[2级]‘We had NBA guys backing up NBA guys’: The story of the 2010-11 Reno Bighorns由JabariIverson 发表在翻译团招工部 https://bbs.hupu.com/fyt-store
In his 31 years of coaching, Eric Musselman has never been one to coach sitting down. Not even during a dominant win. So when Clay Moser, Musselman’s longtime top assistant, saw the head coach approaching the bench during a 2011 D-League game in Idaho, he thought something was wrong with his boss.
“Are you OK?” Moser asked.
“I’m fine,” Musselan responded as he sat down. “This is the best team in the history of minor league basketball. If we keep this team together, nobody can beat us.”
Musselman was in the middle of his first year coaching the Reno Bighorns, and his team was toward the end of a 110-96 win over the Idaho Stampede. Musselman’s squad was relatively loaded, featuring future NBA regulars in Jeremy Lin, Danny Green, Hassan Whiteside and Steve Novak.
During his lone year in Reno, Musselman, now the University of Arkansas coach, led a team that still has its fingerprints on the NBA nearly a decade later, from the court to front offices.
Before each team had its own affiliate, before two-way contracts were introduced and before the league had its own team for blue-chip prospects, Musselman was one of the coaches to master the NBA’s minor league system ahead of the league’s investments in it. While he helped save the careers of Green and Novak and played a role in Linsanity, Musselman learned the tight-rope walk of winning while also getting his players called up to the league.
“This desolate corner of the country where no one would ever go, Eric was turning guys from basketball vagabonds to basketball studs,” said David Minceberg, the Bucks current vice president of basketball strategy, who used to regularly watch Reno play.
By 2010, Musselman had been out of coaching for three years. He had failed stints as head coach of the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings, took a break from the profession, and spent some time working as a broadcaster. When he decided to return to the bench, he wanted a gig that was within driving distance of Danville, Calif., a city just east of San Francisco, where his two sons lived. Reno was only a three-hour drive.
“I thought I could get back in the NBA if I did that for one or two years,” Musselman said of his reasoning.
Musselman took the job immediately with the Bighorns, despite the fact that Reno was the affiliate for the Kings and Warriors, the two NBA teams that fired him in the past. Reno started the 2010-11 season off 7-1 behind the likes of Aaron Miles, Patrick Ewing Jr., Nick Fazekas and Marcus Landry. Future NBA veteran Donald Sloan and Courtney Fortson came off the bench. Throughout the season, Lin and Whiteside regularly came through when their teams sent them down for increased playing time.
“We had NBA guys backing up NBA guys,” Moser said.
Whiteside became one of the biggest surprises to emerge from Reno after leading the NBA in blocks and rebounding in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
“Hassan Whiteside was really struggling,” said Aubrey McCreary, a Reno volunteer assistant coach that season. “He had a level of immaturity beyond belief. Credit to him, he figured it out.”
While Musselman was away from coaching, he spent a lot of time with Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane, who also lived in Danville. Musselman saw how Beane’s embrace of analytics regularly made the A’s playoff contenders despite their financial shortcomings. He thought a similar approach could translate to the D-League, where salaries couldn’t compete with what European clubs offered. Sammy Gelfand, Reno’s director of analytics, led the team to acquiring Green and Novak later in the season, and helped round out the Bighorns coaching staff, which was just as notable as its roster.
“Muss was very open with hiring people,” Gelfand said. “On the caveat that you couldn’t get paid.”
Musselman’s staff included Moser, now his assistant at Arkansas; Gelfand, now director of coaching analytics for Detroit; Phil Handy, now a Lakers assistant; Tom Bialaszewski, now an assistant in Italy for coaching legend Ettore Messina; Phil Hubbard, former assistant for Atlanta, Golden State and Washington; and McCreary, former Cleveland and Louisiana Tech assistant.
