Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Eric Musselman

You're listening to DraftKings Network. Welcome to a California-style South Beach Sessions. We've been doing this out here because we can get closer to basketball royalty. I think of this name. I think Muscleman. I think Van Gundies. I think Hurleys. I think about people who were okay at basketball, but really good at teaching basketball. So he is now the coach at USC. He's had 24 players that he's sent to the NBA, 11 of them in the last five years, six years, and also beyond, what is it, six tournament appearances, two elite eight, and now you're the coach at USC. So thank you for joining us. It's been quite the journey. Can you start right now and name all the teams you've coached? Head coach and assistant. Start at age 23 with the Thrillers. Let's see if you can do this. Can you go through all of them? Do you think you can do it quickly?

I don't know, Dan. First of all, thanks so much for having me on. I'm going to go as quick as I can. It would be Rapid City Thrillers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Minnesota Timberwolves, back to Rapid City Thrillers. Rapid City Thrillers, to the West Palm Beach, Florida Beach Dogs.

Florida Sharks.

Florida Sharks, USBL was in between. Chuck Daley then hired me with the Orlando Magic. Orlando Magic to the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta Hawks to the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, Golden State Warriors to the media world, where I did NBA Radio Game of the week.

That doesn't count. Let's go to Memphis. We're going to Memphis next.

We're going to go to Memphis with Mike Fertello. From Memphis to the head job of the Sacramento Kings, from Sacramento to three years of being a dad, back to the G League in Reno with the Reno Bighorns, to Arizona State as an assistant coach, to Louisiana State as an assistant coach, to the head coach of the University of Nevada, to the head coach of Arkansas, to now being at USC.

What I missed, Dan. You missed the Dominican team, the Venezuelan team. What about the LA? Did you mention the defenders?

I did not mention the Lakers G League team either.

You got LSU. Lsu was in there somewhere?

Yes, I did get LSU.

Okay, I missed that. All right, so Congratulations. You did pretty well. But along that path, what would you describe, if you had to choose in the extremes, the best year that you had and the worst year, the place where you felt like you were most on an outpost and not enjoying yourself coaching?

The hardest experience as a coach, for sure, was the Sacramento Kings, and there's not even a close second. And then I would say best, almost every one of those other places I loved. One, found something outside of basketball that I really loved about the location of all the spots that I've coached at. And then the people that I've worked with, all super positive experiences. Even Golden State, it's super It was very unique, Dan, that you could coach for two years, get fired, and still wear the team apparel and team gear with pride. I have no problem walking the strand in Manhattan Beach with a Golden State warrior shirt on, even though I only lasted there two years.

No Sacramento gear?

I'm not going to wear a King's gear. That's the one gear that I probably will not have on.

But what happened there? Why was that the worst of the experiences by far?

I think a whole bunch of things. One, And as a young coach, you get an opportunity and you feel like, I don't know if I'm going to get another opportunity. So it's a head coach of an NBA team. But when you replace a really good coach or a Hall of Fame type coach, which Rick Adleman, I was replacing somebody that had great success. And they were knocking on the door of conference championships and knocking on the door of every year coming in to thinking about potentially playing in an NBA Championship series. That's a hard thing, especially for a young coach, to replace an older veteran coach with an older veteran team, with a general manager that had been with that head coach. And they shared the same philosophical opinions on how the game should be played, which differed from my opinion on how I wanted our teams to play.

And then you added- So all of it's lonely. It just all becomes lonely. All of it. It feels not supported. I'll get to the happier stuff with you, but I want to examine what gets learned amid failure as well and misery. So you love coaching. I imagine you can unspool quite the poem right now. If I just ask you to explain to me what basketball has done for you and how you love basketball. But that had to be a misery, what you're describing, to be at the top of your dreams, to be failing, to feel unsupported, and it scarred you in a way that you're still saying, I probably didn't love coaching that year because there's a helplessness in coaching. You guys are control freaks. Then once you throw it all out there, the ball bounces the way it does, and you don't have much control over anything anymore. It's frustrating. It is. I can't even imagine what that was as a misery for you to get fired there, to feel everything that you felt there.

Yeah, I think that when I look back on it, I took the job for... I was going through a divorce at at the time. And so for me, Sacramento brought me within a 55-minute drive to my son's. So when I look back and reflect on how I could have been better, one, don't get a DUI when you're in training camp. That was the kiss of death. And that's a mistake I made. Have to live with it. Probably kept me out of the NBA 10 years after that. Now, as time has gone on, then it becomes your own type decision. But I was trying to be a dad to two sons, so we would have a King's practice, and then I would drive. It's 55 minutes from Sacramento to Danville, California, without traffic. Then you add in the traffic. But I was trying to go to every Little League game. So if you have two sons playing Little League, they're probably going to be almost 6-7 days a week when you got two Little League games or AAU basketball. I didn't want to miss anything. So I was practicing, getting in my car, driving an hour, watching a two-hour game of Little League, driving back, having practice, and then maybe the next day, going to watch my other son.

So I was stretched too thin, trying to be parent, single dad. And then 50 % of the time, I had my two sons with me as well, whether they were with me in Sacramento on the weekends, going on road trips with me. So Probably could have been more focused strictly on the job, but I don't regret the parenthood part of it at all. So I'm conflicted.

Well, what a weird thing. The reason I wanted to take some of this path with you is you're at your dreams ostensibly. You're running an organization. You're doing the biggest thing at the highest level. You're replacing a legend. And the personal life that I would imagine, if you've been sculpting basketball all your life, there has been imbalance that has made relationships make women understand this man's going to be on the road a lot. He's going to be obsessed. Even when he's here, he's not going to be here because his mind's going to be there. So I would imagine that that year, at the height of your dreams, a total misery because you got both things happening and you feel guilty that you're failing at both because how? How do you do both of those things if they're not tied together?

And I would say that the uncomfortableness, the I regret the thought process of not being all in was more the basketball than the... Because I was all in on my sons. So I don't regret driving. When I drove, I was never upset that I was in a car.

