conversations with joel

Pelicans.com

Joel Meyers, the longtime TV voice of the New Orleans Pelicans and a veteran NBA broadcaster, will be sharing with Pelicans fans weekly conversations he has with friends and colleagues in the media and the NBA. Up next is New Orleans resident Bob Pettit. The former LSU star was ranked one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history.

Joel Meyers: Bob, you had opportunities to go to other universities. Why did you decide to go to LSU? 

Bob Pettit: Well, in that time, the recruiting was so laid back. I think I had actually only about six or seven scholarship offers as a senior in high school. So, I made the decision that Coach (Harry) Rabenhorst at LSU was such a high-pressure recruiter, he took me to dinner and said, ‘Bob, we have a scholarship for you if you want it,’ and that was his recruiting pitch. Well, it’s a little different today. But I answered at that dinner, and I said, ‘Yes, I want it, I’d like to come to LSU to play basketball.’ Now, I’ve come from a kid that was cut as a sophomore in high school that just wanted to win a letter and, all of a sudden, has a scholarship offer to play basketball in college. So, I came a long way quickly. So, I went ahead and went (to LSU). But then I also went to the ‘North-South’ game in Murray, Ky., as a senior in high school, where the 10 (best players) from the South played the 10 (best players) from the North. In that game, I played very well. So all of a sudden, I’m now getting scholarship offers from DePaul, Western Kentucky, Kentucky, and some of the other big-name schools in the country. They have not seen me play in high school, simply from playing well in this all-star game.

Joel Meyers: So, you go to LSU, freshmen are not eligible at that time.

Bob Pettit: They’re not eligible, and I played a year of freshman ball and then stepped in as a sophomore and started as a sophomore in college.

Joel Meyers: I know things are different now. You go to the games a lot both football and basketball in Baton Rouge and your presence there is great. But let me ask you this, what was it like going to a school where football, let’s face it – in this region and especially to the SEC – football is religion, and it means a lot to this whole region. What was it like playing at that time in the early 1950s at LSU?

Bob Pettit: Well, we were considered a minor sport at LSU. I never thought of this when I signed up to go to college. We had to step aside at the training table and let the football team go first, and I think they were something like, won one game and lost nine or what have you. They were not a very good football team, but we had to step aside and let them go first in the line for the food. So football was the ‘King’ when I went to LSU. Then all of a sudden we became a very good basketball team and the people started coming and filling the Cow Palace as they called it…the old barn at LSU where we played. All of a sudden now we’re still becoming a very, very hot commodity. As a matter of fact, the other sport at LSU that was so popular was the boxing matches, and of course they don’t have that anymore. But when I went to college that was a very big sport. The only person to change that when he came to LSU was Dale Brown, and Dale Brown when his basketball team had to step aside for the football team, he went and told the athletic director and said, ‘That’s the end of that were not having any more of that.’ Then the LSU basketball became on equal terms with football. Even today, football is still the king in Louisiana. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Even I like it so much I go to all of the football games as well as the basketball games. I’m a season ticket holder at LSU. I go to as many games as I possibly can. I don’t get to all of them, don’t even get to the majority of them, but I still go up and follow it very, very closely, and pull for them. Now, the LSU basketball program has come back so strong and is doing extremely well. This year was cut short, but the year before, they won the SEC, which was a big deal in basketball and the Southeastern Conference. Basketball has now done extremely well, and all I can read and what I understand they’ve got a tremendous recruiting class, a good recruiting class coming in. So, LSU basketball should be on good terms for a number of years.

Joel Meyers: Bob, you led LSU your junior year to their first NCAA Final Four. What do you remember from your junior season in Baton Rouge?

Bob Pettit: Well, I do remember that I think we had a very good record. We were, I’m going to say with my memory, 22-1. We lost one game, and that was to Tulsa. We came back and played - and then we went to the NCAA regionals in Raleigh, N.C. In those days, there were only 16 teams that went to the regional tournament. We won at Raleigh, then we got the opportunity to go to Kansas City and play in the Final Four. The first night we played Indiana, who wound up being the champion, and they had a really fine basketball team and great tradition there. They beat us in our first night in Kansas City, but we did go to the Final Four, and that was the first time in a long time that LSU had a basketball team that made it that far.

Joel Meyers: Then your senior year, what stands out in your mind? Before we get into life after LSU, what stands out your senior year? Because you averaged 31 (points) and 17 (rebounds) per game. So, individually you did well, and you led LSU to anther SEC title.

Bob Pettit: Yes. It’s hard to remember in those days, but Kentucky was the really good team other than us in the Southeastern Conference, and they were not able to play. They were not eligible to play. We didn’t even play them. That was an argument over; I don’t even remember the argument over who played where. But we didn’t play Kentucky my senior year. We played them in a playoff game in Nashville. But we had a really nice team. We won 20-something games and lost four or five. (We) went to the NCAA (Tournament) and played Penn State as I recall, and got beat there. But, basketball has come a long way at LSU. In those days, we were, had brought it back to where it has become a big sport with great fan interest. We packed the Parker Coliseum, where we played with close to 10,000 seats in it. We filled it almost every night that we played in both my junior and senior year. There was a lot of interest in basketball. At the end of my senior year, I hadn’t even heard much on some of the NBA teams at that time. There were like eight teams in the NBA. The first pick in my senior year for the draft was a player from Furman University. His name was Frank Selvy. Frank was averaging over 40 points per game his senior year, and actually, he held the scoring record in college until Pete Maravich broke it when Pete was at LSU. So, I was the No. 2 pick in the draft and drafted by a team I had never even heard of, which was the Milwaukee Hawks. It was an interesting time, and when I think back on it, you know a kid from being cut in his sophomore year of high school and going on to now playing at four years at LSU and now being picked No. 2 in the draft for the NBA was an exciting time.

Joel Meyers: We’re going to talk about your NBA career, of course, a little bit later. But let me ask you this. When you came back after your professional career and your last year was 1964-65 with the St. Louis Hawks. You came back to Baton Rouge to go to work and start a life with Carol and raising a family. A couple of years later, Pete Maravich started playing in 1967 at LSU. Did you have an opportunity to watch Pete play for his father Press (Maravich) in those days?

Bob Pettit: Yes, I did. I was living in Baton Rouge at that time, and I had tickets to the games, and we went out there quite often to watch Pete play, and thoroughly enjoyed it. He was exciting to watch, and I enjoyed it. So, yes, I saw him play quite a number of times in college.

Joel Meyers: Tell me what you picked up because we’re going to air Pete’s game on Fox Sports New Orleans when he had 68 points against the Knicks in 1977. Did you see Pete as a college player, and it translating to the NBA as well?

Bob Pettit: I did not get to know him. I didn’t know him at all. I did get to know him a little it after I had -  later years I ran into him, and we would have conversations, and I enjoyed talking to him the few times I was with him. But he was exciting to watch, and the fans loved him. It was an exciting time at LSU with Pete there.

Joel Meyers: Yeah, and he played for his dad, and the style must have been pretty entertaining, wasn’t it Bob?

Bob Pettit: Yes. It was very entertaining. It certainly was if you enjoyed basketball and watched. His passing was exciting to watch, as well as his scoring. So, yea, he was an exciting player to watch, he absolutely was.

