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NBA FINALS: CELTIC v LAKERSJune 6, 2010Rick CarlisleJack RamsayTex WinterChris WinterLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Two THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome NBA Coaches Association President, Rick Carlisle. RICK CARLISLE: Thanks, Mark, and thanks to Brian McIntyre and the people from the NBA that allow us the opportunity to make this presentation. It's such an important event. I'd like to recognize our Association Executive Director Michael Goldberg that's here who does an awful lot of work with this. The Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award is an annual award that is given in memory of Chuck Daly to a person, or in this case, persons, who have over a career set a high standard of integrity, competitive excellence, and a commitment to the promotion of the NBA game. Last year our inaugural recipient was Tom Heinsohn. He was basically the initiator of the NBA Coaches Association back in the early '70s, and so he was the guy that we felt was deserving. Since then we have actually formed a committee of eight people to make this selection and to vote and come together and figure out the right person or people to receive it, and I want to recognize the committee because it's a group of guys that is a diverse group. It's a group of guys that had competed against Chuck Daly's teams, were close friends of him, confidants, two former coaches, Lenny Wilkens and Billy Cunningham; two current coaches, Gregg Popovich and the Lakers' Phil Jackson; one vet and assistant, Bernie Bickerstaff, was on the committee; two team presidents, Donnie Walsh from the Knicks and Pat Riley from the Miami Heat; and one owner, Michael Heisley. We were able to ask him to serve on this committee. Chuck was a consultant for him for three or four years before Chuck passed away last spring. So that committee came to the determination, it was a pretty quick consensus, that there should be two recipients this year for this award. So it's my privilege, and I'll announce obviously that Tex Winter and Dr. Jack Ramsay from the recipients for the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award for 2010. (Applause). We'll have each of these guys come up, first Tex Winter is going to come up with his son Chris. Tex Winter has become a household name in NBA coaching circles and really world basketball coaching circles. The inventor of the triangle offense, and a major contributor to ten world championships in this league, six in Chicago with the Bulls and then four here with the Los Angeles Lakers. Tex, come on up. Chris, come on up. TEX WINTER: You've been great. You've all been great. Always good to say what I can say. The best I can do but I can't do much anymore. I'm a little bit off. CHRIS WINTER: You know, Dad is very honored to receive this award, and it's good to be home. This is where he lives, really, and it's good that we could receive it here. Thank you very much. (Applause). THE MODERATOR: It should be noted, these guys not only made gigantic contributions to the game, but they're two of the most respected and beloved figures in NBA coaching circles. So it's a real privilege to have both those guys here today. Our second recipient, Dr. Jack Ramsay, an early president of the NBA Coaches Association back in its formative years, coach of the 1977 champion Portland Trail Blazers, which was one of their great teams of all time. And over the last 20 or 30 years Jack has been a guy that has done countless clinics worldwide very humbly in his very quiet, unpronounced, sort of his own quiet way. Has really helped promote the game not only in this country but worldwide and has been a great ambassador. Dr. Jack Ramsay, come on up. Congratulations. (Applause). DR. JACK RAMSAY: Thank you very much, Rick. I have been very fortunate to spend my professional life connected with basketball. You know, it's a game. I coached it, I played it in high school and college, at a professional level in the old Eastern League and then to get into high school, college and NBA coaching has enabled me to stay with this game for a lifetime. And then when I finished coaching, to get into television and radio was a further blessing for me. So I've watched the game for a long time. I've seen it develop. I've seen a lot of changes in it. And I've been very blessed, really, to have been able to participate as a player, as a coach, and in the communications sense. Basketball has been nothing but great for me, and I am honored to receive this award, the Chuck Daly Award for a level of achievement. Chuck was a special guy in the way that he coached, the way that he dressed, the way that he got his teams to play the game that he wanted them to play, without an overbearing presence on the team. I think it's very fitting that the Coaches Association has named an award in his honor, and I'm especially fortunate and pleased to receive this award. Chuck is a special person. I'm also honored to receive this at the same time that Tex Winter receives it. Tex had such a great impact on the game. His triangle offense has been a major part of college and NBA basketball for, I don't know, maybe 30, 40 years now. It will continue to be. Phil Jackson adopted this. I mean, this is a tremendous accomplishment for a coach, to have his imprint on the game not only during his time of coaching it but to have it carry through with somebody else coaching it and have it come out as well as it did. Ten championships? Come on. If Bill Russell had had a particular kind of offense, everybody would have been copying that. Bill Russell changed the game at the other end of the floor. But Tex and Chuck have put this together and have had amazing results, and I'm honored to share this with you, Tex, and thank you very much. (Applause). Q. Dr. Jack, if you could just go into what you're saying, how do you explain an offense working that well as long as you have? What do you see that makes it work so well? DR. JACK RAMSAY: It is a fluid, all-purpose offense. It requires great team play, ball movement. You know, it's very interesting to me that in an era where everybody says you've got to have a point guard who can penetrate and that if you don't have one, you can't win, Chicago didn't have one and the Lakers don't have one now. So their game is being carried through by the triangle offense. It helps to have great players because if your sequence does not produce a good shot, and most of the shots that come out of the triangle offense are jump shots from wings