Indianapolis – Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle still prefers brutal honesty to nuance.
The former Pistons coach doesn’t sugar-coat mistakes, doesn’t fear taking his critiques public and doesn’t shield players from high expectations. It’s not who he is – and these young Pacers embrace it.
Yes, after winning nearly 1,000 regular season games, one NBA title and surviving 23 up-and-down seasons as an NBA head coach, Carlisle has seemingly found the perfect fit in a locker room that views a tough, demand coaching through a more genteel prism.
“A savant,” two-time All-Star Tyrese Haliburton dubbed Carlisle during Indiana’s semifinal series. “When it comes to adjustments and getting the best out of guys, we follow his lead, and his intensity come playoff time is easy to follow. When we have a game like (the Game 3 loss to Cleveland), he sets the tone with our energy, practice, film or whatever.”
Carlisle is back in his third Eastern Conference finals not because he stuck to his old-school philosophy, but because he figured out how to adapt to the league’s new ways.
Instead of routinely calling plays from the bench or complaining when opponents produce 40-point quarters, the 65-year-old Carlisle trusts Haliburton and the Pacers ball-handlers on the floor and now understands high-scoring quarters are just part of today’s game – even if he doesn’t like it.
The transition hasn’t come without some rough edges such as the sideline clash between Carlisle and All-Star guard Rajon Rondo in February 2015.
“I would literally give him (Rondo) my play sheet, and he would make calls.” said Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers, who coached Rondo in Boston. “I remember Rick calling me and the last thing I told him was ‘Rick, I may have created a monster, I don’t know. You’re going to have let him help you on the floor.’ It was like 24 hours later you see them getting into it on the sideline because Rondo didn’t want to call that play.”
The two patched things up later. But in the decade since, things seem to have changed.
Center Myles Turner, who grew up in Dallas, believes Carlisle has given the players more freedom to work their magic on the court. New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson also saw that side of Carlisle during his first five pro seasons in Dallas.
Brunson and Carlisle will meet for the second straight year in the playoffs Wednesday night in Game 1 at New York.
“Different personnel, but that’s just coach Carlisle. With the personnel he has he’s going to adapt and going to play with whatever their personnel’s strengths are,” Brunson said Monday. “What he’s been able to do there (with Indiana) in a short time is special.”
Carlisle’s coaching principles are the result of a 40-plus year resume that reads like a basketball history lesson.
He was teammates with Ralph Sampson, Larry Bird and the late Bill Walton. As a coach, he worked with stars such as Reggie Miller, Chauncey Billups, Dirk Nowitzki, Luka Doncic and Brunson and endured the pain of playoff losses with some of the game’s biggest names – Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal and the late Kobe Bryant.
Carlisle won a championship with the 1985-86 Boston Celtics, one of the greatest teams in league history, and in 2010-11 as the Mavericks coach. And in between he dealt with the fallout from one of he NBA’s biggest black eyes, the 2004 brawl between Indiana and Detroit.
But Carlisle never shied away from a challenge, and he managed to navigate the NBA’s ever-evolving world long enough that he’ll head into next season as the league’s second-winningest active coach, behind Rivers, and needing seven victories become the 11th member of the 1,000-win club.
In two seasons as head coach with the Pistons, he led the team to consecutive 50-32 records (.610) with Central Division titles and playoff appearances.
“I think all of us have had to change,” Rivers said. “Where Rick has been always good, in my opinion, he just coaches the team he has, and I think he realized early on with Haliburton, this may be one of those teams where ‘I just have to wind them up and let them go.’ I think that’s why he’s a sensational coach.”
And Haliburton & Co. have taken full advantage.
A year ago, they ended a franchise-worst nine-game skid in the playoffs, won their first postseason series and reached the conference finals for the first time in a decade.
This year, they won 50 games and earned home-court advantage for the first round for the first time since 2013-2014. Now the Pacers are four wins away from reaching the NBA Finals for the second time and to nobody’s surprise, Carlisle is back on the bench for this run, too.
“He let’s players go out there and create,” Turner said. “I think that helps, especially this time of year, because in the playoffs, everybody scouts, everybody knows your plays and whatnot. So you’ve got to freelance more. I think his experience with different personnel, different guys in this league, he knows how to adapt.”