Forgive me, I meant whatever the guilt of divorce is. Yes, all for sure. I just meant in general, the fact that you had found yourself that you had to make that drive to be a full loving parent because you had to over extend yourself on no, dad loves you just as much as he always has.

No question. I would say that that experience that you're referring to, Dan, was probably more in Memphis when the divorce started to happen.

Then it was super like now the personal thought process of, wow, I'm not going to be with my sons every day.

Even though I had already taken a job in Memphis to work for Mike Fertello, Jerry West was a general manager, I made that decision, but we were still married at the time. T And then when the marriage broke off, I was still working in Memphis, and that's probably the most challenging from a personal standpoint to try to deal with. And you're right, it's this two conflicting worlds for coaches in probably any sport.

Well, your balance in general when it comes to family, what has been convenient is that sons just come work for you or you go work for dad. Your family has always been a basketball family. Did your kids even have in their minds a choice? Not saying that you wouldn't give them a choice, but they were going to go into basketball, right? That's what the Musclemen know.

Well, for sure with me, personally, Dan, I knew nothing else because I would wake up, I would go to school, and then my mom would drop me off at my dad's practices. And then every weekend, I would go on a road trip. I was a ball boy. I wanted to be the ball boy of the opposing team's locker room because I wanted to see what diagrams were written up. So for me, I knew that's all I knew. I didn't know how to change the light ball. My dad never took me golfing. No hobbies with me. My sons are a little more well-rounded, probably because of the divorce. So they got 50 % of the time away from my inner world of basketball. So I think they were experienced. They got to experience way more things than I did, more vacations, more world lovely things. I really wasn't sure where my sons would go. Maybe in their eyes, they had no choice. I certainly had no choice. My dad was my best friend. He was my idol, and I knew I wanted to walk in his footsteps no matter what. The firings that I saw my dad go through, the brutal losses, for me, it was all good.

That was the greatest world you could have, even though I knew that there was... I had much more misery at times than maybe some of my fellow students in high school that had the same normal life their whole life and went to the same- Because he was bringing home the losses, just the weight of them, just because the lifestyle was pressurized? Yeah, and I don't even know, Dan, if he needed to bring home the losses. It's just you go to school the next day. When I was in high school, my dad was coaching the Cavaliers. They were not very good. Ted Stepian was the owner. The NBA had to put a closet on trades even and prevent them from trading first-round pick. So that was hard. You go to a high school game, a road game, and people are throwing hot dogs at you, and they're making fun of My dad was in a situation, too, Dan, where it was like Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner. My dad would get fired from one position and hired in another position within the organization. So super hard to deal with. But I think I got to experience stuff that maybe a 30-year-old would experience.

I think it toughened me up, it hardened me. But also, I embraced the wildness that can happen in a coaching Lifestyle.

How hard was your dad on you? How hard was the experience of being his son and knowing nothing else and working for, with, and around your idol?

First of all, my My dad was as old school as it could be. He was an old-school, tough, hard-nosed coach. But I also felt like he probably loved me as much as any dad that I've ever seen. My sister And her relationship with my dad was so loving because she wasn't doing the sport that he played. He played three sports. So when I played Little League, if I struck out, we were probably going back to have batting practice that night.

So you had to meet his standard for excellence and expectations in his area of expertise?

I would say yes, whereas my sister, they would play tennis together and it'd be competitive and all that, but not to the level that I had. You know what I mean? I would wake up and maybe on Christmas Day, I would do ball handling drills.

But loved you with warmth or loved you because you always knew that he was there to support everything you were doing. Was it with words and with warmth, or was it with- No, it was.

Yeah. I think sometimes there's some old-school... A lot of hugging, a lot of physical... He would hug me and tell me he'd love me, he'd kiss me on the cheek. So there was super love, but super discipline, too. If I didn't hit the number of points that I thought His answer was, Don't blame the coach. Go work on your game more. So that type of tough love. But he also had a unique perspective of... He loved the beach, and so we got tons of beach time in Florida always as a family. I saw a little bit different side of him than just the athletic side. But when it came to sports, I got pushed pretty hard.

Yeah, exacting, I would imagine. Is there anything that you've made sure not do with your kids because you didn't like how it felt the way your father was doing it? Obviously, I'm guessing there's some similarities in how you've raised them, and I'm guessing there's some principle alignment, but is there anything that you've learned I'm like, You know what? Maybe I don't need to be this hard on them. Maybe they should be easier on themselves and a little more forgiving, enjoy childhood a little more.

I would say, Dan, that with my second son, Matthew, I was probably a better parent than with Michael. I think that with my older son, I was like a lot of parents. You have this vision, can your son play college athletics? Frustration with an AAU coach if his role wasn't what I wanted. And so I would say, even though I knew how I was raised and my thought process, but I don't know if I took that into my first son. I pushed Michael pretty hard. With Matthew, I took a step back because I saw where Michael was going, and it was just like, Hey, how do you just Did many kids want to jump in my car after a game? Probably not because it was going to be talking about the game. Looking back now with my daughter Mariah, and she's in competitive dance. I don't want to talk about the competitive dance. I want to talk about, where do we want to go to dinner? And so with each child, I've gotten better and better. But it's a hard thing. Everybody wants to, not everybody, but a lot of people want to push their child to be as great as you can get them to be.

But there's also a fine line, obviously. And so I think I've learned with each child.

I think most parents would say that my parents were much harder on me. They They're learning. All of it takes practice. And so they let go of the reins a little bit on my brother because they had their remorse wherever they were fearful because they were young. How much guilt do you do? How much regret do you do? Are you someone who forgives yourself easily or do you ravage yourself on the mistakes?

No, I think that with all of us, I know each step of the way where there's been mistakes, the biggest thing is just, don't justify it. Accept it and then try to get better. So for me, I don't think... I have an opportunity now to... If I messed up when my kids were younger, well, I'm getting a chance to work with them now. With the divorce, 50 % of the time, I didn't have my sons. Well, now I'm getting 100 % while we're working together. So maybe I'm justifying in my own mind.