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Conversations with Joel Meyers: LSU, NBA great Bob Pettit

Joel Meyers, the longtime TV voice of the New Orleans Pelicans and a veteran NBA broadcaster, will be sharing with Pelicans fans weekly conversations he has with friends and colleagues in the media and the NBA. Up next is P.J. Carlesimo, an NBA analyst for ESPN's TV and radio programs. This is the second of two parts of Joel's conversation with P.J.

Joel Meyers: Over to Michael Jordan now. The series, The Last Dance, Michael and the Bulls. But, long before "The Last Dance," you were with him, in 1992 at the Summer (Olympic) Games in Barcelona, and I was fortunate enough to be there because I called all eight games for NBC Radio with Billy Packer. But let’s go to the start of it all, and that summer, because you guys convened in La Hoya for a camp, correct? And then you had a college select team you matched up with, right?

P.J. Carlesimo: Yup. It was really four segments to that summer, as you said, we practiced at UCSD. We stayed at a hotel that sat right on Torrey Pines, the golf course. As you said, we had a college all-star team, they call them select teams nowadays. George Raveling and Roy Williams were the coaches, and I’ll forget, but it was Bobby Hurley, Penny Hardaway, Chris Webber, Grant (Hill), I can’t remember if he was there, but it was the best college players, and you know, most of them became NBA All-Stars later on, or really good players in the NBA, so that’s who we practiced against every day. Maybe we had a week of practices, and it was interesting, because Mike (Michael Jordan) tells a story that Chuck (Daly) threw him….we scrimmaged them, we had a scrimmage, we’d go through drills, go over our offense and our defense and then the college guys would come in for the last hour and we’d put time on the clock and we would scrimmage, and the first one, they are hanging with us, maybe even leading by a couple points, and as it wound down, and this is where I agree with Mike. Mike said from the beginning Chuck had decided to throw it, and I question that only because I don’t know if he could have anticipated good enough to get ahead of us, but he was smart enough when they were leading, the other guys were, I don’t want to say mailing it in, but they were playing like ‘big deal, we lost a scrimmage’ and Chuck didn’t put the best five players – I don’t know how he decided the best players on that team anyhow – but it wasn’t like you put Michael back in and somebody started pressing like ‘there’s no way we’re going to lose this.’ I think he let it take its course. He was not unhappy at all that we lost. I’m not sure the exact words he used but it was probably something along the lines of ‘hey guys, you know I don’t care how good you are, you never know,’ remember the (1972 Soviet Union Team upsetting the United States in the 1972 Olympics). It served its purpose, and there was not another time that summer where Chuck had to say to them ‘hey, let’s focus.’ There were a bunch of things that came together that year that a lot of people don’t appreciate. It was 1988, we lost in ’88, we did not win the gold medal in Korea in ’88, so we’re coming off a loss. The qualification process was different in those days, so we were not in the Olympics, so phase two, after those practices against those college (players), who by the way, the next time we played them we beat them by about 50 (points), was to go to Portland for the Tournament of the Americas to qualify (for the Olympics). It was the teams from North, South, Central America, and I forget the number, three were going to qualify or two were going to qualify, I forget. Obviously, we did (qualify) but in Portland, we had nothing but games. We had like six or seven games in eight days. We never practiced. We had shootarounds and we had games, nothing else. So we went through that process, played extremely well, and then we took a short break, we reconvened in Newark and flew from Newark to Monte Carlo, because we were going to practice in Monte Carlo for a week prior to going to Barcelona, get used to being in Europe, all the different things.

When we were there, it was the first time, we did drills, we’re going to scrimmage, but guess who we’re going to scrimmage, each other. For the first time these guys are scrimmaging five-on-five against each other. It’s not against the college team, and it’s not against the teams from North, South and Central America, it’s us, let’s line up. Patrick Ewing is going to guard David Robinson, Karl Malone is going to guard Charles Barkley, down the list to Chris Mullin, Clyde Drexler. It was unbelievable, that’s who’s going to play, and two guys were a little dinged up injury-wise, Larry Bird and John Stockton, they were both not able to practice every day because they were coming off injuries, so some practices we only had 10 guys. So, Magic (Johnson) would be the point guard for one team, MJ would be the point guard for the other team, and then you’d line up after that. It was the matchups after that, it didn’t matter if it was Chris Mullin or Clyde Drexler or Scottie Pippen, take your pick. The matchups were unbelievable, and the competition was unbelievable and remember, it was the people talking to James Worthy during the specials on Sunday night, you know, how Michael was at practice, and it was the same way there. He wasn’t the lone ranger on that team. When it got to game point, it was like when we were growing up on a playground and it was game point and guys got a layup, you just pushed them in the back and you say ‘you take it out of bounds I’m not going to let you score that way.’ I mean, it got so physical, when it was game point over there you got two guys who just didn’t want to lose [Magic] is the captain of one team and MJ is the captain of the other team, and the guys that were on the floor, and the pride factor and the competitiveness, they would go…even in drills…at that point, we’re getting ready to go to Barcelona for the Olympics. I mean, it’s a box-out drill and you’ve got Patrick (Ewing), David Robinson, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley and poor Christian Laettner, these five guys, any combination of two-on-two, or a two-on-one box-out drill. You’ve got guys killing each other, but again, that was the competitiveness that we were talking about when you and I were talking about how competitive Kevin Durant is, these guys were amazing, and, the other thing, to put the Olympic thing to bed, people forget that David Robinson had lost, and we had lost in ’88, it was the first time the NBA players were representing the United States in the Olympics. You had three guys, Michael (Jordan), Patrick (Ewing) and Chris (Mullin), who played on the ’84 team. They had already won a gold medal; they had already been in the Olympics. You had David who played in ’88 and lost in Korea, and then you had a bunch of other guys who had never been in the Olympics before and thought this was really special, including Charles Barkley and John Stockton, who were virtually the last cuts on some of these other Olympic teams, and you had other guys who just happened to be juniors or seniors in college and it didn’t line up with the fourth year, so they never got a chance to play in the Olympics. So you had some guys, for them it was a big deal. It wasn’t just ‘okay, what are we doing this summer?’ it was ‘hey, I’m getting a chance to play in the Olympics, I’m not going to whiff on that opportunity,’ and you had other teams pay for that. You saw what they did, how they defended, how they rebounded, how unselfish…if anything, we over-passed. That Olympic experience was a lot more meaningful to these guys individually than some people may have realized from the outside, because of the history, what they had been through. You know, some of these guys, they lost opportunities to get into the Olympics, so they relished that opportunity.

Joel Meyers: Well, I remember Michael Jordan saying after he was on the team that lost in Monaco, Michael Jordan said it was the best game he was ever in. The five-on-five that you’re referring to. So now, you go to Barcelona and it’s barely competitive. You’re up close to Michael Jordan, who you matched up with. You’re three-plus years in Portland were after he came back from baseball, so the last two full seasons in Portland, you had to see him twice a year. So you watched him as a competitor, but now, you’re coaching him as an assistant for Chuck Daly. Was he one of the most competitive guys you’ve ever been around in basketball?

