Innovation is nice. But when the competition prevails over the genius with his idea, the genius is no longer the genius.
It happens all time in any arena of competition. ... In the highly competitive information economy, one does not want to be one trick pony. ...
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Nelson is NBA's great innovator
Rusty Simmons, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, April 10, 2010
(04-10) 20:34 PDT -- Forty-five years before Don Nelson became the NBA's all-time winningest coach, he had an epiphany of sorts.
It happened during his time as a player, after a conditioning drill with the 1965 Boston Celtics.
"I had spent my whole life asking: 'Why are point guards expected to only pass, why are small forwards expected to only score and why are centers expected to only post up?' " said Nelson, the Warriors' head coach. "Then, when we ran wind sprints, the fastest guy on the team was also the biggest guy on the team, Bill Russell.
"That proved to me that everyone can be an all-around player, if people allow themselves to think about it."
And so it was that Nelson began questioning every aspect of conventional basketball thinking. The answers to those questions created a unique basketball mind that has been polarizing at times during his 31 seasons as a head coach. His unorthodox thinking has also helped him compile more regular-season wins (1,333 through Friday) than anyone else and create a legacy of innovation that spans arenas across the globe.
"He is the greatest innovator in the history of the game," Miami Heat President Pat Riley said. "No one else would have ever thought about small-ball, isolations or zone defenses at the pro level."
Nelson created the point-forward position, in which a forward initiates the offense. He often is credited with instituting the first three-guard offense and has allowed 7-footers to play on the perimeter and guard players nearly 2 feet shorter. "Nellie Ball" has become a widely accepted term to describe a team that uses an up-tempo offense full of smaller players in hopes of outrunning and outscoring opponents.
Detractors believe his systems put more emphasis on style than substance. They say a team that doesn't rebound and defend can't win, which is why Nelson has not won a championship.
Supporters say his brand of basketball changes in tune with the makeup of his rosters. His Milwaukee squads were in the top five in defense six times, and his Warriors' teams are on pace to finish in the top two in scoring for the fourth consecutive season.
"There's nobody better than Nellie," Charlotte coach Larry Brown said. "If you look around this league and watch what coaches do offensively, every one of them has a lot of Nellie in it.
"Forever, people in this league will be doing what Nellie did first, and it will never get old."
The point forward
Maybe Nelson's most notable innovation is the use of a point forward, something he started in the '80s with Milwaukee and that is now used in some fashion by nearly every team.
The idea is to use a forward to initiate the offense, putting his defender in an uncomfortable position and freeing the point guard to be more of a shooter.
Even Paul Pressey, who was Nelson's guinea pig, wasn't immediately sure what he was being groomed to do. Soon after his stats jumped from 8.3 points and 3.1 assists to 16.1 and 6.8, it became clear.
"I thought of myself as a versatile player in college, but Nellie took it to another level," said Pressey, now an assistant coach with New Orleans. "During my rookie training camp, I had no idea that he was teaching me the basics of a position that hadn't yet been played."
In his 10 seasons with Milwaukee, Nelson won seven consecutive division titles and had seven straight 50-win seasons. He was named Coach of the Year twice.
Small-ball
During his run in Milwaukee, Nelson also started playing around with three-guard lineups. His premise was simple: "I was going to put my best five players on the court, regardless of size," and it jolted opposing coaches.
Five stops before he got his current job as Denver's coach, George Karl remembers facing Nelson in Cleveland. Nelson kept subbing posts for guards and Karl followed suit.
Sub after sub. After sub. After sub.
"I wasn't going to let him get smaller than me," Karl said. "We kept subbing and subbing and subbing until there was no one taller than 6-foot-5 out there."
When Nelson arrived in Oakland in 1988, he turned situations like Karl's into a nightly happening. Nelson played three, four, even five guards at a time. His most famous lineup was guards Tim Hardaway (6-foot), Mitch Richmond (6-5) and Sarunas Marciulionis (6-5), with Chris Mullin (6-6) and Rod Higgins (6-7) masked as a front line.
"I'm not sure I started (small-ball)," Nelson said. "I might have stolen it from someone else, but there is no punishment for plagiarizing in basketball.
"Whatever I've done has made sense to me. With a little teaching, it makes sense to my players, too."
It made sense to the tune of four more playoff berths, two more 50-win seasons and another Coach of the Year honor during 6 1/2 seasons with Golden State.
7-footer goes deep
In 1997, when Nelson took over a Dallas team that had averaged fewer than 23 wins per season over the past seven seasons, including 11- and 13-win seasons in 1992-93 and 1993-94, he opened himself up to a whole new approach.
Along came 7-footer Dirk Nowitzki. Instead of having 7-7 Manute Bol shoot three-pointers or stashing an offensive player near halfcourt to draw shot-blockers out of the lane, Nelson had a true mismatch waiting to happen.
After a year of training, Nelson persuaded Nowitzki that it was OK to play on the perimeter at his height and sometimes defend guards. Persuading a 7-footer that he can guard 5-3 Muggsy Bogues isn't easy, but a .641 winning percentage and five playoff appearances in the next six seasons changes minds.
"He gave me a lot of confidence when I first got in the league, so I obviously owe him a lot," said Nowitzki, who is a nine-time All-Star and MVP. "I don't think there are a lot of coaches who wanted a 7-footer jacking up threes. He always put me in positions to succeed, and it was always fun playing for him."
The critics
Nelson coached Dream Team II to the gold medal in 1994, was named one of the top 10 coaches of all time by the NBA in 1997 and has led 18 teams to the playoffs. Still, on the night he became the winningest coach in the history of the league, the celebration was with Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist instead of champagne.
"I've taken a lot of criticism," Nelson said. "I've been killed about how I was destroying the game, but I've done whatever gave my teams a chance to win the game."
Nelson was widely ripped for waiting until the final five seconds of the shot clock to attempt isolation plays when his inferior Milwaukee squads first played Boston in the late '70s. Shaquille O'Neal once called Nelson a "coward" for having players foul O'Neal to expose the center's poor free-throw shooting - a practice adopted by others as "Hack-a-Shaq."
One current coach, who asked to remain anonymous, said Nelson is "an insult to the rest of us." Nelson even mocks himself for failing in an attempt to become an NBA referee and for turning down his first head-coaching offer three times before he accepted his calling.
But he hasn't been boring. Said Warriors assistant coach Keith Smart: "Nellie opens your mind to things you would never have seen."
E-mail Rusty Simmons at rsimmons@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/10/SP951CSDS2.DTL
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