“Eric always surrounded himself with people that challenged him,” Handy said. “It wasn’t a ‘yes man’ type of thing. He gave all of us the opportunity. Everyone just embraced it. We had the most talented team in the G League. It was just the environment that Eric had.”
For most of the season, Miles was considered the team’s top NBA prospect before tearing an ACL in January 2011, days before he was set to get a call-up. Meanwhile, Green was sitting at home contemplating an offer from a team in Italy after the Spurs released him, and Novak had been waived by the Mavericks a month earlier. Both players felt like they were running out of options to stick in the NBA.
“I just didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Green said. “I was starting to give up hope a bit.”
Green was acquired in a trade with the Rio Grande Vipers for Ewing Jr. in late January, a week before Novak was picked up off waivers. The night before that February game in Idaho, the first of a back-to-back against the Stampede, Green and Novak went to dinner with Lin at a P.F. Changs in Boise to pick his brain on Musselman.
Novak remembers Lin talking about how Musselman let him play through his mistakes, and improve his point guard vision and offensive game. For Green, who came in low on confidence, that was all he needed to hear.
“(Musselman) really vouched for me,” Green said. “He really let me play free. He really let me do my thing. The day I got in, he asked me how things were going, he incorporated me into a lot of stuff, but he was tenacious. He got after it. He talked his trash to opponents. He was a tough son of a gun.”
After that win in Idaho, Musselman proclaimed his squad the greatest in minor league basketball. Green (15 points), Novak (21) and Lin (17) each put up admirable scoring performances, and Reno shot 47 percent from 3 against an Idaho team led by former Celtics star Antoine Walker.
Because of the constant attrition, Musselman didn’t see the point in committing his team to one specific style of play. So he tailored the offense to the players’ strengths and adjusted when he had to. Novak’s shooting (80 percent from the floor against Idaho) added a new dimension to Reno’s offense.
Idaho had no way to stop Reno’s offense and to prove it, Musselman called the same set, a middle pick-and-roll, for 30 consecutive plays. The result always led to a wide-open 3 for Novak, Green or another shooter.
“Fifth up, 15, list 4, middle pick-and-roll with Novak listed,” Musselman said of the play call.
The day of the second game against the Stampede, Lin was recalled by Golden State, but Reno beat Idaho again behind Novak and Green. The Bighorns shot 57 percent from 3.
“We’re never going to lose another game,” Musselman told his staff on the trip back to Reno. “We’re loaded.”
But two hours after the team got back to Reno, Musselman called McCreary.
“Well, I guess we might lose some games,” Musselman said. “Because Novak just got called up to the Spurs.”
Novak was the first call-up in Bighorns history, and he never even played a game in Reno.
Green signed with the Spurs full-time that March. But even without Green, Novak and Lin, who eventually ran out of player options that sent him to Reno, the Bighorns remained successful, led by Landry and Sloan, who eventually had a seven-year NBA career after Reno. Musselman’s team finished the regular season 34-16 and advanced to the second round of the D-League playoffs.
“He wasn’t afraid to have 10 legit players on his team,” Handy said. “Some coaches might try to have as many good players but save some room so guys aren’t upset. Eric didn’t care. When you have that, it breeds a competitive environment.”
Musselman spent the next two seasons coaching another D-League team, the Los Angeles D-Fenders (now the South Bay Lakers). Musselman led the team to a 38-12 record in 2011-12 and a D-League finals appearance, but was unable to catch the attention of the NBA. It was then that his wife, Danyelle Sargent, turned his attention to coaching in college. He joined Herb Sandek’s staff at Arizona State in 2012.
“Almost everybody outside of Muss ended up getting to the NBA,” Gelfand said. “I always felt a little bad because I felt like it was based on prior reputation. Anyone that knows Muss knows he knows basketball. I think a lot of people couldn’t look past when he was younger in his career. He can coach in the NBA. There’s no question.”