P.J. Carlesimo: Without question. It wasn't just basketball; I mean I was lucky, Michael was in college at (North) Carolina while I'm at Seton Hall. We’d go on a lot of Nike coaches trips as the Nike company took a lot of college and pro – mostly college but some pro coaches every year away on a 4-5, day trip with their families and four or five pro players would come. Charles (Barkley), Michael (Jordan), David Robinson, Danny Roundfield. Different guys over the years. So, Michael came every year, and we'd golf. You'd golf in the morning, and then you'd play cards starting about 10-11 at night and play till like two in the morning. It was like going away to camp when you were young. So, I knew Michael very, very well, but had never been, prior to 1992, coaching. Unfortunately, I was sitting against him. You'd talked about the years at Portland and Golden State when you had to try and guard him, and it was impossible. Again, it's funny because so many of the younger generation - more generations - people literally haven't seen him play. I grew up and I knew Michael since he was in college so, I think I knew him very, very well. These guys don't even know who he is. Really, they haven't seen him play, they've seen Youtube, they haven’t watched games, and I'm sure a lot of them were blown away watching what he was like. He remembered vividly – he remembers everything, but Game 3 of his rookie year, that game against Milwaukee.  Then they had the great quotes from Sidney Moncrief about what he was like. I mean, that was Michael, and he was that same way there. I mean we could be playing – it was Panama in Portland, I'm trying to think of who the worst team was. Was it Uganda that Chuck (Charles Barkley) got in trouble, or Angola for elbowing the guy?  I mean we're getting ready to play Angola, and there's no question we’re 50 or 90 points better than them. These guys are dialed in. One of my responsibilities was the scouting. We'd put, Pete Skorich and I, who at the time he was the Detroit video coordinator…he and I would use NBC's facility after it would shut down at night. After they had signed off the air we were allowed to go in and use the editing machines and everything. We'd put together the scout tapes for the next game, and we'd go in there, and guys would be asking – they didn't know guy's names but number 11 what is he?  He likes to go left? And I remember Magic (Johnson) grabs me at one time out because I told him this guy couldn't shoot the ball and the guy made two threes. His numbers were terrible he was like a 17 percent 3-point shooter. I said you can play off of him; he's not a good shooter. He comes over at the timeout he goes, ‘Yo coach! You told me this guy couldn't shoot, and he made two.’ They were dialed in, they just went after people.

You'll remember well because I think we played them twice, what Pip (Scottie Pippen) and M.J. did to Toni Kukoč was virtually criminal. Again, that played into the whole Jerry Krause (thing). I forget the circumstances, Joel. You may know them. I don't think it was when they got rid of Oak (Charles Oakley). I think Oak was for (Bill) Cartwright. For whatever reason Jerry was bringing Toni Kukoč over, it was a good move. Toni Kukoč was a great international player. He played very well, in fact he had an assist in the tape on Sunday night, a behind the back lefty pass to Michael in transition for a dunk. But Toni was coming over, he had yet to play for the Bulls. He's coming over and he was going to be their new teammate, but Michael and Pip were upset because it was Jerry's decision and I don't know who they had gotten rid of, but he must have had to move somebody to create some space. So they, it was not ‘welcome to the league’ or ‘welcome to a new teammate’. They did not let Toni catch the ball. They overplayed him. They denied him the ball. If he caught it, they didn't let him bounce it. If he somehow got a bounce off, they didn't let him get a shot off. It was unbelievable how they embarrassed literally one of the maybe two or three best players in the world at that point outside the NBA, and it was just unbelievable. They were just like frothing at the mouth, making sure he wasn't going to score and get a shot off, much less score. That was his welcome to the Chicago Bulls, and here's two of your teammates. And you see M.J. yelling at him in a practice. The one practice he's getting all over Harp (Ron Harper), and he's getting all over Toni Kukoč. He said, ‘So I’ve got to yell at you every day to play hard?’ So, I mean it was unbelievable. That was the only way he knew how to play. He played the same way when we were golfing. He would be golfing with – he talked about golfing with Danny Ainge before Game 2 of that Boston series. He would play with Payne (Stewart) all through Barcelona. We played with Payne Stewart the first day we were in Barcelona before we'd even played a game. Payne was there with his agent, who unfortunately the two of them died together in that horrible plane crash. Payne was going to stay only a couple of days and then he was like what the heck I'll go to the games, I'll stay. He and Michael must have played six times during Barcelona. But he's the exact same way on the golf course or anything you do with him. You talk about competitive, forget about it. It was interesting to see it. It's a lot more fun when he's on your team, and he's just getting on his teammates, and he's so competitive. But, when you were sitting on that bench, you couldn't stop him in transition when he or Pip would overplay or get a steal for the Bulls. Then that half-court offense, they ran that triangle so well it was great to see Tex (Winter) and Johnny Bach sitting on the bench. And then the worst thing that would happen, you try and play 24 seconds of defense, you can always use that as a selling point in the NBA. ‘Hey guys, we only have to defend for 24 seconds come on. It's not that hard.’ If you happen to play good defense for 18 or 20 seconds, then they just give him the ball in ISO and get out of his way, and you had no chance in the last four seconds of the clock. So, I mean no, sitting on the bench trying to beat the Bulls was a nightmare. It was no accident that they would win six times in eight years. I think the only time they didn't win was when he was out playing baseball. I'm not trying to take anything away from Houston, but it was good. It was a lot better playing when he wasn't paying for the Bulls. That’s a little bit of a different basketball team.

Joel Meyers: Last thing on Michael (Jordan) and because everybody is fascinated and really they did a great job. ESPN did a phenomenal job with “The Last Dance,” the first two hours and every Sunday night we’re all going to be glued to it because we love the game. But, as competitive as Michael is and was and then you got Magic (Johnson) and (Larry) Bird went at each other in the '80s and those were incredible battles. We were the fortunate ones that the Celtics and the Lakers went at it the way they did. Then Chuck Daily’s Pistons ‘The Bad Boys’ back-to-back. So, you have all these ultra-competitive guys. You got Scottie (Pippen) and Michael from the Bulls. You’ve got (John) Stockton and (Karl) Malone from the Jazz. Did they all get along? Did they all hang out together or did they go their separate ways? What was the interaction like when you’ve got 12 on the roster and 11, all 11 NBA guys are in the Hall of Fame?

