Nelson's unconventional ways have a history. (5-21-03)
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SAN ANTONIO (AP) _ To understand why Don Nelson would employ the strange strategy of intentionally fouling Bruce Bowen, one must understand the genesis of how Nelson became the quintessential unconventional coach.
The strategy against Bowen helped Dallas kill San Antonio's momentum in Game 1 as the Mavericks took a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference finals. Game 2 is Wednesday night.
Not many coaches would use the Hack-a-Bruce strategy, but there aren't many coaches like Nelson, now in his 26th season.
Nelson's NBA career began as a player during a time when the common belief was that teams needed a dominant big man to win championships. So it was in the 1960s when Bill Russell was with the Celtics, and the trend continued in the early '70s as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Milwaukee Bucks, Wilt Chamberlain's Los Angeles Lakers and Willis Reed's New York Knicks won the decade's first four titles.
But when Nelson took his first head coaching job with Milwaukee, he had no big man. The Bucks' three best players were two guards and a small forward, Brian Winters, Bob Dandridge and Junior Bridgeman.
``He was trying to do things the conventional way and it just wasn't clicking for him,'' assistant coach and son Donnie Nelson said. ``He was losing games as a result, and finally he just made the decision: 'I'm probably going to lose my job if I do things conventionally, and he started doing things the way he thought was right based upon his personnel and philosophies. Since that time, he's never looked back.''
The Bowen strategy was not as crucial as the Mavs' 49-for-50 free-throw shooting, but it was important nonetheless.
After the Spurs dominated the first 18 minutes, leading by as many as 18 points, Dallas got the deficit to 10. Steve Nash then committed an ordinary foul against Bowen, who went to the line and missed both shots.
The light bulb went off in Nellie's noggin: Time for Hack-a-Bruce.
``He did it to me in once in Dallas, and he did it again. It's more or less of a mind game type of thing, I guess,'' said Bowen, who is shooting 51 percent from 3-point range and 42 percent from the foul line during the playoffs.
Dallas intentionally fouled Bowen away from the ball on four of the next six possessions. The game slowed to a crawl. The once-rabid crowd quieted down.
Bowen made five of eight free throws during that span, and Dallas only reduced its deficit by one. But something else had happened. The game had turned weird and the Spurs were a bit stunned. Dallas eventually found a way to win.
``It took the crowd out, that kind of thing, stopped momentum,'' Spurs coach Gregg Popovich grudgingly conceded.
During the stretch when they were fouling Bowen, the Mavs were keeping him guessing, too. On the other two possessions, Mavs players feigned and darted at Bowen _ only to back off at the last second and avoid contact.
``With the stakes being as high as they are, we were hoping not to pull that card as early as we did. But we needed a momentum buster or something because we were running out of tourniquets there,'' the younger Nelson said. ``It's one small technique that some people would say had no neutralizing effect, but it did the things that we wanted.''
In a league in which the majority of the teams run slight variations of the same offensive and defensive strategies, Nelson has always tried to break from the norm.
In Milwaukee during the mid-80s, Nelson had a smooth ballhandling player in 6-foot-6 Paul Pressey and invented a position for him called point forward.
In Golden State, he ran the low-post offense through 6-foot Tim Hardaway and turned 7-7 Manute Bol into a 3-point shooter.
``Not that I won't use a gimmick once in a while, but you use gimmicks when you have bad teams to try to win a game. You don't use them when you have good teams,'' Nelson said. ``I use very few gimmicks with this team. I'm not a gimmick coach anymore. But I have been occasionally, and so everybody writes about that.''
Nelson's unorthodox ways have not always been well received.
In New York, he was fired in 1996 during his first season despite a 34-25 record because the players wouldn't accept his schemes _ most notably to have Anthony Mason dominate the ball, which meant a reduced role for Patrick Ewing.
Other coaches around the league, including Philadelphia's Larry Brown, have said they would never resort to such Nelsonesque schemes because they feel it degrades the game. Nelson's detractors have questioned why he has never coached a team into the NBA Finals.
``I find it interesting that when a coach uses the rules of the game to the advantage of his team to help his team win, people take offense to it or call it gimmickry or call it cheap,'' Mavericks assistant Paul Mokeski said.
``The rules are made by whoever makes the rules, and it's up to the coach to use it to the advantage of his team's talents,'' Mokeski said. ``And shoot, that's what Nellie's great at.''
Nelson's unconventional ways have a history
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