or baseline or wherever, but it is also flexible enough to accommodate the great players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and allow them to have an open court to drive it to the basket, allow them to go to the post. I think it's a multi-faceted kind of offense that takes advantage of the skills of players. Very few offenses that do that. You seldom see the triangle offense have to call plays. It all comes from the fluid aspect of the play. And in today's game, other teams are always calling plays. And I know from broadcasting and going to games, teams have how many set plays in half court, 40, 50, with options? And the Lakers and the Bulls could run a whole game without going any plays. That's a very beneficial factor to it. Q. The game has changed, Coach Ramsay, the generations have changed. What do you see about coaching that's enduring? DR. JACK RAMSAY: There are elements of coaching that are consistent. You have to have a game plan that's going to be effective. You have to be in charge of your team and organize well your practices, your playing time, your substitutions during the course of a game. I think there are a lot of constants. What has changed is the salary, and sometimes maybe the limitation of coaches in running his team. But when that happens, it's not a good situation. Q. For Coach Winters and his son, could you guys talk about what it's been like to watch the Lakers from afar this year and see their team developing this year? TEX WINTER: I watch them perform and see them, watch them down here and see them. I try to do a lot of work through things this year, and I try to find there that I can learn, try to still learn. I watch them and I see them. CHRIS WINTER: So I guess he's saying he's still a student of the game. I know that he has been watching all the games. TEX WINTER: That's right. CHRIS WINTER: He enjoys them. I actually think he's watching them and he's really not as involved anymore. There's a lot of stress taken off it. So he's enjoying them actually a lot more. He's fully aware of what's going on. He can't express it as well, so he can't -- he may have trouble giving Phil any advice. But he can still diagram the plays, he can still explain how they're run. He still knows the game. I don't know, I wish I could be as eloquent as Dr. Ramsay about basketball. I should be able to, but that's pretty difficult. He sounded like he could give a clinic on the offense, but I can't. DR. JACK RAMSAY: May I say something about Tex and how he reacted and what his role was with the Lakers? Tex, if you watched him during games, he was taking notes the whole game, diagramming plays. He'd have his folder there and be going through a ream of paper during the course of the game. And after a game I remember on one occasion the Lakers had yielded like 16 consecutive points, and Phil had not taken a time-out. I asked Phil about it, and Tex was there, and I said, "Phil, they ran off 16 straight and you didn't take a time-out?" And Tex pipes up, "I told him, Jack. I kept telling him, 'time-out, time-out.'" And Phil's response, of course was, "I wanted to let them play through it." Q. Same question for Mr. Jack and for the Winters: What's the proudest coaching accomplishment you've had? DR. JACK RAMSAY: For me? Portland championship. Actually it was 33 years ago today that we clinched the championship in Portland. That was Game 6. I mentioned that to my son Chris on the way out here, and he said, "Yeah, June 6, that would be 6/6." And I said, "Uh-huh," and we played in Portland where the attendance was 12,666. We limited Julius Irving, who was wearing No. 6. So the sixes were running wild that day. But it was that long ago, and that was a great moment for me. TEX WINTER: I'm older than this guy. DR. JACK RAMSAY: There are plenty who couldn't make that statement. (Laughter). Q. It's said that it's difficult to get today's pro player to buy into a system. Both in '77 and today in the present day, is it difficult to, initially at least, sell a structured system to a pro player? DR. JACK RAMSAY: I think it depends on the coach and certainly on the players. I've encountered a few players, very few, who weren't interested in what had to be done with the team to be a winning team, very few. You can count on one hand. Now, if you can, you have to get rid of those players. The vast majority of players want to win. They want a system that's going to enable the team to win. And you can't fool players; they know. And once they realize that -- I think Phil did a great job both in Chicago and Los Angeles getting his key players to buy into the system. It started with Michael Jordan, started with Shaq and Kobe here. Everybody else fell in line. When I took the job at Portland, my first person, my first target, really, was Bill Walton. I met with him and explained the kind of game that I thought we could play, and he was in agreement. And I still remember as we finished our conversation, we talked for about an hour, and Bill said, "One more thing, Coach: Don't assume we know anything." And when I walked out, my feet hardly touched the sidewalk. I couldn't wait -- I didn't have a cell phone in those days, nobody did. But I couldn't wait to get back and call my assistant Jack McKinney and tell him that statement. Players buy in if they think it's going to use their abilities to the best level and that it's going to help the team win. CHRIS WINTER: I mean, everyone has a system from my observation in basketball. Dad has always told people that you don't need to have the triangle; you teach the system you know. And the art of coaching is to be able to convince them to buy into it. I think that the triangle offers some fundamental -- one of the things I think that Dad has contributed to basketball is a lot of the vocabulary that we see now. This concept of spacing and this idea of -- I don't know if it's his, but these are terms that he used. People space out, they get out of each other's way, they move the ball. I think the triangle, maybe its advantage is that it kind of offers players with special post-up abilities to kind of all post up at the same kind of interchange. But I think that's the thing he's proud of is being able to kind of change the vocabulary of the game and contribute to that a lot. So that's all. (Applause). RICK CARLISLE: Thanks to everybody for coming today, and congratulations to these two guys. We really appreciate everything you guys have done. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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