But it's also a reality. I had a better relationship with my father working with him on television as an adult than I had when I was younger for a variety of reasons, both of us being older and having the appreciation that just comes with age and with learning and with being fired. I've read you say, I don't know if you still stick to this, I will not hire someone who has not been fired because I want somebody who has the appreciation that comes with having been fired and being grateful for the job still. That's still a principle of yours?

Well, it's one that I feel would really help make the staff better. But as you get older as a coach, you need younger staff members. And so I think when I was younger as a coach, it was super important for me. I wanted to hire my college coach that had been fired, Hank Egan. It was super important that he was part of my staff. And then as I've gotten older in my career, now I got to hire younger guys that have not been fired, but you want to try to teach them to understand that there's a different viewpoint once you've been fired somewhere. And probably the greatest thing about being fired is you're not fearful of being fired a second or a third time. I do think that the first time is the hardest time. But in our profession, it's going to happen, especially the higher level you go.

The What are the differences between college and professional coaching. What are the biggest ones that you would point to?

Dan, there's so many. I'll start with per diem. And I say that in the NBA, the per diem is really good. Hotels. And I also think many of those differences that I just mentioned, the charter planes, the foods, that also hurt me trying to get into college basketball. Because I think that athletic directors looked at the different lifestyle that you have at the NBA level and wondered, can you coach at a low major and accept what... My background was unique because I had been in the minor league, so I appreciated everything in the NBA level. But there's so many little things that are different on the floor from an X and O standpoint. In the NBA, you've got to be really good at side out of bounds, offense and defense, late game. Like you You got to be an expert in that field or you have no chance. In college, baseline out of bounds. So I go to my first college job and I have this whole book on side out of bounds, philosophically, what I want to do offensively deep. And I'm like, there's only one side out in this college game. Baseline out of bounds based on where the referee places the ball.

That alone, I had no idea until I get involved in it. But in the NBA, you don't do your own schedule. In college, you're responsible for your non-conference schedule. And then the biggest piece is the age. And you're developing young men, you're developing their habits. Where in the NBA, you're dealing with grown men that have families. Habits have already been developed, and you're just trying to tweak things. But I think the universal thing, no matter what age you coach somebody, the player wants to know, Can you help me get better? Whether it's third-grade AAU or an NBA All-Star, that's the whole key, in my opinion.

So what would be greater as a challenge than the one I'm presenting to you or a difference between the two, where you're basically saying in college, you're developing habits in the pros, you're inheriting habits, right? So what's a greater challenge than that between kids and adults? Because you went to a hotel and you went to money and you went to comforts first. And these are adults who are also wealthy, and they're adults who have where they've gotten maybe taking to mentorship and discipline or maybe rejecting this new guy who, why is he bossing me around? Why is he trying to show me he's in charge?

I would say, Dan, from my experience, by Buy-in is much easier at the collegiate level. When I say buy-in, you put in a play, the players go out and execute the play the way that you've described it. In the NBA, you might put in that same play, and you might be challenged in front of the rest of the roster on why are we doing it this way?

College coach knows best, largely still. High school, certainly, but college, still, Which knows best. Pros?

Yeah, you got to almost prove yourself on a daily basis. I've been around so many great NBA coaches. It's been super interesting to sit back and watch how the audience, meaning the players, take to the messaging. So when you're working for Chuck Daley, and he is the former coach of the Dream Team, and he's won World Championships with the Pistons, the buy-in was so great. That same message could come from a different coach. It could be the same scheme. The buy-in is not there. And it's super interesting seeing how pro players, based on who's delivering the message, how that message gets received. Because I've seen drastic differences in how messages were received. What's up, listeners? I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I certainly dreamed big. I think when we were all kids, we dreamed big, whether we wanted to be astronauts, presidents. Personally, I wanted to be a pitcher for the then Florida Marlins. Now, we're dreaming of something else, like owning our own businesses. But let's be honest, launching it is total chaos. Websites and shipping, your cousin who wants to collab, it's a mess. That's where Shopify comes in.

They power 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. From brands like Mattel to your aunt's Candle Shop. Can't design a site? Shopify has got ready to go templates. Need help writing copy or touching up pics? Ai tools. Want customers? Built-in email and social tools. And if you get stuck, 24 7 support. Real award-winning human beings. Turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.

Com/shopify. Com. Shopify.

Com/batard. Go to Shopify. Com/batard. Shopify. Com/batard.

Well, you became a coach at 23, a head coach for the first time. Ridiculous, the young coaching that you were doing. When did you learn how to lead? I'm in my 50s running a company and lamenting, I don't know how to lead. I don't know how to do it. When I talk to other good leaders, they're always like, Well, nobody really does. But you figure out a few tricks along the way, and then at some point you have experience with these things. So when did you know that you were a good leader?

I think you're trying to lead every day. I don't think that I don't think there ever is an endpoint in leadership. I don't know. You probably feel internally confident about leadership when you get full buy-in on a daily basis from the beginning of the season to the end of the season. Then really, when you think about leadership, it's how far can you take a group of, in our sport, young men to the finish line where they're maximizing their potential? To me, that's leadership.

But when did you know? Did At some point, you didn't have any imposter syndrome when you were 23. You felt like, No, I belong as a head coach at 23 years old. This is my destiny. It's my earned right. It's been handed down from my father. I've learned the things I need to know. I am equipped to lead this.

I think at 23 as a head coach of a minor league sports team, I was confident that I could do the job. Now, what my father told me a week before we were putting our roster together, he said, You need to do two things. He goes, Number one, you need to understand you don't know anything about X and O's. You don't know anything about leadership. You don't know anything about controlling a locker room. You've never done it. He said, So I'm going to give you these two pieces. Try to get as many Bobby Knight players that have played for Coach Knight as possible, and try to get as many Jerry Tarkanian players as possible. And I said, Why those two? And he goes, It's the perfect blend. With Tark, you're going to get great athletes. You're going to get guys that instinctively react. With Coach Knight, you're going to get guys that are super, super disciplined. And he goes, Combine those two, and it's going to equal success, even though you don't know what you're doing. And it was, I went out and did it. We got Jarvis Bass night, and we got Sudden Sam Smith from UNLV, and we went out and got Jimmy Thomas and the Jay Edwards of the world from Indiana, and Keith Smart, and those guys combined.

