P.J. Carlesimo called time out from his work as Nets interim coach to break down his many stops as a basketball lifer with Steve Serby.
Q: The [Latrell] Sprewell incident (Sprewell choked his coach at Warriors practice in 1997) … how do you think it changed you?
A: I don’t think it changed me a ton. Obviously, it probably makes you a little more sensitive, overly sensitive to player-coach relationships, and if they ever look like they’re gonna escalate, I’d probably be a little more sensitive than most in that way. Again, a horrible situation that you went through, and again, what are you gonna do? It happened, and you gotta deal with it. It was disappointing the way it all became almost turned around, but you couldn’t control it. It was what it was.
Q: What advice did your father have for you at that time?
A: I don’t remember a specific conversation, but if we did, it certainly would have been, “Hey, take the high road and just try and handle it as best you can, as diplomatically as you can.”
Q: And your mom?
A: This is where it was a flip — she would’ve been more emotional in that. My mother is not really an emotional person. I remember all the things that ever happened in the family, and I think other than when my father died, she’s just always unflappable. We play a team that I got fired from or something like that, she wants to beat them. She’s gonna hold a grudge a lot longer than my father.
Q: Did Sprewell ever apologize to you?
A: We talked. … The first time I think we were face to face was a Knick game I was working for NBC with Mike Breen, we did the Christmas Day game in New York. He came over, he might have been coming over to do an interview with Clyde [Frazier] or something like that. We had been face to face because there were hearings and things like that, arbitrations and everything, so we had been together. But I don’t think we’d ever been together where you could talk.
Q: So what was that conversation like?
A: I actually forget, but the tenor of it was, “It’s over, let’s move on.”
Q: But you don’t remember him ever apologizing?
A: Truthfully, I can’t say, I don’t want to say he didn’t, ’cause he might say, “That’s bulls–t, I did.” But I don’t remember us having a conversation of that nature.
Q: Were NBA stars supportive?
A: A lot of NBA players and coaches were great during that time.
Q: Did you have to deal with hecklers in the stands?
A: Oh, yeah, still do. Those days, all the time. Three games aren’t gonna go by now that somebody’s not gonna yell something. But they just yell Spree’s name. All they ever do is yell “Sprewell” or something like that.
Q: Do you find it humorous, or …?
A: It’s there, it’s always gonna be there probably. You write about it, it’s gonna be four out of five games in the future for a little while. That’s just the way it is. It’s certainly gonna happen more as a head coach. As assistant coach, half the time people don’t even know who you are, so you walk in, you walk out, without anybody saying anything.
Q: Adjectives to describe your coaching style?
A: “Intense” is probably fair. Hopefully people would say “prepared,” “demanding.” I would also think that they would say, particularly guys that have played for me, that in fact that I care about the player.
Q: Could you have coached Sprewell today?
A: Sure.
Q: You think you could do maybe a better job of dealing with a personality like that now?
A: Hopefully, but hopefully I did a good job then, too.
Q: But you did say you’re more conscious of the relationship.
A: Well, I think you would have to have no IQ whatsoever to not be aware of any circumstance that resembled that. So anytime you had a blowup or whatever with the player, which there are a lot, it’s not an unusual thing. … I probably am a little more sensitized to that than most people.
Q: From coaching Seton Hall in the 1980s, how was the Big East Conference in its heyday?
A: Can’t tell you how great it was to be involved in it. Can’t tell you how disappointed I am to see what’s happened now. You can’t feel as good as we all felt about that league. It didn’t take long for Dave [Gavitt, commissioner] to move everybody out of the little arenas. So many of those games were played in Boston Garden and Madison Square Garden, the Meadowlands and the Cap Centre. And they were all televised. It was like the NCAA Tournament all year. And now, to see what’s evolved … it’s almost depressing. If I thought about it, it would be depressing.
Q: Favorite Seton Hall memory?
A: It had to be the [1989] Final Four. If not, the year before. Our first NCAA Tournament was the year prior to the Final Four, Mark Bryant’s senior year, and there was always the sense, to me and to our coaches, that they had stuck by us. And, it was like a classic “coulda made a change” [scenario] — we already had the nucleus there of those guys — that it very easily could have been somebody else [coaching], and that team still would have done great, probably could have gotten to the Final Four, the whole thing. I always said no team goes to the Final Four, even a Duke that goes 100 times, I don’t think any school ever enjoyed the Final Four experience more than Seton Hall enjoyed it that year. It was just unbelievable, so good for so many people.
Q: Wasn’t there a point when you were hung in effigy?
A: Oh, yeah (chuckle). Without question.
Q: What was that like?
A: When the student newspaper’s writing stuff about you or you’re getting booed, which we got booed a lot at the Meadowlands, or at Walsh [Gymnasium] in those days, there’s nothing you can do. What can you do? You can do what you’re doing and ignore it and just try and coach.