Celtics prepare for monumental offseason
The past 72 hours since the Boston Celtics were eliminated from the playoffs have been a vortex of emotions, conversations and lack of sleep for Brad Stevens.
The team’s president of basketball operations is fully aware there are a lot of questions for him and the front office as the Celtics embark on an offseason that will be replete with challenges that were both expected and unexpected entering this season.
He also wants to make it clear that they don’t plan to rush any of the decisions that lie ahead for the franchise.
“I know there will be a lot of questions about what’s next,” Stevens said during his season-ending news conference on Monday. “At the end of the day I think that will all be driven by the same thing that’s always driven us and that’s ‘How do we get ourselves in the mix to compete for championships best?’ I think that will get more clarity as we take a deep breath, get a little more sleep than we have the last three nights.”
Those three sleepless nights have included coming to terms with the end of their run as defending NBA champions, star Jayson Tatum’s devastating torn Achilles tendon injury and impending rehabilitation that will take up most of next season, and upcoming payroll decisions and potential roster moves that will affect how competitive Boston is in the immediate future.
With Boston’s payroll for next season on track to come in around $225 million, next year’s tax bill would be at almost $280 million. The combined potential $500 million total price tag would be a league record under the current highly restrictive Collective Bargaining Agreement.
It is unclear whether the team’s incoming ownership will want to keep paying those hefty penalties after agreeing to a purchase in March expected to have a final price of a minimum of $6.1 billion.
“The north star is to have a championship contender, right? So you have to do what’s best to give yourself the best opportunity to do that when you can do that,” Stevens said. “And so, we just have to decide how feasible that is on any given year and make sure we are making the decisions accordingly.”
Stevens mostly declined to provide detail about what will go into that process, saying that he would have more to say on it around the NBA draft. But he did acknowledge that it’s unclear whether so-called championship windows are becoming smaller because of the current CBA.
“That’s a good question. I don’t know,” Stevens said. “I think certainly it is more challenging in certain circumstances for sure.”
He also was clear that even though other factors like Jaylen Brown managing what Stevens confirmed is a partially torn meniscus in his right knee, or Kristaps Porzingis dealing with “post-virus syndrome” didn’t prevent Boston from avoiding becoming the sixth straight defending champion not to make it out of the second round the following season.
“I’d rather talk about the CBA and all that crap,” Stevens joked. “The reality is we blew the first two games (against New York), and that’s why we put ourselves in a tough spot. … That’s not on any one person. It’s not out of maliciousness. It’s not out of a bad decision. It’s not bad luck. It’s we had an opportunity to win those first two home games and we put ourselves behind the 8-ball.”
As for the outlook going forward for Brown and Porzingis, Stevens said he is hopeful that absences away from the court won’t be extended.
He said Brown conveyed to him that his knee felt better by the end of New York series, and that he’s encouraged by Porzingis’ plans to play for Latvia at EuroBasket in August.
He also has confidence that Brown can play whatever role is needed next season during Tatum’s absence.
“Those guys have been the core parts of this program for a while. So, there’s no question about that,” Stevens said. “Those guys, they’ve achieved so much. And certainly deserve all the recognition and praise and accolades they get. But, yeah, that’s a huge part of us being the best version of ourselves.”
Cavaliers expect higher expectations
Koby Altman realizes expectations for the Cleveland Cavaliers going into next season will be much different.
Such is life for a franchise that was the top seed in the Eastern Conference but had their postseason run end in disappointment, losing to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Altman, the Cavaliers president of basketball operations, knows the most important goals during the offseason are trying to make sure the roster is mentally and physically tougher to handle being looked at as one of the top teams in the league when training camp begins in late September.
“I think we can all agree that coming into the season no one predicted us to be (the) No. 1 seed. I don’t think anyone had 64 wins. Because we were so good we recreated the expectation of finals. I think everyone in here saw potential champions, which is a new space for us,” Altman said. “We recreated the expectation and now we have to live with that. I think it’s a space we want to live in and take that into the playoffs next year, knowing we’re going to have to change that narrative, knowing that we have get over the hump.”
