NBA FINALS: CELTICS VS. WARRIORS

June 5, 2022

Rick Carlisle

David Fogel

Mike Fratello

Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome you today to a special press conference hosted by the National Basketball Coaches Association.

On stage representing the National Basketball Coaches Association is executive director David Fogel and Indiana Pacers head coach and president of the Coaches Association, Rick Carlisle. With that, I'll turn it over to David.

DAVID FOGEL: Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we are excited to be in San Francisco for Game 2 of the NBA Finals and to present the 2022 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award.

I am David Fogel, the executive director and general counsel of the National Basketball Coaches Association. On behalf of Coaches Association president Coach Rick Carlisle, our executive committee, and all of our NBA head and assistant coaches, I'd like to thank Commissioner [Adam] Silver, Mark Tatum, Kathy Behrens, Mike Bass, Tim Frank, John Hareas, Byron Spruell, Michael Levine, Mark Broussard, and the entire NBA for all of the league's support and assistance in providing this great platform to honor our 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 the standard for integrity, competitive excellence and tireless promotion of NBA basketball.

Chuck was an incredible mentor to so many of our coaches and players in this league, including Coach Carlisle and one of our past Coaches Association presidents, Coach Mike Fratello.

With that, I'd like to turn it over to NBCA president, Coach Rick Carlisle.

RICK CARLISLE: Thanks, David and Adam, thank you to everyone. This has been an amazing platform for us. Each year we get to bring forward a guy like Mike that's just had an amazing career and continues to make amazing impact in the world of basketball as an ambassador.

I first want to recognize gun violence awareness. You see a lot of orange around. This is a very serious issue, and I want to put that out front.

I want to thank our committee, our selection committee, Billy Cunningham, Joe Dumars, Donnie Walsh, Bernie Bickerstaff, Gregg Popovich, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Lenny Wilkins; our past winners, some amazing names, Tom Heinsohn, Jack Ramsay, Tex Winter, Lenny Wilkins, Pat Riley, Bill Fitch, Bernie Bickerstaff, Dick Motta, K.C. Jones, Jerry Sloan, Al Attles, Hubie Brown, Doug Moe, Frank Layden, Del Harris, Larry Brown, and today, of course, Mike.

Mike's career, it's getting close to 50 years where he's had a pretty amazing impact on our game, as a teacher and ambassador. As David mentioned he's a former president of the NBCA. He's the 1986 NBA Coach of the Year, '88 All-Star coach. He has 667 wins, is 18th all time. He had a great run in Atlanta. From Atlanta he moved to NBC, and eventually became -- a lot of different work in broadcasting. He's our only Emmy-winning broadcaster we've had who has been a coach in our league, which is an amazing accomplishment.

His teams in Atlanta, Cleveland and Memphis always to me had one characteristic: They always overachieved, and they always played different styles. Mike always figured out best way to play. Some of his teams played really fast, some of his teams were extremely physical, some played the tempo game. But he always figured out the best way put his players in a position to win.

Another great example, and we are living through this right now in our world, in 2011 he was named the coach of the Ukrainian national team. And at the time, you know, people heard about this and, you know, it sounded like an interesting thing, but it hits us a little harder now.

Well, here is what Mike did with that team. In 2013 they played EUROBASKET. They were the 24th seed out of 24 teams and came in sixth which gave them an automatic bid to the qualifying for the 2014 FIBA World Cup. It's just another example of how his teams always over-performed.

The other thing that's really special about this, I talked to Chuck Daly's daughter, Cydney, a few hours ago. She's with her daughter in London, and I informed her that Mike got the award. It was very heartwarming for her because Mike was a great friend of Chuck's and I know Chuck was a very important guy to you.

Without any further ado, it's my privilege to present the 2022 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award to Mike Fratello.

MIKE FRATELLO: I don't know how you put the emotions that you feel right now into words, to be honest with you. When you think back at the selection committee, the previous winners and what they have accomplished in the game of basketball and the fact that you are going to be added to that list, as Chuck would say, to steal one of his Dalyisms, it's beyond belief, a phrase that he used quite often.

