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NBA FINALS: CAVALIERS vs WARRIORS

June 3, 2018

Oakland, California: Game Two

THE MODERATOR: I would like to introduce David Fogel, the executive director of the National Basketball Coaches Association to begin.

DAVID FOGEL: Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are happy to be back in the Bay Area for the third straight season to present the 2018 NBA Coaches Association Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award.

I am David Fogel, the executive director of the NBA Coaches Association. On behalf of the Coaches Association president Rick Carlisle, our Executive Committee, and all of our head and assistant coach members, I'd like to thank Commissioner (Adam) Silver and the NBA for all of the league's support and assistance in providing this tremendous platform to honor the extraordinary achievements of our great NBA coaches.

We are especially proud of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors the memory of Hall of Famer Chuck Daly, who over an outstanding career set a standard for integrity, competitive excellence, and tireless promotion of NBA basketball.

Chuck was an incredible mentor to so many coaches and players in our league, including Coach Carlisle and Coach Moe.

So without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Coaches Association president, Coach Rick Carlisle. Thank you.

RICK CARLISLE: Thanks, David, Adam, thanks once again for having us, Brian McIntyre for his continued help with this. Charlie (Rosenzeweig), good friend of ours, so many people from the NBA office that have helped us with this.

I want to first recognize our selection committee which is kind of a who is who of basketball history. They're great guys that have helped us for ten years get this award together and pick the right guy at that particular time.

Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Bernie Bickerstaff, Lenny Wilkens, Donnie Walsh, Joe Dumars who was one of Chuck's great players, and Billy Cunningham who, of course, Chuck started out in the NBA with as an assistant coach with Philadelphia.

Our former recipients, this is our 10th year, so we're very proud that this has kept going, and we're extremely grateful for this platform. It's just amazing for us. Our first winner was Tom Heinsohn followed Jack Ramsay, Tex Winter, Lenny Wilkens, Pat Riley, Bill Fitch, Dick Motta, Casey Jones, Jerry Sloan, Hubie Brown last year, and Al Attles last year who we're both very -- excuse me, Al was a very prominent Bay guy.

And this year's award winner, of course, is Doug Moe. And we're going to talk a lot about his coaching achievements, but he also had a very distinguished playing career. He's a three-time All-Star in the ABA. He was an ABA champion for your Oakland Oaks in 1969 and actually played that season in the first iteration of this building, is my understanding. And Doug was part of an early big three of Rick Barry, Warren Jabali, and Doug Moe.

So it's kind of fitting that we're back here in the Oakland area.

So as far as Doug's coaching, he was a bit of a rebel, but he was a visionary. Back in the mid '70s and early '80s, he established a high-paced style of offense, and the record will show that he was decades ahead of his time, because that's where the game is today.

He empowered his players to make plays instead of calling plays. It's funny, we got out of the car when we got over here, and I reached in my pocket and I had a blue piece of paper that had some plays marked on it, and I said, Geez, Doug, I got a piece of paper from during the season. And he said, let me see that. I never had one of those (laughing).

Anytime you scouted Doug's teams, and Jeff Van Gundy will tell you this, you come back to your head coach and he says, Where are all the play calls? And I told Bill Fitch one time, I said, Look, all he does is keep yelling: Go. Faster. Go. Faster.

But he was a guy that was way ahead of his time. He was 1988 (NBA) Coach of the Year. He won 620 games and won 55 percent of his games, which is an amazing record. The number 432 is retired in the Pepsi Center in Denver. He is the all-time winningest coach in Nuggets history, and his teams went to the playoffs in 12 out of 15 years, which is amazing.

I think something that's interesting about Doug, so much like Chuck, really humble guy, self-deprecating sense of humor. Never took his success too seriously, and that's why he was so beloved by everybody in the coaching profession. Also want to welcome his wife Jane, his two granddaughters, Mallory and Madison, who are here from San Antonio.

I call Doug Moe the godfather of the modern NBA pace game, because he was the guy that really saw this coming. So it's my pleasure to present the 2018 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award to the great Doug Moe.

(Applause.)

DOUG MOE: That was pretty good, Rick. I got all excited. I thought I was getting better and better. Let me tell you, this is big for me. This is really a thrill. It's kind of overwhelming. When Rick called me, I think I was driving big Jane (his wife) around. She was shopping, and I was sitting in the car. You woke me up.