Raptors coach Nick Nurse and Jazz coach Quin Snyder have become the poster boys of D-League coaches who successfully made the transition to the NBA. Nurse remembers coaching against Musselman in the D-League and said he was underrated for how he mastered the system before most coaches.
“Those guys just knew how to find and recruit talent at that level,” Nurse said. “They were really good at it.”
Musselman said he’s more proud of what his former players and coaches have become. Handy has been on the bench during the last five NBA Finals, winning a title with the Cavaliers in 2016 and Raptors in 2019 alongside Green, whose postseason performances have shown Musselman how far Green’s confidence has come. Whiteside is averaging a double-double for Portland in his first season with the Trail Blazers. Meanwhile, Gelfand, Atkinson and Miles all were with the Warriors during their recent dynasty. Even Ryan Atkinson, a then-25-year-old who logged long hours in the Bighorns equipment room that season, has ascended to become general manager of the Santa Cruz Warriors.
“(The Warriors) have our staff members because of what we did in Reno,” Musselman said.
Miles later coached two years in the G League and said the experience gave him an appreciation for how Musselman ran things, as Miles came to realize a thin line a coach has to walk between development and winning.
“For me, it’s the most unique league in the world,” Miles said. “The whole objective is to get a call-up for most guys, so it creates a sense of selfishness for what I have to do to get there.”
A year after that dinner in Boise, Novak, Lin and Green met up again. In the middle of a lockout-shortened season, Lin had risen to global fame for his miraculous run with the Knicks, where he was playing with Novak, who led the league in 3-point shooting that year. Green had stuck in San Antonio and became a starter. All three talked about how far they had come. By the start of the 2012-13 season, the trio would go on to sign contracts that totaled up to 10 years worth $50 million, just recently removed from their time with the Bighorns, who became the Stockton Kings in 2018.
All three kept in touch over the years, and Green said he thinks of Musselman often, including after winning the NBA Finals with Toronto last year.
Gelfand said a large portion of the people he met in Reno still keep in touch. Green goes out of his way to hug him whenever the Lakers play the Pistons.
When asked how they know each other, Gelfand always gives the same answer.
“Reno, baby!”
In his 31 years of coaching, Eric Musselman has never been one to coach sitting down. Not even during a dominant win. So when Clay Moser, Musselman’s longtime top assistant, saw the head coach approaching the bench during a 2011 D-League game in Idaho, he thought something was wrong with his boss.
“Are you OK?” Moser asked.
“I’m fine,” Musselan responded as he sat down. “This is the best team in the history of minor league basketball. If we keep this team together, nobody can beat us.”
Musselman was in the middle of his first year coaching the Reno Bighorns, and his team was toward the end of a 110-96 win over the Idaho Stampede. Musselman’s squad was relatively loaded, featuring future NBA regulars in Jeremy Lin, Danny Green, Hassan Whiteside and Steve Novak.
During his lone year in Reno, Musselman, now the University of Arkansas coach, led a team that still has its fingerprints on the NBA nearly a decade later, from the court to front offices.
Before each team had its own affiliate, before two-way contracts were introduced and before the league had its own team for blue-chip prospects, Musselman was one of the coaches to master the NBA’s minor league system ahead of the league’s investments in it. While he helped save the careers of Green and Novak and played a role in Linsanity, Musselman learned the tight-rope walk of winning while also getting his players called up to the league.
“This desolate corner of the country where no one would ever go, Eric was turning guys from basketball vagabonds to basketball studs,” said David Minceberg, the Bucks current vice president of basketball strategy, who used to regularly watch Reno play.
By 2010, Musselman had been out of coaching for three years. He had failed stints as head coach of the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings, took a break from the profession, and spent some time working as a broadcaster. When he decided to return to the bench, he wanted a gig that was within driving distance of Danville, Calif., a city just east of San Francisco, where his two sons lived. Reno was only a three-hour drive.
“I thought I could get back in the NBA if I did that for one or two years,” Musselman said of his reasoning.