The name on this award, the Chuck Daly Award, to me, very special because he and I were very close friends. And from the coaching profession, Chuck basically did it all. He handled the media to perfection. He was selected to be our first coach of the Dream Team era, moving on from -- with that 1992 team. And only a special, special guy could handle that group and handle everything that went with it. Not only his coaching ability but his ability to handle and deal with the media and handle the players were so exceptional. But Chuck was a class act.

I can remember the meeting we had, the Coaches Association meeting we had with Michael Goldberg there, and the topic was brought up, how about if we wear golf shirts and slacks on the sideline?

Chuck raises his hand and said, "I would just like to say that" -- because the point was made, baseball managers are in uniform. Football guys have hoodies on and heavy coats, etc.

Chuck's point was, "Let's separate ourselves from the rest of them." He said, "Let's put ourselves a notch up by wearing the suits and ties that we wear on the sideline."

Now I know because of COVID, things have changed and without question was the right thing to do; the bubble, which our great commissioner, the best commissioner in sports, you got the NBA through that like nobody else could have, what they accomplished, we have the champion and we had the success that we had with the way you and the front office handled all that. Thank you, Adam.

But Chuck was the one that wanted us to remain a class act by wearing suits. He felt it gave us something special.

Chuck was always known for these little sayings that he had. We call them Dalyisms. He had an assistant coach named Brendan Suhr, one of the brightest people in basketball you'll ever meet. Brendan was Chuck's assistant in Detroit.

Brendan wrote a book a couple years ago, and right at the end of the book there are some pages called Dalyisms. I want to share a couple of them with you because every young coach who is starting out should read this book and, in particular, read the last couple pages where Brendan puts some Dalyisms in there.

First one: Land the plane safely. I always felt Chuck was the one individual who said more in the fewest amount of words than anybody I knew. He made you think, what the hell is he saying? But this one always -- this is one he gave to me when I got my first head coaching job in Atlanta. He said, "You know what your job is, right?"

I said, "I'm supposed to win?"

He said, "Land the plane safely."

I went, okay. I had no idea what he meant, but I sure thought about it a whole lot afterwards. What Chuck meant is coaching is like flying an airplane. There's a lot of turbulence and your job is to handle that, bring the plane down safely and move on.

His next one: You can't fool dogs, kids and the NBA players. His thought there was it's all about credibility. And he would say, "You'd better have a good play in the last two minutes, because if you don't, they are looking at you and they are waiting for you to give them something. And if you don't give them something good, they don't think you can coach."

He gave them so much credit for the high IQ that basketball players have.

Next one. Never trust happiness. What did he mean by that? Well, when you just win 5 out of 6, don't think you're on a roll where you're going to win 30 out of 32, because you can fool yourself and you become overconfident and you wind up losing to a team that you shouldn't lose to or you wind up losing 8 out of 10. So the saying was don't ever trust happiness.

Last one is: Nobody looks bad in a blue suit. And that's why you see me in this blue suit tonight, because I believe Chuck. You know, one of his nicknames, he had a couple them, but one of them was Daddy Rich. I think his players appreciated Chuck's flair for style, how much he enjoyed -- he might have enjoyed shopping for clothes more than coaching basketball. That's how much he loved shopping for clothes.

David, I want to thank you for your leadership following Michael Goldberg, who was a dear friend of mine when I was president of the association and had a chance to deal with him. Michael got this whole thing off, and you've taken it and run with it since then.

Rick, you were one of Chuck's favorites.

I can remember the day he said to me, "You know this young kid Carlisle?"

I said, "I know who he is, I don't know him well."

He said, "He's beyond belief."

He thought so much of you. Looking down the road, he knew you were going to be a great coach. And when we talked, he would always mention your name. So you were a favorite of his.

Our late commissioner, I go all the way back to when I had the opportunity to invite David Stern to the Soviet Union and follow our Hawks there. When he came in, he actually ate the food that I cooked in the Soviet Union. He had a lot of courage to do that, okay, experiment with my cooking.

But he was great, when we were starting this whole thing out about a coaches association. And as only David could do, he questioned a lot of things about the association. And it wasn't like he was giving us one of those cards that said pass go, collect 200.

But with Michael's perseverance, his understanding of where the game was going and what's happening with coaches, he was good enough to give us his blessing, and you, from there, have carried on, Adam, and been so supportive and so good to the association, so thank you very much.

