Wow, this is so crazy, it just might work.
The Nets hired a veteran coach to … well, coach.
Lionel Hollins, 60, has more than 20 years in the NBA coaching trenches. His last game as a player came 19 years, not 19 days, ago. His résumé, complete with a NBA championship ring as a player, includes games he actually coached. Making this scenario more jaw-dropping, he only wants to coach.
Hollins is the anti-Jason Kidd, an experienced Derek Fisher. Hollins wants his job on the sidelines. He was unceremoniously whacked in 2013 after guiding Memphis to a franchise-best 56 victories and a berth in the Western Conference finals. For more than a year, he sat, waited and wondered. Finally, the call came and on Monday he was formally introduced as the Nets’ 19th head coach.
“I want to do my job,” said Hollins, who was general manager Billy King’s overwhelming first choice. “You see a few coaches have gotten more power where they’ve gotten president and coach. That’s not my goal. My goal is to come in and coach.”
That should be refreshing for King. Hollins succeeds Kidd, now in Milwaukee, after Kidd’s failed attempt to rule the Nets’ basketball operations.
“That’s over with, now it is about we got a job to do together,” King said.
King, who interviewed and did background work on Hollins last year before Kidd’s ascension, realized the former Grizzlies head was his guy this time after dinner and a subsequent film/skull session. Hollins watched film of the Nets, including Bojan Bogdanovic, and proposed this and that.
Heck, he sounded like someone who had coached before. He has seen the rise of retire-today, coach-tomorrow types. Hollins had gotten calls and did some interviews — he was awaiting a Lakers decision when the Nets rang.
“It’s a trend … I’ve seen this college coaches coming into the NBA,” Hollins said. “You just hope that somebody is not dealing in that trend or they’re a little slow moving toward it. And you get an opportunity.
“To have this opportunity is truly a blessing and the way it came about is truly miracle-like.”
The opportunity arrived following a year off that had its blessings. Hollins saw the game in a different light. He reconnected with his son. Hollins is old school, a guy who prefers the eye test over heaps of stats. Memphis went the way of analytics and stats and points per calories burned during third overtimes and he was out.
“It was difficult because it wasn’t about coaching at all and it wasn’t about analytics,” Hollins said, then referring to ousted Memphis CEO Jason Levien. “The guy in charge wanted to bring somebody else in and it’s easier to sell to a group of fans that are upset.
“People that know me, know that not one word of what they tried to say about me was true. The person in charge, he wound up getting fired this year and it speaks for itself.”
So now Hollins can just coach. Asked about style, Hollins spoke about something far more important: mental toughness.
“I want to play at a little quicker pace than they even played at, than we played at in Memphis. But I don’t want to run up and down and jack up shots. I want to be aggressive, tough defensively. I want to be tough mentally,” said Hollins, a member of the 1977 championship Blazers. “In trying to win and win it all, it’s about how mentally tough you are because there’s so much adversity in an 82-game season then playoffs are such a marathon, it takes mental toughness.”
He has not reached out to Paul Pierce: he said that would be “premature” because of Pierce’s free agency. As far as Kevin Garnett, King said he is all decidedly in Hollins’ corner.
So now Hollins wants to put a staff together, go to Orlando to watch summer league. Then he can do what he wants: coach.
“That’s all I want to do. I’m a basketball coach. I don’t want to do Billy’s job,” Hollins said. “I don’t want to do anybody else’s job in the organization.”