Scott Seems to Have Coaching Down Pat

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —  Byron Scott had the best time of his life when he played for Coach Pat Riley’s Showtime Lakers.

So it makes sense that Scott mentions Riley nearly every day during the NBA Eastern Conference finals.

It is not Showtime that Scott has brought to the New Jersey Nets, but it is a good time. The Nets are one win away from the NBA Finals. One victory--tonight against the Boston Celtics at their FleetCenter or home Sunday at Continental Airlines Arena--and the Nets get to the NBA Finals for the first time.

There is no Magic on this team, but there is magic.

Scott can tell Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles and Keith Van Horn what it was like to win titles, play with Magic and Kareem, how it was to listen to a basketball fanatic such as Riley every day.

Milwaukee Coach George Karl had told a magazine writer this year that too many African Americans with more playing experience than coaching experience were getting NBA head coaching jobs.

Scott got the Net job with only two years of coaching apprenticeship under Rick Adelman with the Sacramento Kings. The trouble with making blanket statements is that a blanket covers everybody. And nobody. Sure Scott coached only two years. But every day that he played, especially when he played for Riley in Los Angeles and Larry Brown in Indianapolis, Scott was learning about coaching.

He was learning about the Xs and O’s, sure. New Jersey General Manager Rod Thorn said that he hired Scott two years ago because he sat for five hours in a hotel room and was hypnotized while Scott diagramed plays on a magnetic board.

But Scott was also learning more. He was learning how to be the coach, how to be the man who instigates, irritates, humbles, praises, raises shattered confidence and bruised egos and dampened spirits.

Scott says it is the memories of Riley’s intense, positive attitude that he called upon when he had to prop up a demoralized Net team after Game 3. It was there, in Boston, when the Nets had given away the biggest fourth-quarter lead in NBA playoff history and the world had the Nets consigned to the swampland they play on.

Practice was canceled the day after the collapse. After a film session and a long talk, Scott told his players to go see a movie, take a walk, have a nice meal, spend time with family. He told them to talk about tomorrow instead of yesterday. He spoke sternly about accomplishment and not failure, about toughness and not misery, about being mean and not being dejected wimps struck down by a bad quarter even if that bad quarter was the worst ever and was watched by the nation.

“I thought about what Coach Riley would say,” Scott said, “because I’ve put a lot of him in me.”

The credit for New Jersey’s journey from cursed, injury-prone losers a year ago to a powerful team needing one win in two chances to advance to the NBA Finals has gone mostly to Kidd.

It is Kidd’s arrival, conventional wisdom says, in place of moody, egotistic Stephon Marbury, that has gotten the Nets to become a running, up-tempo, happy, accomplished team. Kidd was runner-up as NBA most valuable player and conventional wisdom-makers have been saying Kidd should have won the award over Tim Duncan.

That man sitting on the bench, the one in the sharply pressed suit and expression of agony, distaste, anguish, excitement, joy, pain, anger, exhilaration, the one the players gather around at timeouts, he’s just the guy who has to call the timeouts.

“I don’t think Coach Scott gets enough credit,” Van Horn said. “He’s got a great mind for the game and a great way of getting the best out of different players in different ways.”

Scott always says what he thinks. When Detroit’s Rick Carlisle was named coach of the year this season, Scott said, “That’s not right.”

And maybe it wasn’t. The Nets won 26 games last year. They doubled that in the regular season this year. The Nets have no tradition except as buffoons and losers. The Nets entered the NBA from the ABA as supplicants who had to sell Julius Erving to Philadelphia so they could pay a rights’ fee to the Knicks.

The Nets play in the swamp where Jimmy Hoffa is supposed to be buried, in a building of no atmosphere. They represent nothing more than a turnpike exit, 16W. They are the team that featured Derrick Coleman, who uttered perhaps the best quote ever when he was disciplined for missing practice. “Whoop de damn do,” Coleman said, forever illuminating the image of a Net player as a spoiled, pampered, bratty loser.

Scott doesn’t think that way. He wants to hear none of the legendary losing and mistakes, bad draft picks and bad coaches. It is none of his business that Coach John Calipari could have chosen Kobe Bryant but picked Kittles instead because Calipari was too afraid to start his NBA coaching career with a high school player.

That is none of Scott’s business.

Scott’s business is to brashly believe the Nets are winners.

“We have a good team and we’ve had a good season,” Scott said. “Why would I think we wouldn’t go to the finals?”

Scott said that when it was pointed out to him that many experts had made the Celtics the trendy, underdog pick. And after the Nets lost a 26-point third-quarter lead in Game 3, Scott said it was the best thing that could have happened to the Nets.

Everybody laughed. But Scott was right. He said what he thought and he was right. Just like he knew he would be. Just like Coach Riley always seemed to be.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at [email protected].