Musselman took the job immediately with the Bighorns, despite the fact that Reno was the affiliate for the Kings and Warriors, the two NBA teams that fired him in the past. Reno started the 2010-11 season off 7-1 behind the likes of Aaron Miles, Patrick Ewing Jr., Nick Fazekas and Marcus Landry. Future NBA veteran Donald Sloan and Courtney Fortson came off the bench. Throughout the season, Lin and Whiteside regularly came through when their teams sent them down for increased playing time.
“We had NBA guys backing up NBA guys,” Moser said.
Whiteside became one of the biggest surprises to emerge from Reno after leading the NBA in blocks and rebounding in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
“Hassan Whiteside was really struggling,” said Aubrey McCreary, a Reno volunteer assistant coach that season. “He had a level of immaturity beyond belief. Credit to him, he figured it out.”
While Musselman was away from coaching, he spent a lot of time with Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane, who also lived in Danville. Musselman saw how Beane’s embrace of analytics regularly made the A’s playoff contenders despite their financial shortcomings. He thought a similar approach could translate to the D-League, where salaries couldn’t compete with what European clubs offered. Sammy Gelfand, Reno’s director of analytics, led the team to acquiring Green and Novak later in the season, and helped round out the Bighorns coaching staff, which was just as notable as its roster.
“Muss was very open with hiring people,” Gelfand said. “On the caveat that you couldn’t get paid.”
Musselman’s staff included Moser, now his assistant at Arkansas; Gelfand, now director of coaching analytics for Detroit; Phil Handy, now a Lakers assistant; Tom Bialaszewski, now an assistant in Italy for coaching legend Ettore Messina; Phil Hubbard, former assistant for Atlanta, Golden State and Washington; and McCreary, former Cleveland and Louisiana Tech assistant.
“Eric always surrounded himself with people that challenged him,” Handy said. “It wasn’t a ‘yes man’ type of thing. He gave all of us the opportunity. Everyone just embraced it. We had the most talented team in the G League. It was just the environment that Eric had.”
For most of the season, Miles was considered the team’s top NBA prospect before tearing an ACL in January 2011, days before he was set to get a call-up. Meanwhile, Green was sitting at home contemplating an offer from a team in Italy after the Spurs released him, and Novak had been waived by the Mavericks a month earlier. Both players felt like they were running out of options to stick in the NBA.
“I just didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Green said. “I was starting to give up hope a bit.”
Green was acquired in a trade with the Rio Grande Vipers for Ewing Jr. in late January, a week before Novak was picked up off waivers. The night before that February game in Idaho, the first of a back-to-back against the Stampede, Green and Novak went to dinner with Lin at a P.F. Changs in Boise to pick his brain on Musselman.
Novak remembers Lin talking about how Musselman let him play through his mistakes, and improve his point guard vision and offensive game. For Green, who came in low on confidence, that was all he needed to hear.
“(Musselman) really vouched for me,” Green said. “He really let me play free. He really let me do my thing. The day I got in, he asked me how things were going, he incorporated me into a lot of stuff, but he was tenacious. He got after it. He talked his trash to opponents. He was a tough son of a gun.”
After that win in Idaho, Musselman proclaimed his squad the greatest in minor league basketball. Green (15 points), Novak (21) and Lin (17) each put up admirable scoring performances, and Reno shot 47 percent from 3 against an Idaho team led by former Celtics star Antoine Walker.
Because of the constant attrition, Musselman didn’t see the point in committing his team to one specific style of play. So he tailored the offense to the players’ strengths and adjusted when he had to. Novak’s shooting (80 percent from the floor against Idaho) added a new dimension to Reno’s offense.
Idaho had no way to stop Reno’s offense and to prove it, Musselman called the same set, a middle pick-and-roll, for 30 consecutive plays. The result always led to a wide-open 3 for Novak, Green or another shooter.
“Fifth up, 15, list 4, middle pick-and-roll with Novak listed,” Musselman said of the play call.