Q: Easier said than done.
A: I understood the situation. I mean, I think I had seen that in enough other places, enough friends that had to deal with it, and just rationally, what can you do? The thing that takes a while to get used to is just ignoring what you hear. It’s easy to stop reading papers and listening to radio and TV or something like that, but people are yelling stuff at the games and stuff like that. It’s like the NBA now, guys have to do deal with trade rumors, sometimes it’s really tough for rookies their first or second time somebody goes through it. You get to a veteran guy, no one likes it, but they’ve dealt with it so many times, it’s like that’s the way it is. You come and play the next day, and you literally, hopefully, get to the point where it doesn’t have an impact on you.
Q: How heartbreaking was the infamous John Clougherty call in the NCAA finals against Michigan that sent Rumeal Robinson to the foul line?
A: As difficult a situation as you can deal with, because it was one point in overtime, and we were a stop away from … the thing that everybody forgets, if John doesn’t blow the whistle, Michigan’s gonna get a shot, Rumeal’s gonna get a shot, or he’s gonna throw the ball probably to Loy Vaught. They’re gonna get a shot, and it goes in or it doesn’t go in, which obviously we would have preferred. The thing that our guys got great praise and credit for was how they dealt with it. But again, what are you gonna do? You can be a baby or cry about it. First of all, it detracts from what Michigan just did. And Rumeal still had to make the two free throws, and he was not a good percentage shooter, he was low 60s, I think, 62 or something like that.
Q: Do you remember the next time Clougherty reffed one of your games?
A: It was a while. I think they intentionally didn’t send him to the Meadowlands for a while. … I don’t remember specifically the next game, but I remember the next time he walked on the floor at the Meadowlands, people around here are gonna remember and he heard it. … John Clougherty’s a good friend. I said then, and everybody thought we were just saying it: You never get a bad crew in the Final Four. John would have been one of the guys I wanted to work the game. If you said to me before the game, “Here’s a list of the 10 best officials in the country, pick the three,” John would have been one of the three.
Q: Why didn’t you take the Kentucky job?
A: I just felt that a) It wasn’t as good a fit for me as Seton Hall. And probably even more so, what we talked about before, Seton Hall had stuck by us, and given us the time to get it turned around. I would have loved to have worked with [former Kentucky athletic director] C.M. Newton. It was just the wrong time to leave Seton Hall.
Q: 25 words or less: Looie [Carnesecca]?
A: The best. Unlike a lot of coaches, a great loser. A great, great coach, but a much better person.
Q: Rollie [Massimino]?
A: Great coach, great family guy. Was one of those guys that would just push you to be successful because he was so competitive.
Q: Villanova shocking Georgetown in the 1985 championship game?
A: The game was not surprising to us in the league.
Q: [Jim] Boeheim?
A: One of my closest friends. If you can be as successful as he is and still be underrated as a coach and underappreciated as a person, that’s him.
Q: Big John Thompson?
A: Totally misunderstood. You can almost ditto Looie’s comments. The most gracious guy in the world when he beat you, and when you beat him, there’s no excuse. Is a totally different person off the court than his public persona. A great man and a great friend.
Q: What was it like having Bobby Knight coach you when you were 8 years old?
A: I grew up worshipping the guy. He was very close to my high school coach, Jack Gallagher. To me, still the best teacher of the game of basketball that’s ever coached.
Q: Chuck Daly?
A: Brilliant coach, fantastic man. Really, really incredible insights into dealing with NBA players and handling people. Good, good friend and a great mentor for me.
Q: Coach K?
A: Along with [Boeheim], maybe my closest friend. No one, I think, understands or practices the psychology of coaching better than him. He’s a phenomenal X and O guy, but he’s so competitive and he’s so good managing people.
Q: Jim Calhoun?
A: All you had to do was play against his Northeastern teams, you knew how great a coach he was, how competitive a coach he was.
Q: Gregg Popovich?
A: You got a combination of Boeheim and Krzyzewski in terms of clearly the X and Os and his understanding of the game, but maybe his stronger suit is the way he handles people. I think he knows a ton about basketball — he knows twice as much about wine, or about international politics.
Q: A memory from being an assistant coach for the 1992 Dream Team?
A: The collective experience. Sharing it with the family. USA Basketball and the NBA made that very much a family experience. It couldn’t have gone smoother. From San Diego to Portland to Monte Carlo to Barcelona, it was like when you write a book, you say, “It couldn’t have been that good,” but it was.
Q: Did that experience make you believe that you were ready to jump to the NBA?