So you thought your father's literally feels like he's handing you family jewels here, correct? Where you don't know what you're doing yet. Here's Here's a cheap code.

Here's your formula. Exactly.

Here's your blueprint to- And so you were able to stack successes on top of each other that gave you confidence that you were leading correctly until you actually learned how to lead.

Right. And then I thought I was a really good leader with the Warriors. I really did. And then personnel changes happened in year two with Golden State, and I felt like I could lead the team.

That's just Chris Mullen coming in as GM, Yeah.

So what happened there, Dan, was in year one, we were all young. Gilbert Arenas was in his second year and hardly played his first year. Jason Richardson was in year two, Troy Murphy in year two. Mike Dunlevy was a rookie. And then there was a bunch of personnel changes, and in came nick Van Exel at the end of his career. In came Avery Johnson, end of his career. In came Cliff Robinson and Popeye Jones. And now I went from what I thought I was a good leader to now being challenged on a daily basis by these veterans. I went from being super confident to all of a sudden wondering, Can I lead these guys? These guys are older than me. These guys are more experienced. These guys have played for incredible NBA head coaches. When I walked down those steps for shootarounds, in year one, I was the most confident human human being possible. In year two, I wondered when I was going to get challenged on the scheme. We're putting in a trap to pick and roll here. Well, what's Avery Johnson going to ask, or what is nick Van Exel going to ask on the third and fourth option of this thing?

And am I prepared enough? So there was a little bit of paranoia of how well do I really know? Because I had to know it inside and out because it was almost like a game to this group of veterans. I don't know when I... Some years I felt super confident as a leader, and other years...

Well, thank you for admitting that, though. What an interesting What an interesting thing to be summarily confident and then be met with a veteran expertise that you respect so much because they're better at basketball than you were, the sport that you love. No insult there. They're better than almost everybody. They've learned from some of the best in the league you've always wanted to work in. So they immediately are producing an imposter syndrome for you. Just by challenging you directly, though, it wasn't something you felt they were challenging you?

Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. I'm talking, Dan, we would put in a pick and roll scheme, and a couple of the guys had played for the Spurs and Coach Popp, and they said, Hey, when we played Milwaukee, that's not how we would play the pick and roll. And this would be a discussion on the floor with everybody around. It wasn't a player coming into my office and closing the door. So it was challenging. And And as I look back now, I'm like, I can't believe that coaches are getting hired in their late 30s and can do it. But I know why they're doing it. They're doing it because they have a great locker room. They're doing it because of situations like Coach Spoh has been put in, where Coach Reilly has his back, so to speak. And so otherwise, it's super hard for a young coach to even be given a legitimate chance to have success.

Yeah, it's hard to develop the respect until you've done the winning, and you can't really do the winning unless you have the respect. It's why I say, I understand when Pat Reilly describes life as winning in misery. I understand when Van Gunde. I tell him all the time. I'm like, You're so much happier when you're not coaching. Everybody who loves you would say that you're a more balanced, functioning, happy human being, and yet it's a heroin addiction. You cannot stop. You will gravitate toward the misery because the highs are better than any of the highs anywhere else that you get. It's an insanity what you guys do and what you pour into it. It almost forces an obsessive compulsive imbalance. I can't imagine that you have much in your life other than basketball and family. I got to imagine what the muscle... When you say, My dad taught me basketball, and that's what he taught me, that's what was being handed down in our family, and that's it on the man side.

For sure. In that little minute and a half segment, you bring up so much. Before we got into this, we talked about the impact that your podcast/interview with Coach Reilly. That's someone that, for me, I look up to. When I listen to podcast, it was so inspirational to me. And the first thing that came to my mind is, Man, I wish Dan could do that again with Coach Reilly. I need another hour and a half. Because the lessons that he was saying for all coaches of any sport. And then Coach Van Gunde opening up and being so transparent with his life outside of basketball. That stuff is super, super impactful. For me, If I'm not coaching, I would be miserable. Other coaches, maybe they're miserable. I have misery when I coach, but that's a lot better than the three years that I wasn't coaching.

Well, I've read you quote it as saying, If I'm not working, I'm walking around like a zombie. If I'm not working, I need to stay active. Are you in any way hiding in the work, or is it just that you love it so much that this is who you are, it's who you've been, you are at peace with it, it's who you'll forever be, and it makes you happy, even when it makes you miserable?

Thousand %. This is what I've been exposed to and what I know. For me, when I'm in first and second grade and I come down to have breakfast before school, cartoons were not on. Game film was on. On a weekend, when I'm in third grade, and my dad's coaching at the University of Minnesota, it's Adrian Dantley's on a visit that weekend. My weekend was not playing outside and riding a snowmobile in Bloomington, Minnesota. It was, Oh, I'm following my dad on this visit with Adrian Dantley or Lionel Train-Hollins. I bring those two guys up, Dan, because I know what happened when my dad didn't get those two recruits.

Yeah, they're gods. The You get those two guys, they will make a lot of coaches look very good at their job.

And my household was in turmoil when my dad got the call that Dantley, through the fax machine, had sent it to Notre Dame rather than Minnesota. So all this, you're right, maybe it is like a drug, highs, lows, whatever. That's what I am used to. That's how I grew up. That's what I need. That's what I like. That's what I love.

What Riley says of game 7s, when he talks most poetically about Game 7s, it's like, look, they don't, like the olden days in competition, hang you up in a square by your thumbs if you lose. All I'm doing at the height of Game 7 is feeling more alive than I ever do anywhere else in life. Whether it's winning or losing, it's just the place that I feel most alive when you put the stakes up there and you test me at the maximum of the challenges.

Yeah. For me, you I bring up the word alive. So when I get fired from Sacramento, for three years, I decide, All right, I have three more years pay. I'm in the prime of my career, and I have three more years of pay coming from the Kings.

A lovely situation.

A great situation.

Paid a lot of money to not work, to not have pressure all over you.