I should mention all the people that I owe a great deal of gratitude for the many opportunities, for the GMs and owners who hired me and gave me a chance; to all of my assistant coaches, I've had so many assistant coaches, but I had great, great assistant coaches who did the majority of the work; the teaching, the development of players, the suggestions, the game plans.

And I try to stay in touch with as many as I can all the way through, as we keep on going here.

The players that I had the privilege of coaching who trusted in our staff, who trusted in the system and then they went out there and put their hard work, their sweat, their blood on the court to help us win together.

I do have to thank one guy who -- he gave me my other name. He gave me the "Czar," and that's Marv Albert. As dear a friend as I can have, and I have to thank him so much for bringing me into broadcasting, teaching me, correcting me and being the best in the business that there is.

When you think about my interview for television was with Bob Costas, and my partner I sat next to was Marv Albert; you're talking about two Hall of Famers. So when you have that in the broadcast booth and you come in under Hubie Brown, and then Kevin Loughery, the two head coaches I was an assistant under, it certainly gives you a little bit of an advantage over many, many people.

My family, I can't thank them enough. Because they suffer along the way; if you've ever been a coach, and P.J. [Carlesimo] just came in, one of my dear, dear friends, you understand that your families pay the price of you being selfish, and you're selfish with your time. You try to do as much as you can with your families and you try and raise your children as best you can, you try and be there for everything, but you're away a lot. And they have to put up with you and they have to be able to handle the highs and lows of coaches. Thank you to my family.

This is my Godson, Race, who is heading from here to L.A. to do a ten-week internship with the Clippers. I asked Race to bring this. There's a story behind this jacket.

About 18, 19 years ago, Chuck and I were out shopping one day, because Chuck wanted to go shopping and Chuck wanted to go look at clothes, and Chuck had a way of wearing you down if he wanted something. This was about the third visit, you know what I'm talking about. This is the third visit back to this clothing store within a three- or four-day period.

We went in again, Chuck went back to the same leather jacket, and asked the owner, "Is this on sale yet?"

And he said, "No, I told you that yesterday."

Chuck said, "I just wanted to make sure that you didn't change your mind." And as we're walking out, Chuck sees this jacket hanging, and he says to me, "You need to buy that jacket."

"Chuck, why do I need to buy that jacket?"

"It's really special. He said, "You're going to wear that one day at a very special occasion."

"Chuck, I don't" --

He said, "Buy the jacket."

Now, he didn't offer to buy the jacket. He just told me to buy the jacket, okay.

So I buy the jacket. This jacket has been hanging in my closet for about 18, 19 years. I think I wore it one time at a Fourth of July party because of the colors. But as I was packing for this trip to come here, I said, "This is the time that the jacket goes to a special occasion."

And this is the special occasion. So Chuck's suggestion, this special occasion, they go hand-in-hand and I wanted to have it here today.

So thank you to the committee. Thank you to David, Rick, for presenting me with this award. I can't tell you how much it means to me. Appreciate it.

Q. The four years in Ukraine, especially with what's gone on obviously in recent months, how much have you reflected on those years during the war? It's hard for any human to see what's happening there. I'm just wondering how it's affected you and the memories you have from coaching that team.

MIKE FRATELLO: Those are four of the greatest years of my coaching career. Only to be surpassed by me getting opportunity to coach Team USA when I was asked to do that the last couple years. That was a dream come true.

But the four years that I spent in the Ukraine, we actually were at the beginning of what is now the war going on. We were there for three summers. We traveled all over Europe. We played exhibition games and then we got into the real Euro Championships, my first year; my third year there with the Euro Championships to try and qualify for the World Championship.

But in year four, which we had qualified in year three, we were going to the World Championships in year four, and that's when it started to break out. And when they took over Crimea, and from there, it escalated.

This beautiful -- I don't know if you've ever been to Kiev, but if you have, I called it a small New York City: You had every shop, every restaurant, whatever you wanted. This huge, wide street that ran down the middle of downtown Kiev, it was an incredible city. The people were vibrant. They had been independent at that time, something like 24, 25 years at the point that I was there, they had their independence.

And when the lower part of the Ukraine was invaded, that street that was so beautiful and was so vibrant turned into tent city. The whole street was occupied with tents, with people, with people being killed. You just didn't hear about it as much because it was happening down south.