P.J. Carlesimo: They really, really enjoyed each other, and it was really special, honestly. First of all, you had the family element. Not in San Diego, not in Portland, but yes in both Monte Carlo and Barcelona. You had wives and children there. You had some guys that were already good friends. Like I mentioned, the Nike trip. Charles was very close with David and with Michael from the trip. Patrick (Ewing) and Mully (Chris Mullin) had played against each other in college, and they were teammates with M.J. on the 1984 team. You had other guys that had only played against each other, and you know from the league, guys say hello to each other but they really don't know each other. Particularly when you are in different conferences, and you only play twice a year or if they haven't played a whole bunch of times in the playoffs. I was that way. I felt at that point I was really close with Michael and Charles, Chris, Patrick. I knew about half the team. I had never met Stock (John Stockton) or 'The Mail Man' (Karl Malone). I never met those guys. I hardly knew Larry Bird and got to be very friendly with him. That was the same dynamic with the team. Guys were enjoying getting to know each other. One of the best combinations, it was really funny because I think they weren't close before it started. If anything they were arch-rivals from the East: Birdy and Patrick Ewing. We used to call it the ‘Harry and Larry Show’. I don't know why they named Patrick ‘Harry’, but they even put T-shirts up. Those two guys were inseparable. Like if you walked in to the breakfast room or lunch after practice or something like that those two were always sitting together and that was really the way it was. Charles kind of took Christian (Laettner) under his wing if you can believe that. I mean, if you're Christian, who else would you want to show you the ropes than Charles? But, Charles kind of befriended Christian and included him in thing because Christian obviously was the outlier because he was the lone college player that was on that team. It had come down to him or Shaq (Shaquille O'Neal) for that spot, and you could make the case if you look at Christian's body of work, you can make the case that he's the best college basketball player. What he's done for the four years he played college basketball was incredible, but clearly, on that team, he was the college player. The only reason he was on it was because he was the best player in college, that's why he was on the team. But no, there was really, really good camaraderie on that team. We did so many things together. There were so many unique experiences, particularly when we got to Monte Carlo. We went and had dinner at the palace with Prince Rainier and his son. I mean, there were so many things we did. So many people that wanted to touch that team and be a part of that team and the security and what it was like…I mean, it was like the Beatles. You had a little bit of it in that show on Sunday. But remember when the Bulls were playing in Paris, and everybody was going crazy for the team? It was 10 times worse than that in Barcelona. These guys were absolute superstars.

Joel Meyers: P.J. I'll jump in on this, and you can add on it. We stayed at Le Meridien on the Ramblas – Carol and I and the boys – and you guys were right around the corner from us. So, we walked down the street just to look around the corner, and there were literally thousands of people outside of your hotel, P.J.

P.J. Carlesimo: We couldn't go – when we went anywhere it was with police. I'm not talking a couple, like 10 cars. Every time we would go under an underpass on the way to the gym there would be military guys or policemen on the bridge with like the bullets crossed on the front of their blouses. I mean it was unbelievable and it was because they were really concerned. Terrorism at that point was pretty high around the world and they felt if anyone wanted to make a statement during that Olympics, what was the most high visibility team? So, the security that we had to deal with…when a player went out, when I went out – I mean nobody knew who I was. But if you went out, you never went out by yourself. You took security people with you. The players like Charles – one of my other jobs was to go out in Ramblas at 3-4 in the morning and locate Charles. If you had to go and try to go and find him, he had 3-4 security guys with him too because he would be up and down Ramblas visiting and being friendly in the middle of big crowds of people. But no, it was amazing what those guys had to deal with, and I really think they've all stayed very close. We've only gotten together a few times when they put the entire team in the Hall of Fame together as a group. They put the team in. It was the first team I think they put in there. There were some really good friendships started there. There were friendships that were already in place. But, there are a lot of friendships that started in Barcelona and still exist today.

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Conversations with Joel Meyers: Part 2 with ESPN's P.J. Carlesimo

Joel Meyers, the longtime TV voice of the New Orleans Pelicans and a veteran NBA broadcaster, will be sharing with Pelicans fans weekly conversations he has with friends and colleagues in the media and the NBA. Up next is P.J. Carlesimo, an NBA analyst for ESPN's TV and radio programs. This is the first of two parts of Joel's conversation with P.J.

Joel Meyers: Ever since you left the bench, you’ve been on ESPN. Whether it’s on TV or radio. Do you find yourself looking at games just to kind of be prepared, be ready just in case we’re back in June or July?

P.J. Carlesimo: Between doing the interviews, that kind of keeps me in it a little bit. If Indianapolis or ESPN calls up, I’ll pull out the stats from what they’ve done so far. That kind of keeps me in it. What I’ve found I’m doing a lot of – and I’m sure it’s the same for you – is that I’ll get a call from San Antonio that says they’re playing game six tonight from the 2003 finals. I’m very conversed in with things that happened 20 years ago. I’m not as good as what’s happened recently. People every once in a while want to know what’s going to happen. I just think it’s going to be so different for all these teams to try and build the bridge back to where they were. In my mind, it was no question that the Lakers and the Bucks were head and shoulders above everybody else at that point when we went down. I know people are talking about the Clippers and when they get healthy and all this, but I mean I thought those two teams had distanced themselves from everybody else. Now it’s totally unchartered territory. We know what it’s like in October and November when the ball is kind of going all over the place and you start going, ‘Well, hey. It’s going to take a while to get in basketball shape and it’s going to take a while for these teams to come together.’ Yeah there’s a big advantage in that they’ve played 50 or 60 games. That’s good, but it seems so long ago and conditioning is going to be such a challenge. I think there will be some guys in very good shape because of what they’ve had access to in terms of being able to work out and I think other guys are not going to be in good shape at all, particularly basketball shape, because they haven’t shot the ball that much.

Joel Meyers: You’ve coached at the highest level for a long time. Do you go back and re-live – and you brought up 2003, 2005, 2007 where you won rings as an assistant coach with Gregg Popovich. The game that stand out in my mind, for you, is 1989…the upset of Bobby Knight and Indiana 78-65 and then the No. 1 seed at the time, the Michigan Wolverines. Do you go back? Do you look at that? When is the last time you saw that, because I still don’t think it was a foul with three seconds to go. Rumeal Robinson goes to the line. Do you go back and revisit that at all?

P.J. Carlesimo: I don’t. I used to get calls – I still will – when ESPN Classic replayed the game. I always get a bunch of texts or phone calls the next day or sometimes that night. I remember a couple of times checking into hotels late at night, as you and I are used to when a team gets to a city, and all of the sudden the phone will ring, ‘Hey, they’re playing the championship game.’ I don’t watch it. I don’t go back. I’ve seen the clip of the play itself a number of times, but I haven’t gone back to watch it. It’s funny living in Seattle, that game of course was in the Kingdome in 1989.  I swear – I’ll say a month, I used to say a week – a month doesn’t go by that two or three people don’t stop me and say, ‘Hey I was at that game.’ I think I’ve talked to 200,000 people that claim they were at the game. It’s a good memory because that whole trip – the five wins preceding the one-point overtime loss to Michigan – we really enjoyed. It was a special team, obviously, and it was a great time. I actually got a chance to talk about it a lot a month or so ago when they cancelled the NCAA Tournament because the last game I did this year was Dallas at San Antonio on March 10. Pop and I of course went out to dinner after the game and we were sitting there and had a really nice meal, and I flew out to Las Vegas the next morning intending to do the Pac-10 tournament. I was going to watch the first day and then we were going to so the semis and the finals. I was looking at three straight weeks of the NCAA Tournament for Westwood One. It was a great schedule because I had a couple of Monday and Tuesday NBA games snuck in there. It was going to be my busiest four weeks of the year, then of course the plug got pulled with Rudy Gobert and Utah/OKC that night. Then I started getting – the following week or whenever it was when the NCAA made the decision – what is it going to be like for these guys to not get a chance to play in an NCAA Tournament? People would ask me, ‘What was that like? Making a Final Four run or playing in a championship game.’ I said it was a once in a lifetime experience. Unless you’re Duke, you don’t get a chance to do that that many times. If you’re lucky enough to get back, it’s great. That is once in a lifetime for our seniors – that team that we had had about six or seven seniors. You look at the guys this year. I’m close to Mark Few – he’s not that far from here at Gonzaga over in Spokane. Seton Hall had one of their best teams this year. They had big guys; they had Myles Powell, a great guard. I think there were more teams this year with a realistic chance to win the tournament. Everybody always says they can win it, but usually it’s three or four teams or five. This year I think there were 10 teams that literally could look around and say, ‘Hey, we’re good enough to win this whole thing.’ Those teams, particularly the seniors, are never going to get a chance. Even the teams where you have guys coming back, it’s not the same thing. It’s not the same team. It’s sad if you’ve experienced it because it’s such a phenomenal event, particularly for a senior or a team like Dayton or San Diego State this year. Not that Dayton will never get back there or San Diego State will never get back there, but those were really special teams and everybody wanted to see, ‘Hey, can these guys play with the teams from the power conferences?’ Obviously you’ll never know. Compared to what’s going on, is that all important? No. But for a lot of these guys and girls, it literally was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Joel Meyers: A couple of years ago Donte DiVincenzo had an amazing run and championship game for Villanova. Those opportunities were lost for guys that wanted to advance to the NBA.