I took advantage of it. I wanted to be a dad. How do I reconnect with my son? I moved back to where their mother lived, and I was a dad for three Three years. But towards the end of the three years, I was in carpool lane. I was looking to my left, looking to my right. There's a mom on the right with her Starbucks coffee. There's a mom to the left. And I was like, Wow. I'm I'm in the prime right now in my career. And this three years has been incredible. But I got to go do what I do. I got to go do what I love. I have to go do what I'm passionate about, what makes me alive. I got to go do again. It didn't matter where. So I got a little bit of taste in the Dominican in the summer, where I could still be a dad, but I can go coach for two and a half months in the Dominican Republic. Then I go to Venezuela. And those are two of the greatest experiences ever. I learned to become a better coach. Half the team didn't speak the same language I did.

I don't speak Spanish, but I coached two countries, their national team, where 80 % 67 % one year of the spoke note. It was all Spanish-speaking. So I learned to demonstrate better. I learned to communicate better in huddles. All those things made me a way, way better coach. I didn't know it at the time, but I knew it coming out of those situations.

Take me through the greatest difficulties of coaching a bunch of players that don't speak the same language that you do. How is it that you get by the... I mean, you mentioned some of the details, but take me through some of the difficulties. I imagine that was super weird to not be able to... I don't know where you place communication on the list of traits a coach has to have, but I would imagine it would be pretty high in terms of importance.

It is. I think, one, the key is to have a player that speaks English that really buys in, that can help with the interpretation. And then anybody that speaks Spanish on your staff, there's got to be great trust as well, that what you're conveying. But But what I learned as a hands-on coach was demonstration. So being in physical condition, even at 60, super important because I think you got to be able to go out there and demonstrate what you want. But when you don't speak the same language, now demonstration becomes super, super important. Demonstration, delivery, and slowing things down were the things that I learned But it may be I'm a better coach now in college because of those experiences, because in a huddle, if you only have a minute and a half to get a message in, and you're My diagrams became better. If I'm coaching a bunch of guys that speak the same language, I can do a sloppy diagram and they go out, execute it. But if not, my diagrams have to be so clear, so concise. So it became The seating chart on the bench, I came up with point guard to my right, off guard, small forward in the middle, power forward center, so that when I looked up, I knew exactly what position regardless of who was sitting there.

Then I would say the player's name, look at him, diagram where he went. I would go player by player, and then diagram where he was. I've never done that before. I've always diagram the whole play. But I've learned that that's probably the best way to get a message across in a huddle.

What's an example your family would give me of you being just totally unreasonably competitive? Is there any story of something, of a board game? You cannot be sane. There have to be stories of your youth, at the very least, where your competitive streak is not in any way reasonable.

That would be pick up basketball. I don't know if it's my son's, but certainly when I was in high school, college, and then probably 12 years after college, La Hoya Rec Center- You were a red ass. Yeah. I mean, I did not like to lose in pickup ball. And probably even more so, Dan, than winning a college game, I probably took pickup ball wins and losses because I would have what my record was every day. And I was pretty prideful of what that record was. And I was super prideful in going into a gym and having somebody else pick the teams against me. So we weren't winning pick-up games because of my ability. We were winning pick-up games because of my ability to choose four other players that complemented each other to go kick the crap out of the other guy. So I I would say that anybody that played with me from the time I was probably 15 years old to 35 would understand the competitive nature. We had a walk on on our team at USC that was recruited and played for the prior coach, Coach Enfield. And then I get the job and all of a sudden the dad said, Hey, I used to play with you at Live Oak when you were working for the Clippers when we were right out of college.

Have you analyzed where it all comes from, though? The need to be that competitive, the need to prove yourself.

Oh, my dad. Yeah. My dad was the most competitive person that I've ever witnessed in my life. When I grew up and we would play pickup ball, We had to win. And game point, if the game was to 12 and it was 11-11, that might take 30... My dad would keep fouling on defense until until we somehow got the ball back and had the opportunity. He was the most competitive person that I've ever seen in my life. And maybe Jerry West rivaled his competitiveness/lunatic will to win.

Healthy or unhealthy?

Oh, for sure. With those two, probably unhealthy. Now, like Mike Fertello, super competitive, and Doc Rivers is super competitive. Chuck Daley, competitively, was right up there with anybody, but he handled it way different because he was so cool. I mean that not his dress, but his personality. He was cool.

Unfaced.

Unfaced. Confidence. If we lost, he didn't need it. It was not. He He didn't take responsibility, but he knew what he was doing. I would just say, yeah, West and my dad were- Well, when you say unhealthy, though, tell me what it looks like, because you've mentioned a couple of times that it stuck with you, the despondence.

You're saying, well, it's not that he's bringing it home. I was right there with him, so I was bringing it home, too. I learned well from my dad. But when you say it's unhealthy- Yeah.

Okay, so if we went on vacation somewhere, My dad would want to go play pickup ball. Let's go to the nearest outdoor court. If we lost or we played bad because we were always on the same team, it was super cool. My son and I, we'll get these other three, we'll go play. But dinner would be ruined. I don't know how else to say it. We would not have a good dinner. No words exchanged. That was the problem, probably. We didn't talk. We lost.

And he would just steam.

Yeah, he was just bitter that we lost. So there, that was what I-Not terribly evolved in that respect, emotionally, right?

I I understand. I understand the coaching mentality to a degree. I can't understand it entirely. So a coach is going to bring a loss home. If he's responsible, what could he have done different? There might be some misery at the dinner table, but you're speaking as a family, man, about the joys of being around your children. My guess is that you would not like to be that for them with the losses. If you're doing anything with mortality, if you're doing anything with age and experience of these moments are fleeting, this time that I have with them is precious, perhaps I shouldn't ruin it because we missed six free throws.

