would be neither abstract nor expressionistic.

Over the years, Nelson has been there and done that, enduring the twists and turns, the ups and downs, his cancer, her cancer and a couple of trips to hell and back.

And now? "I'm a sucker for good guys," Donnie Nelson said. "I've always liked the John Wayne films, where I'd watch them ride off into the sunset. Nellie's a John Wayne to me."

Nelson and Flip Saunders, some might say, are different trains on parallel tracks, one generation and about 800 victories apart.

Saunders, the most successful head coach in Wolves history, never has won a playoff series. Nelson, voted one of the top 10 coaches in NBA history in 1997, is the only one on the list who never made it to the NBA Finals, much less won a championship.

With Toronto's Lenny Wilkens and Miami's Pat Riley, Nelson is one of only three coaches with more than 1,000 NBA victories. He won five rings as a utility forward with the Celtics and his number 19 hangs above the floor in Boston. But he never has gotten close to a title as a coach.

"I don't think Nellie's been in a situation where he's been favored to win it," Saunders said earlier in this series. "There were some great coaches during Johnny Wooden's time, and you can't say they're not great because they never won a championship. It's like Patrick Ewing: born at the wrong time, the same time Michael Jordan's here."

Not yet winning a title as a coach apparently does not haunt Nelson.

"I've never seen him happier," Donnie Nelson said. "A lot of that has to do with some of the ordeals he's been through.

"So it's that, combined with the satisfaction that he can finish his career in a winning, dignified way. It's rejuvenated him to the point where he'd like to do this a couple more years."

Age has a way of mellowing even the lions. Going eyeball-to-eyeball with mortality does, too, what with his prostate cancer surgery in January 2001 and wife Joy's recent bout with breast cancer. She had surgery this winter, finished radiation treatments this month and is with him in the Twin Cities today. Both are said to be cancer-free.

Getting kicked in the teeth a few times also is great for perspective. It might sound odd for an NBA lifer who retreats each offseason to beachfront property in Maui. But it's true.

Nelson was 25, married with four kids, when the Los Angeles Lakers waived him in October 1965. He had a week back home in the Quad Cities to contemplate a career as a roofer when Boston coach Red Auerbach called and made him a part of the Celtics' dynasty.

After retiring in 1976, Nelson washed out in a summer tryout to become a referee and was about to sell cars for a living when Milwaukee coach Larry Costello convinced him to become his assistant.

A lifetime later, Nelson's exit from Golden State in February 1995 after a spat with Chris Webber stamped him as a dinosaur, out of touch. His hello-I-must-be-going stint with the Knicks the next season cast him as a guy looking for a payday. So, too, did his willingness to take on the Dallas mess in February 1997, first as GM, then as coach, with a team that had gone 136-356 in six previous seasons.

"When you go through those things, it makes you appreciate these kinds of opportunities," Donnie Nelson said. "In coaching, you're one loss away or one blowout with a player from being out the door."

In Milwaukee, Nelson built his reputation. Thrust into the head coach's role 18 games after arriving, he improvised his way to seven division titles from 1980-86, an average of 54 victories over eight seasons and Coach of the Year awards in 1983 and 1985.

His Bucks teams went small, exploited the arcane illegal-defense rules and, for Paul Pressey, developed the "point forward" concept used later with Scottie Pippen, Grant Hill and others. In 1987, after a power struggle with new owner Herb Kohl, Nelson quit and joined his old owner, Jim Fitzgerald, in the Bay Area.

"I always said Nellie was like a CBA coach in the NBA," Saunders said. "He was always looking to find a way to get an edge. He always tries to create some type of mismatch."

At Golden State, Nelson got the Warriors into the playoffs four times in six years, won Coach of the Year in 1992 and drafted Mitch Richmond, Tim Hardaway, Tyrone Hill and Latrell Sprewell. He married Joy Wolfgram right in the Coliseum in June 1991. But he had no answer for Webber, who bucked Nelson's attempts to use him at center and led a locker-room rebellion.

The New York experience came and went so fast. He "lost" Ewing by trying to shift the offense away from the low box and got fired in March 1996 with a 34-25 record.

"After that, he told me and my sisters, 'I'm going to Maui and I'm going to enjoy the rest of my life,' " Donnie Nelson said. "But Dallas called and his juices were stirred."

Things were bad there, and Nelson's early moves were almost wacky. Within days, he traded Jamal Mashburn, Jim Jackson, Sam Cassell, George McCloud, Eric Montross and Chris Gatling for Shawn Bradley, Robert Pack and a band of forgettables. He oversold players such as Samaki Walker, Chris Anstey and, initially, Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash.

After firing Jim Cleamons (28-70), Nelson did even worse (26-72) in his first 98 games on the bench. It didn't help that he hired his son as his future replacement as Dallas coach.

Del Harris, Nelson's longtime friend and assistant, knew his boss's image was low. "[People said], 'Here's this crazy guy who paints outside the lines, has his own rules, basically can't make a good deal and has lost his ability to coach,' " Harris recalled last season. "Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth."

Internet billionaire Mark Cuban bought his most outrageous toy in January 2000. Since that day, the Mavericks' regular-season record is 141-75. For the first time, Nelson had an owner who didn't need or even want to wring a profit from the operation. Cuban's bottom line is to win, grab attention and have fun.

"We've got an owner now who will pay the luxury tax and do whatever it takes to take that next step," Nelson said.

Clearly, the Mavericks have passed the Wolves. They were 40-42 two seasons ago but went 53-29 last spring, made the playoffs for the first time in 11 years and immediately advanced to the second round.

This season, Nelson pulled off the February trade with Denver for Raef LaFrentz and Nick Van Exel and nearly won the Midwest Division title. He likes the club's rainbow coalition -- Donnie made him a believer in international scouting -- and grooves to Tejano music on the way to the arena. "It makes it easy to come to work," Nelson said, "when you love your guys and they love you."

So he's back now, with vindication on his side. After all, Webber got traded twice after getting Nelson fired and wasn't happy in Sacramento until this season. The Knicks dealt Ewing two years ago and will be in the lottery in May.

Nowitzki didn't win that 1999 Rookie of the Year award -- but he got votes this spring in balloting for the league's MVP trophy. He and Nash played for Nelson on the West squad at the All-Star game. Dallas has a shot at the Finals and could be even better next year.

"He's not going to be one of those guys who looks back and judges his success in life on a ring," Donnie Nelson said. "He understands as well as anybody that you've got to be really good, you've got to work your rear end off and you've got to be lucky."

In the most famous moment of Nelson's playing career, he picked up a loose ball late in Game 7 of the 1969 Finals against the Lakers and threw it at the basket. With balloons in the rafters of the Forum poised for a celebration, Nelson's shot hit the back of the rim, rose several feet in the air, then dropped in, assuring the Celtics of their 11th title in 13 years.

Nelson has a ball in the air again. And it's in the cylinder.

[Drbio]

great articles as always MFFL....thanks.