Lawrence Frank must have a lot of red marks on him, so don’t be surprised to see him wince every now and then.
He’s still pinching himself.
“When I was a little kid, 11 or 12, I wanted to be a coach,” said Frank, the newly appointed coach of the New Jersey Nets.
Frank loved basketball even then, but he was cut from just about every tryout.
“I got into the profession being a manager at Indiana (for Bob Knight), and that was great,” he said. “Then I’m with Kevin O’Neill (video coordinator) at Marquette and I’m overjoyed to be a college assistant. Then I get to be an assistant with Brian Hill at Vancouver. I’m thinking, `Man, it can’t get any better than this.'”
When his Nets won 105-85 Wednesday night at Cleveland for their 10th straight victory, he tied for the best start ever for an NBA coach with his ninth straight win.
No one is quite sure who he is and why he’s there coaching the hottest team in the league.
Thursday night the Bulls entertain the Boston Celtics, who feature the other NBA coach no one knows, John Carroll. He’s off to a 1-6 start with a demoralized Celtics team ripped apart by trades and the resignation of coach Jim O’Brien. It’s doubtful anyone will be hearing from Carroll much longer.
But Frank, the youngest coach in major-league sports at 33 appears likely to stick around for a while.
Frank’s emergence and the Nets’ turnaround is one of the best stories in the NBA.
“The bottom line is it’s not about me,” Frank said. “It’s about us as a team. But the buck stops with me. I want that challenge.”
And it will be a challenge because our society often bases first impressions on appearance. Frank is barely 5 feet 8 inches tall and so boyish looking that reporters who cover the Nets have taken to calling him “Doogie Howser” and “the Little Coach Who Could.”
Frank isn’t offended.
“I agree–I do look more like the ball boy than a head coach,” he said. “Security usually stops me. We won in Orlando and I’m at the hotel on the elevator after the game and it stops on a floor and guy walks in. I must have had something on that had `Nets.’ “He says, `Were you at the game tonight? Who won?’ I said, `The Nets.’ And he said, `The Nets won?’
“I don’t mind. I want to go under the radar. You have to laugh at yourself. I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin.”
Frank has the Nets on a roll. Before playing Cleveland they had moved 10 games above .500 and within 1 1/2 games in the Eastern Conference of the second-place Detroit Pistons, whom they defeated Tuesday night 89-78. In his first nine games, the Nets won each by at least 10 points.
It’s clear the players have responded to him, although one can say it’s the typical honeymoon period after a team gets a coach fired. Byron Scott had taken the Nets to consecutive NBA Finals, but it was clear he and Jason Kidd were not getting along.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Kidd and Kenyon Martin have been on a tear since, each winning the Eastern Conference Player of the Week award. Kidd’s scoring has been up and his turnovers down in Frank’s nine games.
“This is a different team in the sense of preparation and understanding what’s at stake,” Kidd told reporters who cover the team.
Martin said: “We’re playing harder for longer and defending the way we know how to defend.”
In a lot of ways it hasn’t been an easy season for the Nets, the consensus preseason favorite in the conference. Center Alonzo Mourning had to retire because of kidney disease and Dikembe Mutombo was let go.
The team was sold amid reports it will be moved to Brooklyn and might relocate to Long Island until a Brooklyn arena is ready. Key reserves were injured, and then Scott may have hastened his firing when he expressed public doubt about the players after a blowout loss to Miami.
In comes Frank, one of the most anonymous men in the nameless world of basketball assistants. He had been around: Marquette and Tennessee with O’Neill; the Grizzlies; then the Nets under Scott.
He’s one of those basketball gym rats, sitting in the stands with a clipboard watching some high school practice. He went to Indiana from Teaneck, N.J., because he idolized Knight’s coaching and talked his way into a student manager job.
“I went there to learn from Coach,” Frank said, leaving no doubt to whom he’s referring. In his world there’s only one “Coach.”
“My goal was to get into coaching and there’s no one better to learn from than Coach.”
Frank eventually was allowed to break down film and help with game preparation. He studied Knight’s practices intently and went to his clinics. He couldn’t get enough of the game.
He’s an unabashed admirer of his players, calling every Eastern Conference coach after he was hired to lobby for All-Star selections.
Before his first game, Frank’s fiery pregame speech was about underdogs, how he always has been one, how each player had been one at one time, written off, and how they persevered. The Nets jumped to a 26-6 lead.
Concerned about playing last-place Orlando, Frank told the team a story about the overconfidence of the Japanese navy when it was controlling World War II in the early 1940s
“It’s called Victory Disease,” Frank said. “You put together a string of victories, and all of a sudden, because of overconfidence, you start slipping on your attention to detail. You lose your edge. That’s what happened to the Japanese.”
“He can tell a story quite well,” Kidd said.
He also is living one.
The long road back
A look how Teaneck, N.J., native Lawrence Frank found his way home.
1. Bloomington, Ind.: earned a B.S. in education at Indiana University in 1992, spending four years as Bob Knight’s student manager.
2. Milwaukee: Staff assistant to kevin O’ Neill at Marquette for two seasons while earning an M.S. in education administration.
3. Knoxville, Tenn.: Followed O’Neill to Tennessee as an assistant for three seasons. (1994-95 through 1996-97)
4. Vancouver: Went north of the border and into the NBA to become Brian Hill’s assistant at Vancouver for three seasons (1997-98 through 1999-2000).
5. E. Rutherford, N.J.: Joined the Nets for the 2000-01 season as an assistant; named interim head coach Jan. 26, to replace the fired Byron Scott.
Chicago Tribune.