Yeah. I would say that I have learned from that. Danielle, my wife, we have from 9: 00 to 10: 00 at night, Every night, we watch some show together. No phone, no recruiting. Now, during the season, if I come home after a game, we're going to watch a show together. It might not be at that exact time because you get home at different. But she'll stay up, we'll watch an hour, she'll fall asleep, and then I'll take it upstairs on the couch to deal with my own internal issues regarding the game. But I don't I don't have a home game, play the game, go to dinner with the staff, talk about the game. I go home to my wife, with my wife, and we watch some type of show that's non-basketball related. And then after we get that 60 minutes in, I dive right back into my feelings and my own world. And that could go throughout the night. But I have learned through watching my mom and dad, through my I've learned that you got to turn it off. And with my daughter, it's different than my two sons. My daughter, she didn't go to many of our games.

She's got her own dance thing right now. So when I come home, we don't really talk about basketball, Mariah and I. So it's different dynamics at different points in my life and with different children.

I would imagine, though, that if I go to your closest friendships, if I go and find shortcuts where it is that I will find all of the people who love you and you love them back, I will find the relationship connection shortcut of We Talk Basketball. There will be a handful of exceptions.

Not many, if any.

Well, it's a life devoted to basketball through generations, and basketball has provided. It's not like you don't understand everything that has been provided for those kids, but do you understand how imbalanced you've had to be in order to chase this pursuit and deem it worthy of all of your time so that you can do things like help kids so that it feels like that you're doing good in the world?

I don't think there's any doubt, like the imbalance of... My dad carried a note around from like sixth grade on that said he wanted to be a coach. For me, I knew in high school, my dad was an NBA head coach, and there had never been a father-son head coach duo. You were the first. Since high school, that's what I wanted. You got to be pretty driven in high school to think, how do I... And I'm beating a clock because I don't know who Don Nelson and Donnie Nelson Jr. Were ahead of where I was. And so I was always checking out Donnie Nelson and like, Is he going to beat me to this goal/dream that I had?

Competitive even there. Competitive on dreams.

But it's what I know.

Well, you beat him.

We did.

When you look at that, though, sixth grade knows he's going to be a head coach, what could you tell people about what are the challenges of working with family? Because it must be fraught with all sorts of things that I couldn't possibly know about.

Yeah. So I spent one year with my dad with the Timberwolves. I wasn't able to join in year one because my dad said, I'm not going to hire you. You have no experience as a coach, because I had been only a general manager of this minor league team at first. And then we hired Flip Saunders to be the coach. And And I kept thinking, my dad's going to hire him, he's going to hire him. And he said, hey, you got to get coaching experience. So I coached for one year, joined him in year two with the Timberwolves. That year was the greatest year of my life. I felt no other than I moved in with my dad, and that lasted a month. And then I ended up living in the same complex with Tom Thibodeau. I lived above him on a floor. He lived below me on a floor. I would pound the floor. We would both go to the target center together for practice.

Just you and Thibodeau geeking out on being basketball cavemen. No time, because Thibodeau is a lunatic, so he's a solitary pursuit. That guy doesn't even do relationships. That guy is just basketball, basketball, basketball.

I will say this, Dan. When I was with Coach Tibbs, and he might not like me- Playboy. Look out. He might not like me to say this, but Tom had a girlfriend, and he did do stuff at that point. I can only speak for the one year that I worked with Coach Tibbs.

Playboy Thibodeau. You're just exposing him, a side of him no one has ever seen before.

I'm just saying that he and my dad would go to nightclubs for sure.

Look at that.

Coach Tibbs did. It's hard to believe. Tom did have a life outside of basketball. But yeah, I lived with my dad for one month, and it was too much.

Tell me, what happened?

Well, so first of all, my dad had the first player ever recruited at Ashton College was a player by the name of Gary Urchek. Gary Urcheck lived in Minnesota. He had gotten divorced. His family was out of the house. He had a big house. So my dad actually lived in the house of the first player ever recruited. This is a big enough house where I could join in, which I did. And it was 2: 00 in the morning, I would be dead asleep, and my dad would walk in the room, open the door, and say, Hey, E, come on downstairs. Let's check out some tape on Karl Malone and how we might want to defend him. That's pretty cool for a week, Dan. You get into the 30th day, I'm like, I'm out. And so that's what happened. I moved out. All right.

But he was obsessive compulsive then, right? But he also...

He loved the fact that he got a joy out of picking up the phone at one in the morning and calling somebody to talk hoops. And then he liked the legacy that that carried on, that, Hey, Bill Musselman, he's going to talk hoops at all hours.

Was it hard for you to move out? Was it hard for you to tell him, Dad, I'm not staying here anymore. I can't do this.

This is not. Not at all. I can't Because I had no fear of my dad. It was a loving household. It was, Hey, dad, I can't deal with this no more. I got to go. All right, see you.

Can you tell me about the emotion then of achieving what it is your goal had been to get to become the first father-son duo to ever coach in the NBA?

Wow. No, I don't know if anyone's ever asked me that. I might get emotional because it was my mom, it was my family. Everybody was in what was going to be my office. Before the press conference, they bring you in, Hey, this is going to be your office. We're all in there. It's a celebratory moment. And I had to ask everybody to leave, including my mom. Hey, I need a moment. So I'm like 10 minutes before walking out. First NBA head job, and I'm on the floor on all fours crying because I'm like, my dad is not going to see this. Now, he might see it from above, but my dad is not here to be a part of this. And then I had to regroup. You know what I mean? I mean, the Bay Area is pretty big media market. And so you're nervous. You got angst. You have all these things going through. And just to think like, I'm going to be an NBA head coach, something that I felt like my dad's been mentoring me to do this since I was a baby. It's probably his thought that maybe this could happen.

And just The fact that he wasn't going to be there for it hurt. I don't know how else to describe it, but it hurt.

And hands and knees, you're being literal there. The pain of your father missing it by... How much earlier had he been alive?

I don't have. I mean, that's hard for me. I'm going to guess he was with Portland Trailblazers when he passed away. I was working for Orlando, so maybe five years.

You get to that moment, and it's the thought of his absence that makes you feel that way. Had you really grieved it before that, or was it leaking up on you in that moment, 10 minutes before?

It came out of nowhere. It was not that I was thinking of it leading up to my interviews.

I'm saying, had you pushed down all of the grief there, not examined it, gone to work, done whatever it is that people do to cope with grief- You mean just on my father's death? And then the way that it snuck back up? Obviously, grief is something that can surprise you at any time, but you hadn't felt it quite like that.