The day of the second game against the Stampede, Lin was recalled by Golden State, but Reno beat Idaho again behind Novak and Green. The Bighorns shot 57 percent from 3.
“We’re never going to lose another game,” Musselman told his staff on the trip back to Reno. “We’re loaded.”
But two hours after the team got back to Reno, Musselman called McCreary.
“Well, I guess we might lose some games,” Musselman said. “Because Novak just got called up to the Spurs.”
Novak was the first call-up in Bighorns history, and he never even played a game in Reno.
Green signed with the Spurs full-time that March. But even without Green, Novak and Lin, who eventually ran out of player options that sent him to Reno, the Bighorns remained successful, led by Landry and Sloan, who eventually had a seven-year NBA career after Reno. Musselman’s team finished the regular season 34-16 and advanced to the second round of the D-League playoffs.
“He wasn’t afraid to have 10 legit players on his team,” Handy said. “Some coaches might try to have as many good players but save some room so guys aren’t upset. Eric didn’t care. When you have that, it breeds a competitive environment.”
Musselman spent the next two seasons coaching another D-League team, the Los Angeles D-Fenders (now the South Bay Lakers). Musselman led the team to a 38-12 record in 2011-12 and a D-League finals appearance, but was unable to catch the attention of the NBA. It was then that his wife, Danyelle Sargent, turned his attention to coaching in college. He joined Herb Sandek’s staff at Arizona State in 2012.
“Almost everybody outside of Muss ended up getting to the NBA,” Gelfand said. “I always felt a little bad because I felt like it was based on prior reputation. Anyone that knows Muss knows he knows basketball. I think a lot of people couldn’t look past when he was younger in his career. He can coach in the NBA. There’s no question.”
Raptors coach Nick Nurse and Jazz coach Quin Snyder have become the poster boys of D-League coaches who successfully made the transition to the NBA. Nurse remembers coaching against Musselman in the D-League and said he was underrated for how he mastered the system before most coaches.
“Those guys just knew how to find and recruit talent at that level,” Nurse said. “They were really good at it.”
Musselman said he’s more proud of what his former players and coaches have become. Handy has been on the bench during the last five NBA Finals, winning a title with the Cavaliers in 2016 and Raptors in 2019 alongside Green, whose postseason performances have shown Musselman how far Green’s confidence has come. Whiteside is averaging a double-double for Portland in his first season with the Trail Blazers. Meanwhile, Gelfand, Atkinson and Miles all were with the Warriors during their recent dynasty. Even Ryan Atkinson, a then-25-year-old who logged long hours in the Bighorns equipment room that season, has ascended to become general manager of the Santa Cruz Warriors.
“(The Warriors) have our staff members because of what we did in Reno,” Musselman said.
Miles later coached two years in the G League and said the experience gave him an appreciation for how Musselman ran things, as Miles came to realize a thin line a coach has to walk between development and winning.
“For me, it’s the most unique league in the world,” Miles said. “The whole objective is to get a call-up for most guys, so it creates a sense of selfishness for what I have to do to get there.”
A year after that dinner in Boise, Novak, Lin and Green met up again. In the middle of a lockout-shortened season, Lin had risen to global fame for his miraculous run with the Knicks, where he was playing with Novak, who led the league in 3-point shooting that year. Green had stuck in San Antonio and became a starter. All three talked about how far they had come. By the start of the 2012-13 season, the trio would go on to sign contracts that totaled up to 10 years worth $50 million, just recently removed from their time with the Bighorns, who became the Stockton Kings in 2018.
All three kept in touch over the years, and Green said he thinks of Musselman often, including after winning the NBA Finals with Toronto last year.
Gelfand said a large portion of the people he met in Reno still keep in touch. Green goes out of his way to hug him whenever the Lakers play the Pistons.
When asked how they know each other, Gelfand always gives the same answer.
“Reno, baby!”
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