But I was kind of stunned and couldn't believe it. So I kind of downplayed it and told my grandkids, I said, Well, I'm getting the Chuck Daly Lifetime Award, and they looked at me and they said, Pop, what, are you crazy? That's a big deal. I said, Oh.

And it is a big deal. I'm really, really excited about it.

I think back and also it just brought up with -- Chuck and I were involved in the highest scoring game. I don't know if we played any defense, but we were involved in the highest scoring game. Kiki (VanDeWeghe) was there. He got his career high points that night, I believe. Didn't you? This is memory I'm doing this from. Kiki, anyway, we were involved in that.

It's just been a good weekend, a thrill, and I'm excited to be here. Excited to be anyplace.

RICK CARLISLE: I believe the score of that game was 188 to 185. Does that sound right?

DOUG MOE: I've forgotten. We were the losing team. I haven't went back to it.

RICK CARLISLE: You losing a game in Denver didn't happen very often.

DOUG MOE: Was that in Denver?

RICK CARLISLE: Yeah.

Q. Rick alluded to the fact that you played on the '69 Oakland Oaks that won the championship. That team averaged 126 points, so they were maybe a little ahead of their time as well. Can you think back or are there some highlights of that season that you can share with us? Anything that's memorable?
DOUG MOE: Well, the biggest highlight that I remember was Warren Jabali hitting the three-pointer on an inbounds play when we were down three to tie the game, and then we won it in overtime. Then went on to win the championship.

But other than that, it's tough to remember. I do remember, though, playing here in the Oakland Coliseum, which I can't believe the thing's still standing. And Larry Brown was a point guard. Of course what really helped was when we got Rick (Barry) and got all the publicity, that was big-time for us.

Q. Given the way the game is played now with the heavy reliance on the three-point ball, you guys put up big offensive numbers in Denver, particularly, but you didn't shoot the three pointers like they do today. If you had a chance to go back and do it over again, would you have treated that as a different kind of weapon?
DOUG MOE: I don't think so. We could shoot a three-pointer anytime they wanted. It was up to the players. But the problem is you've got to be able to shoot them to shoot the threes. So we only had one or two guys that really shot threes, and then we had great scorers in (Alex) English, Kiki and Dan Issel. So at that time we didn't need quite as many threes. But they were free to do whatever they wanted.

We played, quote, passing game, which is a coach's term, you know, to make things look good. It's basically freelance. Go out there and do what you want. Have a good time. Just make sure we win the game (laughing). But it was a fun way to play.

After you play it awhile, you don't want to run plays. The players don't want to run plays. If things started going bad and I'd threaten them with running plays, they'd always play better.

Q. Do you have any particular memories of Chuck Daly, either from that high-scoring game or just in general?
DOUG MOE: Well, just in general, I've got them. He was in our golfing group. We'd go to Pinehurst every year and just the general fun we had. But I always remembered Chuck would come up to me, and he'd say, Daggum, Doug, we can't score like you guys. I'd look at Chuck and I'd say, It's me, Doug, Chuck. Say, You guys can score with anyone at your pace. They slowed it down, beat everyone up, and he had the guys that just in that very slowed down basketball could score at will. So he had one of the better scoring teams. He would kind of look at me and smile.

But he knew exactly what he had. Such a great coach.

Q. As Rick kind of alluded to, you were seen as something of a maverick in your day. Did you expect that history would kind of come around to your side of things? What do you attribute that change in philosophy to?
DOUG MOE: You know what, it's hard for me to answer that because I don't kind of look at it like that. First of all, I didn't know I was a maverick except Larry Brown told me I dress like a slob all the time.

As far as playing, you know, you just go out and do what you're comfortable with. We, at San Antonio, we ran a lot of plays and we ran, but we ran a lot of plays. When we got to Denver, we kind of changed. During the preseason we decided to put the passing game, quote, freelance in, so we didn't want any plays so we didn't have anything to fall back on. So we got used to playing like that, and we just kept it that way.

But as far as saying oh, I'm doing something different or doing this and that, I never thought of it, really.

Big Jane, are you happy (laughing)? Big Jane's my wife.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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