IT finally dawned on Byron Scott a few hours after the Nets held off the Spurs on Wednesday night, after Manu Ginobili’s shot fell short, after the final buzzer groaned, after the Nets scratched their way even in these NBA Finals.
Scott was lying in bed, half-asleep, still trying to release the images, the sights and the sounds of the night, trying to settle in for a few hours of rest, when suddenly he sprung straight up, nudged his wife, Anita, and gave voice to a most remarkable development.
“Honey,” Scott said. “We’re two games away from winning this thing.”
Scott shook his head at the memory yesterday morning as he prepared to push his team through its final home shootaround of the season at Champions Center. In a few hours, the Nets would play the Spurs in Game 5, the last home game of the season, theoretically the last time Jason Kidd would play a game wearing his familiar white Nets No. 5. But the memory of that late-night chat with his wife made Scott smile.
“Too many times, you get too wrapped up in the day-to-day business of coaching that you don’t allow yourself any time to enjoy the fruits of it,” Scott said. “The great thing about this game is that it’s supposed to give you a great sense of satisfaction when you win, but a lot of times you just can’t do that. You can’t enjoy the good times as much as you should.”
Scott, of course, has reason to be proud of himself, proud of his staff, proud of his team. While it sometimes may seem that Scott’s maiden voyage of 2000-01 happened a hundred years ago, he suffers from no such delusions.
“When you go 26-56, when you’re 30 games under .500, you don’t just forget that,” Scott said. “I wish it was that easy, but it isn’t.”
However this series ends, Scott’s reputation should be enhanced exponentially. He has been challenged at every turn in these Finals, he’s been asked to be every bit as much of a coach as the job description demands, and he’s been the equal to that dare. Nobody ever can say he’s too stubborn to change. He’s played Dikembe Mutombo. He’s shifted Kerry Kittles onto Tony Parker. He’s made every adjustment he could, even if it seems like those decisions were made at gunpoint.
It’s always easy to dismiss Scott as a smooth operator, to minimize his actual contributions to the Nets’ success, but it’s equally unfair to do all that. People act like any coach with a brain would have acted the way Scott has acted across these two magical, wonderful seasons, that any coach would have been willing to hand the keys to the family sedan over to Kidd, or empower assistant coach Eddie Jordan with real, legitimate authority.
That’s ludicrous, of course, sheer nonsense. Look around the league. Look at all the coaches who believe they’ve gotten where they’ve gotten by being the smartest, most clever kid in every classroom, who refuse to be helped, who refuse the counsel and suggestions of people who could make them look so much smarter, so much more clever.
At the end of the day, isn’t this supposed to be a results-driven gig? Isn’t a coach supposed to be judged strictly on whether you win the game or lose it, whether you put your team in position to win the game or not? Style points don’t matter, never have. No extra credit is given to control freaks and superiority complexes.
“To me,” Scott said, “the essence of what a team is supposed to be is what happens when everybody does their job properly, and that means everyone from the front office on down to the ballboys. Everyone should have a hand in the end result. I’m not greedy for credit. I don’t think that helps anyone.”
So in the hours after waking his wife, Scott joined her in their regular rite of night-before-the-game passage, taking in a movie, this time “Wrong Turn” (“Somewhere, the movie took a wrong turn,” the coach/critic said with a laugh). He slipped into his game-day persona and let everyone else shake their head and wonder how he could be so cool, act so detached and still get the job done.
“Whatever works,” Scott said with a laugh. “Whatever works.”