Well, no. My dad had three funerals because he had coached at so many different spots. So I went to two, and I didn't go to the third just because I couldn't emotionally handle it. The first one, I've never felt like that. It was the most crushing, and I couldn't accept his death. I did not want his casket to go below the ground. I couldn't deal And that went on probably for a year. I would go jogging on the beach where he lived in Sarasota on Siesta Key, and I would think I would see him. And not to the point of... People have said, Well, oh, yeah, I thought... No, to the point of me in going from a jog to a dead sprint to get ahead of the guy and look and see thinking that I'm... But then through time, that went away, and then it just, bam, it hit me at this press conference. It's like how proud he would be of all the time he poured into me to help me get to that moment.

I don't know what spiritual man you are, and I don't mean to suggest that I've learned much of anything about grief, but I have been examining it over two years. When you described the story you described, it is possible, depending on what it is you believe and what it is to choose, choose to think, that you could feel in that moment, instead of overwhelming grief from missing someone, also a semblance of gratitude because they are indeed there. If you're overwhelmed or overtaken by that sensation, if you're willing to believe that the person you're running to catch up is a spirit and source that in that moment, because your father and your love for your father is so alive, that he is also there. But that's not what was present for you. It was just pain something. It was just 10 minutes before you're about to go out to realize the dream, it's just pain that he's not there to share it with you.

Just pain. Yeah. It's only pain, probably. Then I would say that to your spiritual aspect of my dad. Anytime something goes wrong, it could even be in-game. It's certainly when I start thinking about changing plane rotations or I always have a conversation with my dad. And what would you do? And I get an answer. Now, maybe it's just me making it up in my own head. But a couple of years ago at Arkansas, we went through a rough patch, and I took some little time by myself, and I said, Dad, what do I do here? And he told me, Play your five toughest guys. Forget the position they play. Just trust me. And I heard in my heart, my soul, my brain, my dad told me, Play the five toughest guys regardless of position. And then I go into the staff meeting and I say, Hey, guys, this is what we're going to do. This is what my dad told me to do. And then we go on an elite eight run. But I think in huddles all the time, in late game, before the time out, actually, ball's going from one basket to the next.

I'm like, All right, if there's a dead ball here and there's a time out, come on, dad, what do we got? And usually gets answered. There's a couple of times I haven't gotten an answer, but I usually get an answer.

That's lovely, though, the idea that you believe enough to believe that those conversations are real, right?

I feel them. I hear them. And again, it's whether it's just you could argue whether I'm hearing them or it's my imagination, but I'm hearing them. It doesn't matter. It matters to me, actually, Dan, because I believe that he's telling me that, and I'm hearing it. You know what I mean?

But you keep him alive either way, right? The reason I say does it matter is because I will ask of my brother, I will say, Dave, are you here here, and I've never done that before, are you here? And it is soothing to believe he is. I do hear those same things, and I do feel those things, and there are things that I don't understand, can't begin to understand, will go the rest of my life without totally being able to articulate, but in that moment, he is there. If the love for him is there, if the pain of that love for him is there, then everything that I felt for him is still alive. The memories still keep it alive. I, too, have heard the exact voice that you're saying the conversation is not fabricated because you can hear him telling you, giving you an answer that wasn't the answer that you had. You had questions, you were searching, you were looking for a mentor, you were looking for advice, and his voice was there. That keeps it alive.

No question.

You wrestle how with whether or not the spirituality of the beyond is something that is helping you now as you guide your own children and your family through whatever it is that would resemble the pride of your father?

No question. I mean, it's a daily... For me, I'm always thinking about him. Is he with me? I know he's with me. I struggle with that aspect. But I do know in the time of need, he always comes through. And that I do know. And if he doesn't give me an answer, I always chuckle. And it's like, All right, he's testing me. You're on your own. You figure it out. And so I always feel like he's present and with me and still guiding me.

Do you remember the moments after you get up off of your knees to go do that press conference? You shake that off, how you... Shake it off. I don't even know if that's the right way to phrase what you're feeling there. But how do you regroup and now present yourself to the public as a new face and voice of a team that's got to have his composure and be respected. Yeah.

The first thing is to try to get my family in there as quick as possible to get me to no tears. That's the first thought is I can't go before the Bay Area media with any semblance of vulnerability. No one would understand it.

I hate that for you guys, though. I hate that you always have to go to the coach speak because this is a caveman world where you cannot trust these cruel people with your vulnerabilities. They are not to be trusted, but it'd be so much more humanizing. It doesn't serve you at all, but it'd be so much more humanizing if people can understand and you could say to people, Hey, I got nick Van Exel in my huddle, and the guy thinks he knows more than I do. On occasion, he might. You can't say any of that.

That's true. Now, I think I could say more of that, not the way you just worded it, where it was totally transparent. But I think I saw Coach Daley do it. I think I do it more now. I I think when you become confident, when you get older, when you gained experience, you under... And then I do think with the media, just as I referenced, maybe not, Coach Reilly's trust with you. I can go back and look at people that I saw my dad trust, Sid Hartman with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Charlie Walters, who still writes for the Pioneer. My dad trusted those guys. I look at my career, Bob Holt, who just passed away with the Arkansas demo. I had no problem telling Bob, whatever, Richard Davenport, who still writes for the Arkansas. Those guys, they're friends, but it wasn't that way at the start. You know what I mean? When I think about that first press conference, I didn't know any of those guys. And you're probably right. I probably would have gotten off to a better start now that I'm thinking about it for the first time ever in my life. I'm thinking about what if I would have gone out there and said, Hey, I got tears in my eyes because I was thinking about my dad.

It probably would have changed the narrative and shown a personal side that probably would have been helpful. I wish I would have met you.