P.J. Carlesimo: No question. The Final Four for a lot of people define their careers with what they’ve done there. Donte is the perfect example. I saw him a lot because I still do some Big East Conference (games). Jay Wright is a good friend, so I watch them. I like Donte. I had him the year before in the regional, I think when they beat Texas Tech, and I really liked him. I thought he was a good player. Even when he was drafted I said, ‘Boy, people are really overreacting to what happened in the Final Four.’ Having covered Milwaukee a couple of times in the past few years – last year he was banged up – he’s really a good player. He’s an excellent player. Like you said, that wouldn’t have happened without the Final Four…it wouldn’t have happened that year without the Final Four experience.  

Joel Meyers: Let’s move on to the Spurs. You’re with them in ’03 and they win the title in six games over Jason Kidd and the Nets. It’s Tony Parker’s second year, Manu Ginóbili is a rookie. Then (2005) comes up, Brent Barry is added (along with) a couple other guys, (Bruce) Bowen is already there. Then 2007. What stands out in your mind about those three championship ruins with Gregg Popovich?

P.J. Carlesimo: I’ll tell you what really surprised me, as I’m getting toward senility and you’re knocking on the door too. I had forgotten so many things about that game six. (My son Kyle) watched it with me. The game is over and Kyle says, ‘Timmy (Duncan) had a quadruple-double.’ As it turned out, the stat crew messed up; they only had him for eight blocks to go with I think 21 points, 20 boards, and 10 assists. The game was ridiculous how well he played. I don’t think anybody’s ever had those kind of numbers in a clinching game in the NBA Finals. What I had forgotten, I’m watching the fourth quarter and we’re down seven or nine points (and) go on a 19-0 run, which I forgot. Steven Jackson had three threes, Speedy Claxton was unbelievable. Jack and Speedy finished the game like Pop always did: if guys were going good, you didn’t necessarily go back to the starters or go back to who he would finish a game with. Jack hit three threes in that 19-0 run. Speedy was unbelievable, I think he had two buckets. David (Robinson) is playing his last game. You couldn’t have had a more fairy-tale ending to a career. David is playing at home in, I think, the first year of the AT&T Center. There were so many different story lines, but to me…Tim was the constant. There’s no question about that. I had no recollection that he literally had a quadruple-double in that game. I’m watching one of the other games against Detroit, I think in game seven in 2007. He blocks a shot – which again, other guys swat the ball out of bounds and then walk around like a rooster. Timmy would block the ball softly up in the air and catch it himself and he got control of it. He dribbles the ball up the floor, he stops and hit a top of the key jump shot, we’re down five. It’s a huge play, and he stops and knocks down a jump shot. I’m sure sitting on the bench, I was thinking, ‘What is he doing?’ Of course he knocks the shot down, we cut it to three and end up winning the game. If a guy can be underrated, and yet at the same time go into the Hall of Fame which he’s doing this year, it’s Tim Duncan. You know him. He’s a better person than he was a player, but I almost had forgotten just how special Tim Duncan was through those three championships. When you look at it, it was one in ’99 and another one in ’14. So I guess he got five championships.

Joel Meyers: Pretty amazing individual, as you said.

You coached Kevin Durant his rookie season. Did you have a good feel that this guy was going to be that good at that time? I remember sitting down with him at Key Arena when you were the coach, a couple of hours before game time. I asked him about that commercial where he was walking through the tunnel by the locker room and taking off all of those jerseys…his first Nike commercial. I asked him about it and said, ‘Who is Drew Freeman’s All-Stars?’ and he smiled and he goes, ‘That was my middle school.’ Did you realize at the time – because you had him his very first year – did you realize Durant was going to be this good?

P.J. Carlesimo: I actually did and it’s not because I’m insightful or know basketball, it’s because Stevie Wonder would have known (laughter). If you watched one practice, there was no question. I remember calling Rick Barnes, I was standing in our bedroom in our home in San Antonio where you and I had a glass of wine or two (laughter) and I called Rick up when I thought I was going to get the scout job and I said, ‘How good is he, I’ve seen him on TV,’ and he kind of said the same thing we said about Timmy (Tim Duncan). He said ‘let me tell you, he’s a gym rat. You’ll have to kick him out of the gym. All he wants to do is be a great player. He’s a great teammate, he’s unbelievable, he can shoot it, he’s so skilled, you’d be shocked at how big he is, and, here’s the best news; he’s a better person than he is a player,’ I mean it was like he couldn’t have been bubbling over more. So, we get him, I get the job, I think I had to stay for the press conference or something like that. The team is in Vegas getting ready for Summer League and Ralph Lewis is coaching the team, one of our assistants, and we go and watch five minutes of a practice and I’m going ‘holy God,’ I couldn’t believe it. I wish I had tapes because I remember some scrums after some practices when we got back to Seattle and we’re getting ready to start the season in October and people saying how good he was, and I remember saying specifically, because I didn’t want to put too much (pressure) on him, that we weren’t going to be a good team, I think he’ll be a 8-10-time All Star, he may be good enough to make a run at MVP, he’s going to win championships in the league, and (the media) is looking at me [surprised], because he was really skinny, really thin, and (the media) said ‘wow’ and I said ‘I don’t feel like I’m sticking my neck out. You guys watch him play and you’re going to believe it,’ you know, they could only watch 10 minutes of the practice and we hadn’t had any games except Summer League games at that point. If you had watched him play and particularly if you knew him, if you got to know the person, I mean he’s like, you know, people talk about (Michael Jordan) and watching the series now and people still talk about LeBron, rightfully so, Kobe, of course, those guys out-worked the other players in the league. It’s a bad combination when a guy naturally has more talent than most of the other players in the league, but then he has a work ethic and he out-works the other players in the league that are less talented, then they’re going to be a real problem. We’d come back from a trip, and I’d be sitting in my office, and any time I heard a ball bouncing at two or three-o-clock in the morning I knew who it was. I got a kick out of it, you literally had to kick him out of the gym, and there’s nothing you could ask him to do that he wouldn’t do. He was that motivated to be the best player, and even later in his career. Right now, still, I guarantee when he comes back, there’s no question how he’s going to come back. It’s physically possible he’s going to come better than he was because he’s going to be out-working these people. Right now I guarantee he’s working as hard, if not harder, than anybody in the NBA right now. That’s Kevin Durant, and it was real easy to see how good he was going to be.