The Cavaliers have had steady improvement the last four seasons as they rebuilt the roster after four straight trips to the NBA Finals (2015-18) and a 2016 NBA title during LeBron James’ second stint.
Altman has built a solid core group with Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen. The group has played together for three seasons and has proven it can be formidable in the regular season. They had a 16-win improvement in NBA Coach of the Year Kenny Atkinson’s first season and were the East’s top seed for the first time in nine years.
The next step though is advancing beyond the conference semifinals.
Altman pointed to Indiana, Denver, Boston and Oklahoma City as teams that had to go through growing pains with their core players before achieving success.
When it comes to what was the determining factor in the Indiana series, Altman pointed to the end of Game 2, which the Pacers won 120-119 on Tyrese Haliburton’s 3-pointer with 1.1 seconds remaining. Haliburton missed the second free throw with Indiana trailing by two points, but got the offensive rebound before hitting his winning shot.
“That one foul line backout in Game 2, that’s a level of focus and winning that we have to get to. And it’s gonna eat at us, it’s going to haunt us,” Altman said.
Reserve guard Ty Jerome is due to become an unrestricted free agent, but Altman said there is interest in re-signing him. The Cavaliers are above both aprons of the salary cap, meaning that trying to find more depth for the bench could be difficult, but ownership has not given Altman any restrictions by going into the luxury tax.
While Mitchell attracts plenty of attention and headlines, the Cavaliers’ fortunes largely depend on Mobley taking another big step. Mobley was named the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year and had a breakout season after averaging 18.5 points, 9.3 rebounds and being selected to the NBA All-Star Game for the first time.
Mobley also had nine games this season with at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.
“We’re going to go as a franchise as Evan is going to go. And we’ve had that conversation with Evan,” Altman said. “In the playoffs, we need more. We need more than 13 field-goal attempts per game – that’s new for Evan. There’s another jump. And so to that point, Kenny’s going to be able to implement his offseason program, which we’re very excited about. And we’re going to see some internal growth there, and we think we have one of the best big men in the game in Evan Mobley.
Thunder’s Williams fined $25,000
The NBA has fined Oklahoma City Thunder All-Star Jalen Williams $25,000 for wearing clothing with profane language during a postgame media session, the league announced Monday.
Williams’ actions came Sunday after the Thunder’s 125-93 victory over the Denver Nuggets in Game 7 of their conference semifinals playoff series. Williams scored 24 points to help the Thunder advance to the Western Conference finals. Oklahoma City will open the series at home against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday.
Williams was a first-time All-Star this season. He averaged 21.6 points, 5.3 rebounds and 5.1 assists during the regular season for the Thunder, who finished with a league-best 68-14 record.
Conference Finals schedulesEastern ConferenceNew York vs. Indiana
▶ Game 1: Wednesday at New York, 8
▶ Game 2: Friday at New York, 8
▶ Game 3: Sunday at Indiana, 8
▶ Game 4: Tuesday, May 27 at Indiana, 8
▶ Game 5: x-Thursday, May 29 at New York, TBA
▶ Game 6: x-Saturday, May 31 at Indiana, TBA
▶ Game 7: x-Monday, June 2 at New York, TBA
Western ConferenceOklahoma City vs. Minnesota
▶ Game 1: Tuesday at Oklahoma City, 8:30
▶ Game 2: Thursday at Oklahoma City, 8:30
▶ Game 3: Saturday at Minnesota, 8:30
▶ Game 4: Monday, May 26 at Minnesota, 8:30
▶ Game 5: x-Wednesday, May 28 at Oklahoma City, TBA
▶ Game 6: x-Friday, May 30 at Minnesota, TBA
▶ Game 7: x-Sunday, June 1 at Oklahoma City, TBA
Finals schedules
▶ Game 1: Thursday, June 5
▶ Game 2: Sunday, June 8
▶ Game 3: Wednesday, June 11
▶ Game 4: Friday, June 13
▶ Game 5: x-Monday, June 16
▶ Game 6: x-Thursday, June 19
▶ Game 7: x-Sunday, June 22
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