When this war broke out now the way it did a hundred days ago, whatever it is, I immediately tried to get in touch with as many of the players that played for me as I could. Sasha Volkov was the president of the Ukrainian Basketball Foundation when I got the job. I got in touch with Sasha. We talked almost every day, every other day. And he was there. He was here in the United States two weeks or three weeks before the war broke out.

I talked to him, I said, "Sasha, what's on your schedule?"

He said, "I'm going to back to Ukraine."

I said, "Saha, why don't you stay here another two, three months here and see what happens?"

He said, "No, I have to go back."

He and his wife, Alla, went back. I remember him saying, "They will never start a war while the Olympics are going on." He was right; they didn't. They waited until they ended, and then they started the war.

And he was there in Ukraine. We would talk. He would dress in Army fatigues and patrol his development with a rifle and his wife driving the car, and Sasha was taking his hour of guarding their neighborhood so people wouldn't loot it, wouldn't come in and try to rob and steal and that's what the development had agreed to.

So I'm very happy to say that's back in the United States. Every one of the players that I tried to get in touch with that I was able to get in touch with is safe. Incredible how a couple of them happened to be on vacation in other countries. It's very close to my heart. I just wish we could end this anything.

Q. Typically when players or coaches go into broadcasting, they wrap up the basketball role and then they go into the broadcast role. You've interspersed your coaching stints with broadcasting and I'm curious over the span of time what sort of benefits that might have brought you at one or both jobs?

MIKE FRATELLO: Well, that's what happens when you can't keep a job. You have to go out and look for another one. I was blessed in the beginning because my first owner was Ted Turner, and Mr. Turner was trying to start this thing called TBS, which nobody ever thought would survive, and because of that oftentimes they needed somebody to do shows. So they would call and say, hey, could you do this, could you do that.

I remember, they were televising -- I guess it was the World Championships. I can't even tell you how far back it was. But guess who the three-man booth was for that World Championship televised by TBS? Bill Russell, Rick Barry and Mike Fratello.

I have to tell you this story because it's priceless. We are sitting in the last row at the top to broadcast this game. Bill and I said, yeah, Rick is our lead guy here, we'll chip in when we can.

With two minutes to go, in our earpiece up there, on the headset, they said, "Russell, Fratello, go down to the floor. You are going to interview every player on the team if United States wins. Rick, you finish out the game."

Bill and I get up and walk down to the floor and he said, "Oh, by the way, you won't be able to hear anything. We have no way of hooking up down there, no earpiece. So there will be a guy kneeling down, giving you hand signals. Just follow his hand signals." Okay.

So Bill and I go down. We are down on the floor, it's USA against Soviet Union, I think it was Soviet Union, and we win by one in the championship game. Muggsy Bogues was on that team.

Everyone's excited. They line them up, and I said to Bill, "You want to go first?"

He said, "No, you go first."

So first guy was Muggsy. I said, "Muggsy Bogues, congratulations." Looking eye-to-eye with each other, and Muggsy, you know, he's great. I go, "Over to you, Bill."

So Bill interviews the second guy. Third guy back to me. He goes, "Mike?" And I take the third guy. Okay. The next guy in line was the guy who replaced Steve Kerr because Steve had blown his knee out and couldn't play. So they brought somebody in to take his place. Bill didn't know who it was. I had no idea who it was. So it's Bill's turn. So I go, "Over to you, Bill."

And Bill goes, "Keep it."

I said, "Keep it?" And thank God, the person was the person that he is, a class act, Sean Elliott was the next guy up. Without moving his lips, he goes, "Sean Elliott." He knew we were in trouble and he bailed us out with that.

That's how long ago I had an opportunity to get behind the mic and try to do something behind the camera and was blessed because of it.

The MODERATOR: We'll go to P. J. Carlesimo with our last question.

Q. WVFI Notre Dame Sports Radio. Are you going to wear the jacket or not?

MIKE FRATELLO: How about I put it on and it doesn't fit, would that be embarrassing?

Q. Chuck said this is a special occasion. I think you should put it on.

MIKE FRATELLO: I'll try it on. See what happens. [Wearing jacket to a perfect fit] Not bad for 18 years ago.

THE MODERATOR: Thank, everybody, for joining us today.