A: It never entered my mind. [Former Trail Blazers exec] Brad Greenberg called me up and said, “Do you want to come and interview for the Portland job?” I was doing a clinic in Italy. I was in a hotel with Mike D’Antoni. Mike was having a press conference to be announced as the new coach at Benetton Treviso. If you like basketball, I think you have to prefer the NBA because it’s all you do. I love the NBA.
Q: Best NBA team you ever saw?
A: One of the Bulls teams.
Q: Best college team you ever saw?
A: One of the Wooden UCLA teams.
Q: Best college player you ever saw?
A: Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar].
Q: Describe your first head-coaching job at New Hampshire College.
A: It was an ad in the New York Times. They were an NAIA Division III school who wanted to go Division II NCAA. Went up there and thought I’d be there for three, four, five years and hopefully if you do a good job, you’ll get a chance to go somewhere else. We had a good year: Won the conference championship, we went to the NAIA tournament. But ended up, Wagner had an opening, and Larry Geracioti, who was the AD at Wagner, had kind of a profile in mind. He wanted somebody from the New York area. I just fit the profile for what Wagner wanted. And at the time, I think they had eight or nine or 10 straight losing seasons in Division III and they were going Division I, so (chuckle) a lot of people probably didn’t think it was the greatest job in the world at that point. Tommy Sullivan was my assistant. Sully ended up being the head coach after me for 20 years, before he came back to go to Manhattan.
Q: What did your father Pete tell you about Vince Lombardi?
A: Vince was a close friend of the family. My father and Vince went to school [at Fordham] together. When Vince retired, his big, huge retirement dinner in Green Bay, my father spoke at the dinner. I knew [wife] Marie better than I knew Vince just from functions and things like that. My father always — dreamt is probably the wrong word — but always believed that Fordham could get back to … his office at Fordham, he was the athletic director, I remember he had big pictures of the Cotton Bowl or the Sugar Bowl or Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds filled when he was at Fordham when they were nationally ranked. He always wanted to bring Vince back to coach football at Fordham. And they had conversations about it. I can’t remember whether it was between Green Bay and Washington or what. But he really believed that Vince might do that, and that would be the thing that enabled Fordham to get back to major college football.
Q: What kind of guy was he?
A: Again, the other exterior. He was very similar to my father. Like people that didn’t know them, thought they were really tough, disciplined guys, jumping on people and stuff like that. But they were both highly emotional. They were really softies, they had this exterior that was one way, and they really were both very personable to family and to friends. The outside world never saw that side.
Q: Favorite Scranton, Pa., childhood memory?
A: Our house was always kinda the center of everything, we had a big backyard, probably just brothers and sisters in the backyard or neighbors, that type of thing.
Q: You were a better baseball player at Fordham?
A: Well, better’s a stretch, but yeah. What little I accomplished, it was more in baseball than basketball.
Q: What position did you play?
A: Catcher. I played for Gil McDougald.
Q: Favorite athletes growing up?
A: Football Giants: Charlie Conerly, Tittle, Gifford, those guys. The Yankees: Mantle and Maris, those guys. Because where we were located, we were kinda dead in the middle. The Phillies were my National League team. Basketball: the Big O [Oscar Robertson]. You’d see only the Sunday game. I remember vividly the St. Louis Hawks, I remember the Syracuse Nats, I remember all those guys.
Q: You got married at 51.
A: I had never met somebody that I had wanted to be with all the time.
Q: Has fatherhood [two children, ages 10 and 7] changed you?
A: It has to. It makes it harder to work, for sure. The worst thing about this job is the fact that they’re in Seattle. … That’s really a problem — being married and being a coach.
Q: Why do you think you’re the best man for the Nets job?
A: If you are a good basketball coach and you don’t feel that way, there’s something wrong. I think all of us should feel we’re the best person for a job, whatever that job is. I believe that I’m a very good basketball coach, so I believe I can do as good a job or a better job here than anyone else is gonna do. And I think if you don’t feel that way, you probably shouldn’t be coaching.
A: Mikhail Prokhorov?
A: I love him as an owner, because first of all he’s clearly very intelligent. But he’s very direct, and he wants to win. Everybody says they want to win … you can’t talk to him for a half-hour and not understand that’s what he wants to do. And in the NBA, that’s the perfect owner. He wants to win and he’s willing to commit the resources to win and he’s not gonna interfere with you, but you better get results. That’s the perfect NBA owner.
Q: Three dinner guests?
A: Jesus, my parents.
Q: Favorite movie?
A: “Camelot.”
Q: Favorite actor?
A: Denzel Washington. I’m prejudiced. I coached him for two years at Fordham, he’s a good friend. He went to the Lincoln Center campus, it was a real pain in the [butt] for him to come to practice every day. And just his enthusiasm. He was a good player.
Q: Point guard?
A: More of a 2.
Q: Favorite entertainer?
A: Jay-Z and Beyonce.
Q: Favorite meal?
A: Italian.