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Conversations with Joel Meyers: ESPN's P.J. Carlesimo

Joel Meyers, the longtime TV voice of the New Orleans Pelicans and a veteran NBA broadcaster, will be sharing with Pelicans fans weekly conversations he has with friends and colleagues in the media and the NBA. Up first is Tim Legler, lead NBA studio analyst for ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” This is the second of two parts of Joel's conversation with Tim.

Joel Meyers: What are your first impressions on what you’ve seen from the Pels this year? What do you see from them going forward?

Tim Legler: This is a team that I’m just enamored with. The thing for me all season was just the entertainment value. This is a team that’s got a lot of talent…a lot of young talent. They play a style that is really entertaining to watch, incredibly difficult to guard. They can beat you inside-out. They can beat you off ball-screens. They can obviously beat you with pace and transition. The young talent base, first of all, I’m just really enamored with and I think there’s an incredible about of upside there. Obviously, not having Zion Williamson for the vast majority of the season didn’t let you get this team to really peak for a long enough period of time where you (could) say, ‘Hey, that would’ve been a bona-fide playoff team.’ Once you saw him on the court, he adds a dimension to your offense of physicality and high-percentage shots and the ability to finish at such a high rate. It just really enhances all of the perimeter talent that is on this team, because you’ve got so many different guys that can score and can beat you. I’ve seen great improvement from some of the young players. Obviously, Brandon Ingram has taken it to a level where now he’s not only maybe the Most Improved Player in the league, but he’s going to be now a perennial All-Star from this point going forward. You look at the improvement of Lonzo Ball and what he did to his shot. I’ve got to give him all of the credit in the world because what he was doing – the way he was shooting the ball mechanically – was not going to work at the NBA level. For him to go from what he looked like his whole life to where he’s releasing the ball from (now) and the threat that he became from the three-point line in one season…really dramatic. So you add that to what Zion Williamson brings to the table, and this is a fun, young group. They look like they’ve got pretty good chemistry, and I think they’ve got enough diverse offensive talent that they’re on their way to becoming a real factor in the Western Conference.

Joel Meyers: Yeah, it’s interesting for down the road purposes because of the Laker trade with Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, and I want your thoughts on Josh Hart as well, but also the picks that are coming over in 2021 and 2023. Josh Hart has a chance to be one of the best rebounding guards in the NBA, and you got to watch him at Villanova.

Tim Legler: He’s got a motor that’s off the charts. He’s just a winner. He’s tough, he’s hard-nosed. He plays at absolute break-neck speed every minute that he’s on the court. He’s got really no weaknesses in his game. I don’t think he’s ever going to be a guy that is creative enough with the ball to become like a 20-point scorer in the NBA, but I do think he’s got the potential – because of the way he guards and the way he wants to guard, I think he’s got the potential to become one of the better two-way combo guards in the league. He plays so hard defensively. He’s physical, so he can play bigger guys. He’s a very good open three-point shooter and he excels in transition the way he attacks the rim. Josh Hart is a key pickup. I saw a ton of him in college, as most of us did, but I’m more familiar with those schools out of Philly because I’m watching them all the time and that’s what’s always stood out to me about Josh Hart. This is just a guy that, when he was on the court, good things happened because he knows how to play, (has) an incredible IQ for the game. When you combine that IQ with that intensity level, you get a guy that’s a real impact player. When he comes into the game – and eventually who knows, maybe he’s a starter in this league full-time – he’s just a guy that makes winning plays. He’s a great pickup in that trade. You look at all the talent haul that they got back, they set themselves up for a very bright future here in (a short time).

Joel Meyers: Not to mention getting Jaxson Hayes, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Didi Louzada in the 2019 draft. Sustainable success is the goal, what have you seen objectively from a distance?

Tim Legler: Yeah you bring up a couple of young guys that we saw in Vegas (Summer League). That’s where we saw Alexander-Walker and Jaxson Hayes. You saw, No. 1, that they had great chemistry together. But I think they opened some eyes for some people. It’s interesting to see the way that that could be a springboard to your first year in the league. Just look at a guy like Kyle Kuzma; he’s a great example. Look at what he did in Vegas. He did things in the Summer League that none of us had seen him do in college. Now you say, ‘Wow.’ The confidence boost that he got from that carried over into his first year and I think that sets you up to have success annually. I think you’re seeing some of that with the guys that they drafted as well. Jaxson Hayes can do things athletically that very few guys his size in the league can do. He’s just one of the best runners, finishers, and plays with great verticality above the rim. He gives you great energy and bounce because he can make plays out of nothing. When you don’t run anything for him, he can go make plays for himself because of his athletic ability. Alexander-Walker is just a guy who is a much better play-maker and passer than I thought that he was. He had streakiness his rookie year but that’s absolutely typical for any guard. You’re not going to see guys hit this stride in terms of their efficiency and their shooting percentages be consistent until you get into year three, year four. I think that’s where he’s headed as well. The future is incredibly bright. I think it’s a shame, if this ends up being the end of the regular season, that the Pels won’t get that opportunity to close the ground because I think they had a real shot if this had played out and you had a normal 82-game season. I think they had a real shot to get that eighth spot and set themselves up for whatever that may have meant – playing the Lakers in the first round most likely. Regardless, the taste of the experience those young players would’ve gotten would’ve made them so hungry and you would’ve seen a team come back on a mission next year. We’ll see how that plays out. Regardless, they’re headed in the right direction and there’s no question in my mind that with that young talent and a guy like Zion Williamson, who I think can be transcendent, you have now a team that is going to be poised to make some serious noise in the West.

Joel Meyers: Looking at the final thing, and a lot of teams are duos now, where it's AD (Anthony Davis) and LeBron (James) in LA. We've got a lot of really good duos, not 'Big 3's' anymore. And one guy is just 22, and that's Brandon Ingram at the three (position). And you've got Zion Williamson at the four (position) who doesn't even turn 20 until over the summer. Projections for these two working together because one guy is an outside guy, although Brandon can go inside. We've seen his strength and development there. But how do you see that duo working out? Is it going to be considered as you see it over the next four or five years developing into one of the top twosomes in the NBA?