Well, I found, generally, that in this particular world, in the arena, men are taught to Ignore your body. Ignore your feelings. Those things don't matter. The finish line matters. The scoreboard matters. All that matters is result. Show me the baby. Don't tell me about the labor. You grew up in the most hardened form of that. If your dad is carrying around a piece of paper from sixth grade that says he's going to be a coach, if he's unhealthy about the way that he's competitive and he raises a boy who idolizes him, you almost have no chance at learning these things through anything other than failures or falling down or learning what you got to learn. But you know how repressed this environment is. You're tears. A public cryer is not a coach. Dick Vermeer had the confidence to do it. There are not very many men that I have seen in the world of coaching who are totally confident being like, Yeah, these are my emotions. What's the problem? It doesn't keep me from doing my job correctly.

That's probably why we don't see it, Dan, because if there had been 30 other people prior that had done. Maybe it becomes more natural.

But it's not weakness, it's strength to go in front of those people and tell them about the relationship with your father. You're right. It's backward the way that we do some of this in sports where tears are weakness, and it's meant to be hidden as if fear wasn't the most human thing, as if hurt wasn't the most human thing. It seems silly.

No, it's true. But we probably haven't had enough conversations about that or been taught that enough. And I think now, I think younger people are being exposed to these conversations of it's okay to be vulnerable. And you think about all the mental health stuff that goes on now, which is so powerful and so good for our student athletes. You have to embrace that and encourage your players to go because it's a form of being vulnerable. It's a form of sharing and It's a space for help, which we all need in reality.

But men can be bad about asking for. No question. Stan Van Gunde talks pretty eloquently about not understanding how they'll send the guy into another room for treatment for his ankle problem, but he's just kicked another basketball in frustration into the stands, and he's got an anger problem, and nobody wants to talk about whether or not that needs treatment or not.

But I think it is now much more so than even 10 years ago.

Well, but imagine your father, if I'm asking your father to describe what tough is, imagine your father just receiving the news that somebody needs a mental health day.

Yeah, I would say with my dad, that would be in his day and age. But then I think back of his conversations with a lot of his players, and I think he was aware of that stuff And that's why he had such incredible relationships with people like Sam Mitchell. My dad was vulnerable, too. He had a picture up in his beach apartment in San go to Florida of Sam Mitchell. And I'm like, why do you have a picture of Sam up? And he's like, because I love him. So I think that I spent a summer with Huby Brown. And I think what made Coach Brown, he was so hard on everybody, including me as an assistant coach. I'd stand in front of a truck for him because he poured into me. It was hard. It was challenging. I mean, he cursed me out. But out of all the people I've worked for, I'd stand in front of a moving truck for him.

Because you just knew that he cared and you understood his way of caring, and you were doing some of the translations on he's investing in me.

Yeah. He did more for me in one month than any human I've ever been around. He taught me so much. And I felt like when he was going to practice and saying stuff to the players, I think half the time he was saying it to me as a young coach. I don't know if he was or wasn't, but that's what in my soul, that's what I thought. And so, yeah, you can cuss me out, Coach Brown, because you're You're teaching me something every day.

I appreciate the honesty. It's been a pleasure to talk to you and to watch all your success no matter where you are. Do you want to take the quiz again? See if you do any better on all the places that you bring me.

You know what I do want to do, though, Dan, and it is important to me, is to mention my mom before we get off the air because I know my mom's going to listen to this. And a lot of the stuff is through my dad with basketball, but a lot of the stuff off the floor is through my mom. And she's like, my financial stability is due to my mom, her teaching me things. The marketing, my mom's family was involved in Pepsi of cola running Pepsi plants. So the marketing and trying to fill up a building at Arkansas, fill up a building in all that comes from my mom. So I wanted to at least get that in.

She probably enjoys you talking about your father and that relationship as well. But there is no way for creatures like you and your father to exist unless someone else is doing all the other things that life requires. That's so true. I mean, if the Muslinns are just doing the work and The women who love them are feeding their terrible, terrible habit of being addicted to this thing that makes them who they are, their identity. There's real love and understanding and understanding that your father needed to be doing that to be whole.

I needed my wife, Dan, because we do not make a sweet 16 at Nevada, ranked 17 straight weeks in the top 10 at Nevada, make two elite eights at Arkansas I saw three straight sweet 16s at Arkansas without my wife. She probably has as much to do with our success as I do because the recruits that we got, she played a big part. Keeping the locker room intact, having guys over for a meal after I've been hard on them in practice.

Advice.

Advice. The media advice that she's given our players.

Strength when you're weak.

Draft preparation for interviews that Danielle has helped guys with. You're right. You got me thinking, I'm probably just a mediocre college coach without my wife.

Well, you were talking about the loneliness that you felt with the lack of support once you had gotten to one of your dreams. I would imagine that all of this is better because it's shared, all of this. This is such a family affair. The fact that both of your sons are working for you, the fact that you descend from what you descend from. What choice does she have, honestly? If she's going to love this man, it has to be with basketball. There's not a choice that loves this man without basketball, correct?

Well, the only difference here is when Danielle and I met, I was in my three years not coaching, and she says all the time, You are so funny. I thought you were the funniest male that I've ever met. You didn't have a care in the world. You always wanted to go on vacation. What happened?

I don't know. It's Stan Van Gunn. Look at you. You guys cackle from the bowels of hell laughing. It's heaven. You don't understand. And they're looking at you like you're crazy because you are. Thank you. Thank you Stan. I appreciate you sharing that insanity with us. It is not on unusual for a coach to express some of the things that you're expressing. It just seems like you cannot be fully functioning, balanced human beings and be hugely successful coaches if you have to have more time for things outside of basketball and family. There's not a third thing, right? There's not a third thing that's coming there that- The closest I've ever seen is Chuck Daley.

I will say that. That is the closest to the competitive will to win, doing your job, and enjoying in life.

But he actually won, right? Because the interesting thing to me between the differences in Stan Van Gunde and Pat Reilly's addictions is at least I understood why Stan and Jeff kept coming back. They wanted the ultimate thing. But Reilly is going to be in that seat 10 years after he's dead because basketball is his identity and he doesn't want to be anything else. But he's already won, so I don't totally get why the misery would still be the heroine addiction it is. But I'll keep talking to coaches until I find So thank you for spending this time with us, Eric. Appreciate.