Pity Mike Dunleavy, who in his third incarnation as an NBA coach is the designated zookeeper of the Portland Trail Blazers. This is nothing like his first job, which found him succeeding Pat Riley and taking over a Lakers team anchored by Magic Johnson. Nor is it anything like his second, which forced him to teach the basics to a bunch of NBA neophytes while trying to rebuild the Milwaukee Bucks.
“This team is somewhere in the middle,” he said of the squad that lost to the Bulls Thursday night. “It’s a more talented team, but a young team and at times a very immature team.”
That’s for sure. Not for nothing has it been known as the Portland Jail Blazers.
Guard Isaiah Rider, who is no stranger to police blotters, is one of the starters, as is forward Gary Trent, who has had his own brush with the law. The other forward is Rasheed Wallace, whom Dean Smith found so vexing he was pleased when Wallace left North Carolina two years early. The reserves include forward Dontonio Wingfield, whom Bob Huggins pushed out the door at Cincinnati, where choirboys don’t exactly abound.
Guard Kenny Anderson is considered the elder statesman of this wild bunch, even though his past is littered with tardiness, missed practices and pouting.
Not one member of the Blazers recalls Calvin Murphy or Sidney Moncrief or Julius Erving or Rudy Tomjanovich or any of the other driven veterans Dunleavy performed alongside in his playing days.
“Guys,” Dunleavy recalled, “who had a great desire to win.
“You always had to police yourselves then,” he said. “In the locker room, there’s a lot of things that go on today . . . it wouldn’t have been the coach’s job or management’s job to take care of it. The players I played with were like, `Hey, you’re stealing money from me. Because if you don’t produce the way you’re capable of producing, that means we don’t win, we don’t advance, and I don’t get my playoff check, and the recognition from winning, and the endorsements that come as part of winning.
“Same thing in L.A. with Magic. When your best player is your hardest-working guy, how can everybody else not fall in line? We’d have days in L.A. where we had a tough stretch, maybe be a little bit tired, I’d say to Magic, `You want a day off? You’ve been playing 40 minutes, take a day off.’
“No way. After that, everybody’s got to fall in line. Michael (Jordan), I’m sure, is absolutely the same way.”
But there’s no one remotely like that in Portland.
“Probably not,” Dunleavy conceded.
So does that make the job more difficult?
“Sure it does. Every team is better off having a guy on the floor who is willing to take that leadership role and is able to get it done because of his attributes.”
Dunleavy’s own attributes– competitiveness, smarts, a passion for the game–would come in handy on what he refers to as “a high-maintenance team” if more of his players shared them. Instead, they show up almost devoid of passion and lose at home to lowly Golden State. They have little or no chemistry, and they’re easily distracted by trade rumors, such as those currently circling about Anderson.
They probably need a baby-sitter more than a coach, a lion tamer more than a thoughtful teacher.
“People management, really,” is Phil Jackson’s definition of the job he and Dunleavy share. “That’s what it’s all about. You want the guys, in a 250-day season, to have the best kind of demeanor and attitude toward each other.”
But are the people harder to manage.
“Yeah,” Jackson conceded. “Irritable. Unhappy. Selfish. Passive. A lot of things can spoil the chemistry, the mix, in a group.”
And the Bulls are five-time world champions. The Blazers?
“It’s probably true en masse,” Dunleavy said. “You’ve always had guys who made so much money they had leverage over a coach, over a situation, and depending on what kind of person they were, they could be an idiot and get away with it, or be a great guy and be a star. That hasn’t changed.
“The difference today is the fact all of those guys who were in that position had done it on the floor. They got paid for a reason. They had produced. Now what’s happening is you’re getting a lot of younger players who are getting paid on potential before they’ve produced. So if they’re not a good guy with a passion for the game, there can be problems.”
Do the problems ever get so bad that a coach sits back at night and wonders why he’s putting himself through it?
“I think everyone in every profession says that,” Dunleavy said, managing a laugh. “But there are other nights when you say to yourself, `Hey, I love what I do, and this is why I do it.’ I love to coach and I want to win, and I think this team ultimately gives you that possibility.”
Even with its history of off-court shenanigans?
“Yeah,” Dunleavy said. “To be honest with you, these guys are good guys at heart. What happens is we’re a little immature at times, and guys fly off the handle and don’t react to something in the right way. . . .
“But for the most part, our guys want to get the job done, they want to win, but sometimes they don’t understand what the price is you have to pay to get it done. That’s part of my job too–to try to figure out how to get that across to them.”