Tim Legler: Yeah, I really think they’ve got a chance to do it. I think one of the keys there is going to be Brandon Ingram continuing to evolve as a play-maker because now you talk about playing some two-man basketball with Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson. Good luck trying to defend that once Brandon Ingram passing ability gets to that level where he can pick you apart by making pocket passes, lobs. Where he can come off a ball screen with Zion, there's too much traffic guarding those two guys, and now he's throwing a bullet pass to the opposite corner to a spot-up shooter. When you get to that LeBron James type of play-making where every single time he runs action, he can find anyone on the floor to beat you and make the right read. I'm not saying that Brandon Ingram will necessarily ever get to that level because LeBron James is one of the greatest play-makers in the history of this league. But imagine now a guy that can score the way he can because he's added to his ability to stay on balance because he's added some strength. That he can now get to spots pull up, elevate. He's got so much in his game in terms of a one-on-one scorer. Now imagine if you continue to hone his passing skills where you can run two-man game with those two guys and the way Zion catches it out of a ball screen and dive and just explodes into people and over people and he's got the finesse around the rim to finish anything. You now have something really, really special that's going to be incredibly difficult to defend. So I do think they're headed there and obviously, they're young, and they're going to improve. They're going to continue to polish their games. But you look at the combination of just the raw scoring ability of Ingram and then that combination of power and athletic ability in a guy that’s Zion Williamson's size, which has never been seen. You have something really, really unique with those two guys. So yeah, if the chemistry stays good and they continue to polish their games and hone – and particularly Brandon Ingram's ability to be that big-time play-maker – I think now you have something that could potentially be as good as any duo in the league.

Joel Meyers: Let me ask you this because you need a good duo you need guys to be attracted to a certain destination. Because we saw San Antonio and it started with first (Tim) Duncan obviously '97 and David was in the prime of his basketball career. David Robinson, who came in '87, first overall pick. But then (Tony) Parker 28th overall in '01. (Manu) Ginobili joins them in '02. (Bruce) Bowen arrives in '03 as a free agent. '05, Brent Barry comes in. A couple of other guys come in. Because of that kind of duo, they're the model obviously, after 22 seasons. But can a small market – can a market that's not looked at as New York, LA, or Chicago, can it be a destination because of a duo?

Tim Legler: Yeah, I think it can be. I think it's not just the duo. I think it's the nature of who we're talking about. I think Zion Williamson is a guy that's a guy that's going to attract players and are going to want to play with him. Because he's a guy that is not a ball-stopping player, he's not a guy that's difficult to play with because he's going to 'iso' you a ton. He's a guy that the way he moves, catches, and finishes is so quick and so decisive that I think there are going to be other elite players that can easily see themselves playing with him without compromising their own game because he does it so efficiently. I think that's a real attraction to players. So, and I think what you saw them do this year once he came back and the ground they made up after that really difficult start when they had injuries. They had a brutal schedule to start the year that did not allow them to get out of the gates quickly. They dug themselves a huge hole. To see them make up the ground once they got him back and you saw that chemistry come together. I think players around the league are noticing that kind of thing. He's got a charisma about him as well. The way he carries himself, he just seems like an incredibly likable, fun-loving kid that would be easy to join up with and play without sacrificing or compromising who you are as a player. That's really what a lot of these guys think about on that level. They want to be able to go somewhere and play with another star, but they don't want to have to compromise who they are to make that happen. It's got to be a natural fit, and I think Zion Williamson can be a natural fit with a lot of guys. So, whether it's just two of them or you add a third guy, I think that it absolutely can work in a place like New Orleans because I think people took notice of what they have going on down there and that young talent is really attractive. You start to think about doing this every year because you just don't want to go somewhere for a two or three year hit. If you're a player who wants to think about joining up with this and adding to it, you want to think about longevity. You mentioned the Spurs; that was a two-decade run of success, the gold standard. You want to go to a place like New Orleans that's got young players that are showing you that that's where they are headed. So, even with those two guys, I think it's a great start. I think they have the real potential to add outside talent as free agents that are going to want to play with them, particularly with Zion, because what he brings to the table is so unique. I think guys would like to have a taste of that.

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Conversations with Joel Meyers: Part 2 with ESPN's Tim Legler

Joel Meyers, the longtime TV voice of the New Orleans Pelicans and a veteran NBA broadcaster, will be sharing with Pelicans fans weekly conversations he has with friends and colleagues in the media and the NBA. Up first is Tim Legler, lead NBA studio analyst for ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” This is the first of two parts of Joel's conversation with Tim.

Joel Meyers: You were a player in 1999, the 50-game season. How did you maintain through waiting and waiting and waiting like the players are doing right now? Totally different circumstances of course, but how did you maintain conditioning especially for a shooter like yourself? Did you find a place to get shots up? I know that’s difficult for guys now because nobody’s around now and nobody’s allowed to be around. You know guys find hoops, and they’re by themselves getting shots up. How did you stay in shape?

Tim Legler: It was tough. It was difficult because – circumstances are different in this way. Obviously this is due to not wanting guys to be around each other (or) in physical proximity to each other because of the coronavirus. When I went through this in '98-99, they didn’t want us around either because we were locked out. So it was a similar situation that you didn’t have opportunities where guys could gather and play and try to maintain some sort of continuity. A lot of guys just went home. I basically was just trying to find local places where I could get in, get some shots up, do my cardio and my weightlifting…doing some running just around where I lived and whatnot…just trying to get in as much work as I could. I was in pretty constant contact with our strength and conditioning guy. But it’s different now; they have such a deeper staff on these teams that handle all of these things. We had one guy to handle all of that back then. You’re just trying to get ideas and ways I could make my workouts up and try to stay in the best shape that I could. It was a strange circumstance because we never got the season going. We were coming out of the offseason, so I hadn’t played meaningful basketball since the previous April and we didn’t start playing again until February. These guys are dealing with something different in that they reached the peak physical condition, getting 60 games in. They were in as good of shape as they were going to be in, and then you pull the plug on it. Now you’re going to sit for two, three months, maybe longer. That’s a much different dynamic in what they’re dealing with in terms of their conditioning and what we were going through when we never even got off the ground with our conditioning because we never got the season started.

Joel Meyers: As a shooter, how did you keep in form with your stroke?

Tim Legler: Well, one of the things I had going for me was, my entire life I was taught – at a young age when I first started to play the game – to do everything at game-speed in my individual workouts. I had done that my entire life. So where you might see some guys go in and get casual reps up for 90 minutes or a couple of hours – a lot of set shots, slow rhythm/pace in coming off their screens, shooting to simulate – everything I did since I was probably 15 years old, I did as hard as I could. That meant taking shots that would be as close as possible to what it would feel like in a game. So I always had that built-in routine, but you can’t replicate what it feels like to get shots off in a tight window with defenders on you when you’re working out by yourself. So it definitely was an effect. The thing I was wondering the whole time and concerned about was, ‘How much time are they going to give us?’ Once we got the go-ahead and the clearance that this thing was over with, the lockout had ended, and we were going to start playing basketball, how much time were we going to have to be able to ramp up before we started playing meaningful basketball? It’s a big concern for a shooter. You really want to get in as much time as you can in game situations with defenders on you to find that rhythm and find that stroke before you start playing games where those things really matter and those percentages start to count.

Joel Meyers: How much time would you anticipate it would take for a team to get back into the gym together to get ready for the remaining 16 or 18 games, if they went that way, in the regular season?

