As coach, Avery Johnson draws from life lessons

[MavsFanFinley]

As coach, Avery Johnson draws from life lessons

By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News

You hear that quirky, part-Cajun, part-Southern Baptist minister voice and you know right away who is in your ear. Or your face.

Avery Johnson doesn't need an introduction. The moment he speaks, his whereabouts are a mystery no more. But as recognizable as that voice might be, it's the messages carried in it that are getting even more attention these days for the Mavericks.

As great communicators go, they don't build them much better than the assistant coach who has become Don Nelson's right-hand man.

"He's always had that ability to talk to people," Nelson says. "Good people skills – he's had that ever since he was a young boy. He talks about that in his book. He's always been able to talk his way out of jams."

In his book Reaching Beyond the Break, Johnson's message is about overcoming the odds. From being a too-short player to embracing his religious roots to fighting his way to a better life for his family, Johnson has made believers out of people every step of the way.

"I think my dad really was the one to encourage me in that area," says Johnson, whose father died in 1992. "When I was 11 or 12 years old, he'd tell me: 'You did a good job of getting your team in the right places, of being a coach on the floor.' He always said I was a good communicator. ...

"If you hear that enough, you start buying into it."

Now, the Mavericks are buying into Johnson. Whether or not he is their coach of the future, he certainly is a voice of the franchise. And so, we look at a few of the factors that led him to this point:

No silver platters

Rudy Tomjanovich was there during the early moments of Johnson's basketball career, after he was waived by two teams, was traded for virtually nothing by another and spent time in an alphabet-soup league that no longer exists.

That school of hard knocks has served Johnson well.

"He's got a good basketball mind, but also, it didn't come easy for him," says Tomjanovich, now coach of the Lakers. "He had to work, and I think when you've had that in your life, you realize the little things it's got to take to make a team work and to develop players. ... He had to go through it himself."

Four-letter moratorium

Don Nelson likes to catch Johnson when he has a lapse. It doesn't happen often. But Nellie is always on the lookout for a slip of the tongue.

"He tries not to swear, but sometimes he lets one slip out and it gets a little disturbing," Nelson says. "Then he has to go to church twice on Sunday."

Johnson, like Del Harris, Larry Riley, Charlie Parker and most of the others on the Mavericks' coaching staff, is a devout Christian.

"He's a good person who cares about people, and I believe that's a factor," Rudy Tomjanovich says. "You have to get information across to your team. But also to be an approachable guy where the communication goes both ways – he's that kind of person. It's good to be around Avery. He's got positive energy just oozing out of him."

Learning on the fly

In football, you see the whole field if you're the quarterback. In basketball, point guard is where you learn how the game is played.

Johnson was not the best point guard, but he got the most out of his talents and, usually, the teams he was running. He and Calvin Murphy remain the only players under 6 feet in league history to play more than 1,000 games.

"You really have to think the game there," Nelson says of the point guard position. "And in coaching, you have to think the game all the time."

Johnson says the point guard job was good training but not the only tool. "It's important for anybody to cerebrally think the game," he says.

Now, about that voice ...

Johnson knows his octaves can go up a little beyond the norm for an NBA coach. But it's as much a plus as it is a negative that his voice is one people love to imitate.

"I am who I am," he says. "At one time, it was really cute, because people would really make fun of it. But I think as a professional basketball coach, I have been conscious about how I communicate because my voice is so distinctive.

"But I don't think [team owner Mark] Cuban has me here because he wants me to change. They don't think of me the way they think of me because they want me to change the way I communicate or try to go have some voice lessons."

A need-to-know basis

Johnson communicates differently with point guards Jason Terry and Devin Harris, from whom he expects much because it's the position he played for 16 years in the league.

"What I tell them is the same thing, but at the same time, it's a little different," Johnson says. "J.T., I can give him a little more info in terms of second and third options.

"With the rook, I just try to keep it plain vanilla. He has the basics. And he's really been doing that well. We shrunk his package. Everybody says we have a million plays. For Rook, it's about 10,000."

One thing, however, doesn't change in his message to the point guards.

"I tell them they absolutely have to communicate with their teammates," he said.

[EricaLubarsky]

y'all know how much I love Avery. I am really glad he's around.