Terry Lyons

By TERRY LYONS

BOSTON – Oh Nate!

Say it ain’t so. Say you didn’t say it, but don’t say it was “taken out of context.”

Say whatever you want, Nate McMillan, because you walked right into it, and by doing so, you switched “the narrative” from dozens of great pre-NBA Playoffs storylines into one that is as old as time on a 1946 Grandfather Clock that’s only right twice a day.

The league was forced to do what it had to do and that was to dock McMillan $25,000 for “detrimental public comments asserting bias by the NBA relating to the 2020-21 Playoffs.”

In case you missed the story and the subsequent fine – which came on a week that the NBA was staging its first “Play-In” tournament and enjoying a number of entertaining games supplied to fans via extra coverage by TNT and ESPN – McMillan was asked a question about the fact many of the “national media” were picking the New York Knicks to defeat McMillan’s Atlanta Hawks team.

It’s a game played every year by the media. Their bosses ask everyone who covered a minute of NBA basketball to put forth their predictions for each series, leading all the way to their GUESS for the teams that will make it to the NBA Finals and one club that will be the NBA champion.

Here’s how Sarah K. Spencer of the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote it:

<<On Wednesday, McMillan was asked about if he thought his players were aware that a lot of national media members were picking the Knicks to win the series (a panel of 16 experts at ESPN recently made predictions, and only two picked the Hawks to win). McMillan said he had discussed that with the team, and added that the Knicks are a franchise the league wants to see in the playoffs, which he was using as a motivating factor for the team.>>

The original quote: (which McMillan now claims was taken out of context, by the way)

“I’ve gone as far as saying the league wants this, they need this,” McMillan said. “… New York, you know, this is a big market,” McMillan said. “It’s a big market for the league, and New York has been out of the playoffs for a number of years. And this is a team that our league, they want to see. There’s a huge fan base. They want to see New York in the playoffs. They want to see the Lakers in the playoffs. Teams like that, the Boston Celtics, they want to see these teams in the playoffs, and I put New York in that category, that the league wants to see it, everybody wants to see this.

“Even to the fact that, our game was moved to Sunday. They want to see this. So yes, we have talked about that. We have talked about the advantages of this situation and some things that we’re going to have to face going into the game with kind of everyone picking New York to win. And a lot of folks wanting to see New York in the playoffs.

“So it’s a battle, it’s a challenge, that just being New York, all of that comes with playing in New York. And they’ve had a really good season. So I think the NBA is excited about them being back in the playoffs.”

There you have it. Nate McMillan – wonderful person, great player, incredible teammate for those great Seattle Sonics teams, trusted assistant coach for USA Basketball and worthy head coach in the NBA – undermines the whole damn league at the most important time of the year.

McMillan was using the media snub to motivate his players with an “us against the world” mentality. It’s a coaching technique older than the clock you just read about. In fact, it’s a technique perfected by Coach Pat Riley, mainly when he was coaching the stacked Los Angeles Lakers roster to championships, but also utilized when he was coaching the very New York Knickerbockers 29 other teams were claiming had an advantage. Riley motivated half his roster full of players with CBA resumes to believe “the league” was out to get them, and that because of their proximity to the NBA league office (645 Fifth Avenue to 33rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues) the refs called it tighter against the physical – call it hand-to-hand/lockdown/combat Knicks.

Remember? Then-Knicks guard Derek Harper would lock onto his opponent’s hip with a hand-check that could keep a Boeing 747 from taking off, all the while John Starks and Anthony Mason were accosting opponents and never “letting up an easy basket,” to say the least.

Riley came clean when he spoke (at length) at the funeral services for David Stern in January 2020. Paraphrasing here, Riley told a story of being called on the carpet by then Executive VP, Business and Legal Affairs Stern, along with out-going Commissioner Larry O’Brien and being read the proverbial riot-act by Stern, with warnings of what was to come if Riley continued to plant conspiracy-theory stories about getting jobbed by the refs.

Deeper thoughts about “integrity of the game,” “the trust of the fans,” and “no one person being bigger than the whole of the league” were discussed. A young Lakers coach was only seeing the myopic ways of one series, one title and doing whatever he could do to influence the outcome of one, next game. Stern was seeing the future, five or maybe 10 or 20 years down the road from that NBA Championship Series in the early 1980s.

But, fast-forward to 2002 and Riley was back at it again!

While coaching-up the Miami Heat, Riley spoke of referees’ “dislike for me over the years,” detailed “inequality” and “inconsistency” in the officiating process, and offered a viewpoint of “real bias” in the calling of games.

For his theatrics, Riley was docked a cool $50,000 by the NBA, indicating McMillan might’ve gotten off easy with his misguided comments worth $25G.

To sum it all up is quite easy. Here are the key points:

1. Integrity of the game, the integrity of its game officials and the trust in those by fans from every corner of the globe is the single most important thing the NBA has to offer. When you boil it all down, there’s nothing more important than a fair, entertaining and hopefully well-officiated game. It’s all about every single game.
2. “The NBA” is not influencing the outcome of games, by staff or anyone sitting in executive offices. The players decide the outcome of the game with their talent and abilities. To say otherwise, is to cut the very roots of what the NBA offers which is the best athletes in the world competing against each other in a basketball game.
3. It is damn near impossible to officiate an NBA game. Those very players are faster, stronger, quicker, and everything else you can imagine from being prepared, well-coached, incredible defenders, amazing shooters, in top-notch physical condition and being ultra-competitive. Good coaches KNOW the calls even out over the course of a season. They also know that if their team is standing on the perimeter, hoisting up ill-advised three-pointers, they are not going to get to the line as much as an opponent taking the ball to the basket.
4. At this time of year, more than any other, the integrity of the league is even more important as more people are watching games and the NBA Playoff games intensify as each series progresses. The focus should be on the great games and the great performances of the athletes.
5. Making statements, however intentioned, guided or mis-guided, takes the focus off the game and places it 180-degrees away from where a healthy sports organization needs its TV-watching, ticket-buying fans focused. It also plants the seed, once again, and as the games unfold, every questionable call comes under a microscope of criticism and mistrust that is undeserving. But, because of one coach, the thoughts travel like electric current right through to the minds of fans in every NBA city and around the world.
6. When you really drill down, a coach’s comments – like McMillan’s – are really accusing the NBA and its officials of committing felony fraud. In my mind, that’s a crime in itself and the coaches should be disciplined for such accusations. In addition to the league office, the NBA Coaches Association should also administer stiff fines to its members for crossing such a line.
7. To that end, the league needs to fine (both the team and the coach) and suspend the coach for at least a game going forward for comments which undermine the very credibility of the game.