Tim Legler: Let’s put it in perspective. You go back to '98-99, this was a situation where we didn’t have load management, we weren’t worried as much about guys getting rest, we were still playing four games in five nights at times during that season even if there hadn’t been a lockout. We still got two full weeks to get ready to start playing games. The one big difference here, Joel, is that we started playing games that were going to give us a chance to be able to get our legs under us. There were some minute restrictions early on, because those first 10 games or so weren’t going to be that critical. This is a totally different situation. You’re talking about now maybe taking a few months off – I’m estimating at least two weeks I think, minimum, to give them a chance to get their conditioning up because the last thing you want is for guys to go out there playing out of shape and you have a serious injury that impacts the following season. They’re going to have a couple of weeks. The difference though is, when they hit the ground running this time, they’re hitting the ground running playing the most meaningful basketball of their season. That wasn’t the case with us in the lockout. We were starting the year – even though it was going to be 50 games – those first 10 or so were going to feel like the beginning of any season, finding a rhythm, finding rotations, getting your legs under you, wins and losses not being critical. That wouldn’t be the case here, whether it’s getting in a handful of regular season games and then start the postseason. Those games are going to be very impactful in terms of seeding, so they’re going to matter a lot. There is a scenario in which they just start immediately with the postseason after this long layoff. Think about the ramifications of that: your first game that you’re going to play in three months is going to be the biggest game of the year because it’s game one of a playoff series. It’s going to be a little different in terms of how coaches are going to manage those players because of the impact of the games and the importance and the meaning behind games, as opposed to what we had during the lockout year.

Joel Meyers: You look at the calendar after Memorial Day. You finish the regular season in June, so then you have all of July and August for the postseason. I bring it up because of the Western Conference in particular, whether it’s New Orleans, San Antonio, Portland, Sacramento all right there within striking distance of the eighth seed. In New Orleans’ case, it’s only three back in the loss column. Do you think there is the potential to finish the regular season if the green light is given from the Center for Disease Control?

Tim Legler: Yeah there’s no doubt. There’s so much at stake, not just for those teams that are fighting to get that last spot in the West, but also just take a look at how tight some of these teams are in terms of seeding. You’re talking about teams that are a game apart or tied, and the difference being playing at home in the first round or playing on the road in the first round. There’s huge ramifications. When the season stopped, there was a lot to still be determined. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be tough if you start talking about getting into June and allowing there to be regular season basketball to where you start the postseason, say just hypothetically, (in) mid-June and you want to have a normal postseason, you’re talking about playing up until mid-August if that’s the case and training camp for the following season is set to start in September. I think Adam Silver – one of the things he alluded to and it just becomes a math game – he doesn’t want to have next season impacted. At some point – depending on how long it is before we return to some sort of normalcy in society where you would even contemplate having these games – at some point you have to start to look at that red line that could be crossed where you say, ‘Now we’re actually bleeding into next season.’ That’s the last thing I think Adam Silver wants. So it’s really going to come down to timing, which is why he said no decision is going to be made until at least May 1, if not later, because they’re trying to just continue to look at the math behind this and what’s realistic. Now one other scenario could be, maybe they start that late, you play a handful of regular season games to let there at least be something that these teams can determine, and then maybe shorten the postseason a little bit. Maybe the first round is best of three, best of five. Maybe the second round is best of five…best of seven in the last two rounds. Or maybe you don’t have as many teams in the postseason. There are ways to adjust the playoff format to end it in a more reasonable time so that you’re not affecting next year while still also allowing teams to get a handful of regular season games in to determine some of the things you’re talking about. I think that’s something they would have to look at: shortening the postseason a little bit if it started that late.

Joel Meyers: Some have brought up the idea of starting the NBA season in December and playing through August, right before the NFL season begins. How do you feel about that suggestion?

Tim Legler: I personally didn’t like the idea because there’s something about when the NBA Finals ends and the way that it ties into really the end of the school year. So we finish up mid-June; that’s when school lets out. So what happens over the next couple of months? Even though I know you can watch games now anywhere because you have mobile devices and it’s amazing what you’re able to do, the bottom line is that families in the summer – they want to be outside. They want to take vacations. They want to be away from sitting down at a restaurant/bar on your cell phone watching these games. I think it would be a bad idea to move the NBA calendar in that way. It’s worked this way for a really long time, and I think it’s been pretty successful. The popularity of the game is greater than ever. I don’t know if I would like to see NBA players playing over the entire summer with the most meaningful games all taking place during those summer months when I think there are so many other distractions – so many other things that people like to do that takes them away from watching.

Joel Meyers: With March Madness being cancelled this season, how does that impact the draft and player evaluation as far as you’re concerned?

Tim Legler: Yeah it’s really tough for some guys. There are certain guys that have already – you’ve seen enough of a body of work, you’ve seen enough sample size. People know that they’re going to be high draft picks. The guys that I feel bad for – and I lived this life because I coached AAU basketball and I’ve had players who fall exactly into this category – you have an opportunity to go into this time of the year, and let’s say you’ve got a kid that’s going to be normally slotted from 15 to 25 in the draft and then he goes on a run in the conference tournament and he has a big conference tournament for somebody, then he goes into the NCAA Tournament and he gets an opportunity to play two or maybe three games and plays out of his mind. A guy like that has an opportunity to bump himself somewhere near the top 10. That’s a big difference. It’s just the exposure component to what we missed out on for some of these guys in conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament. It’s going to make it more difficult, because I think what you’re going to see – when you look back on the 2020 draft five years from now – because you didn’t get as much evaluation at the most important time of the year for these players, there are going to be more misses on guys from this draft than most years when you look back on it several years from now. It’s such a critical time of the year to get an opportunity to let the cream sort of rise to the top as you look at the pressure of these games and the way guys can sometimes put a team on their back. You can really make a name for yourself with either your conference tournament or March Madness, and I think that’s going to make it much more difficult. Just look at the draft combine and what guys would normally go through. We might not have any of that leading up to the draft, so it’s very difficult for the talent evaluators to get these right when you had this entire thing cut short, because they were counting on that time of year to really make their final decisions and have some guys catch their eye that they didn’t know as much about. I feel bad for the players because they’re not going to be able to differentiate themselves with those high-pressure games, and also for the talent evaluators that are going to have to get this right, and it’s going to be much more difficult to do that.

Joel Meyers: What about European players? Does this help some guys who play in the higher level leagues in Europe? Will we see more European players potentially taken in this draft due to having a larger sample size and more film?

Tim Legler: Yeah that’s a good point. I actually think it could because of what you’re talking about. You know that these guys have turned pro at a younger age, they’ve been playing against grown men for longer, you are very familiar with who these guys are. It’s a little bit different than watching a guy who you kind of liked, had an eye on, maybe plays at a mid-major and now he’s going to have an opportunity to go play another three, four, five games against elite competition at the right time of the year where you could see something special in a college player. It’s different for a foreign player, so I think actually it could help some of those guys and you might see more guys taken in the top 20 because you’re going to feel a little more certain than you are about some guys that you hadn’t really written that final chapter on, where you felt really comfortable taking them in the first round – certainly the first half of the first round.

The second part of this conversation will be published Thursday, April 16.

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Conversations with Joel Meyers: ESPN's Tim Legler

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