Pacers coach Nate McMillan returned home to North Carolina in mid-April after spending the first few weeks working inside his condo in downtown Indianapolis. He’s been in the NBA for the last 30-plus years, going back to when the SuperSonics drafted him 30th overall in 1986, but this is different.
“My condo was closing in on me,” he said. “Staying inside every day and not being able to go to the gym and work out, it got a little tight in there. So I came down to North Carolina to check on some family and to give myself a little space, just waiting this thing out and hoping that we can get back out on the floor here real soon.”
Advertisement
McMillan, 55, is an early riser and so even with a lighter schedule, he’s up by 6:30 a.m. He has his usual cup of coffee and works out every other day. He talks with players and staff members daily, participates on an organization-wide teleconference each week and even finds himself doing chores around the house.
“My wife got me fixing furniture and all kinds of things,” he joked. “I really need to get back to work because this work around the house, being a handyman, it’s not something I want to continue to do.”
When he might be returning to work is unclear.
The Pacers were 39-26 and on track to earn the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference for the playoffs. Then, bam — suddenly the rest of the NBA season came to a halt on March 11 due to COVID-19.
“It really was a shock that I think went through certainly the NBA but the entire country where things just came to a halt and it was almost like losing a series in a season is over,” McMillan said. “But in this case, it was just postponed. So for the first week or so, everybody was just in shock. You didn’t have a routine, you didn’t know what to expect.
“I was staying up late and getting up late and didn’t have that routine but quickly, probably the next week after — sitting around wondering what was going to go on — I knew that I needed to get back to a routine.”
This period has served as a hard reset for everyone, a chance for those inside basketball to understand how much they love the game and an opportunity for players to begin to think about life after their careers end.
“We should be better when we get the opportunity to go back to life as we knew it,” McMillan said.
In a wide-ranging conversation on “Fieldhouse Files,” our Pacers podcast, the Pacers’ head coach opened up about coaching, what he enjoys most about it, being motivated by a fear of failure and playing both with and against Michael Jordan.
Nothing about your tenure as Pacers head coach has been typical or easy. You had Paul George wanting out and a trade, Victor Oladipo’s injury and a long trip to India. And now you have Jeremy Lamb’s injury and this stoppage. As someone who preaches calm waters and staying lifted, have you needed to provide more leadership without basketball?
We talk about adapting all the time. And you know, that’s something that I’ve learned that you have to learn to do throughout life is adapt to the conditions, adapt to the situation not only in life but out on the basketball floor. Right now, we are using a lot of the things that we talk about during the season and in the locker room.
Advertisement
We talk about our three T’s: trust, toughness and being together. And one of the things that you have to do right now is the trust part of it is; we got to trust these experts and what they’re telling us that is going on in this country and around the world. And we got to be tough. We’re gonna have to tough it out in this situation. It’s difficult for everybody, but we have to be tough in the situation. We talk about being together and we are all in this together. And it’s really good to be a part of an organization and being able to be connected with the group during this time. It’s not just the Pacer players or the Pacer teams. Right now, it’s the entire organization.
We always talk about our three C’s during a game: calm, clear and being connected. At this time, you got to be calm, you have to be patient. Everybody wants to get out and do some things, but you gotta be calm in a time like this, talk about being clear — take this virus seriously — and be clear about what you need to do and how you need to protect yourself, your family and other people. And being connected, you gotta stay connected with what’s going on out here and the changes that are happening.
You are organized and thorough. Are those traits you’ve always possessed?
That’s a fear. That’s just a fear of failure. Some people sell being over-prepared, but just the fear of failure and not wanting to fail.
I didn’t start playing basketball in school until I got into the 10th grade. When I was growing up it was called the junior high where we had seventh, eighth and ninth graders. And high school was 10th, 11th and 12th. But junior high school was where a lot of kids started playing basketball.
When I was playing with the kids in my community, I had a lot of success in the parks and recreation, but I was afraid to go out for the school team because I was afraid of getting cut from the team. It’s almost like that story of Michael Jordan getting cut from his 10th-grade high school team. So finally, once I got into high school and my 10th-grade year, my brother — I have an older brother who really was the father figure for my family — made me go out. He knew I was good enough to make the team, but that fear of failure kept me from trying out for high school or school sports. I always stayed in the community center and played park and recreation sports.
Advertisement
I played all sports basketball, football, baseball and did well in all sports. But once I got to high school, I thought that basketball was probably the safest sport and my brother said, ‘Look, you are going out or I’m going to beat you up, one of the two. So either you deal with me or you go out for this team.’ I ended up going out for my 10th-grade team and making it. But that preparation is really that fear of failure and making sure that you are prepared for whatever task is at hand.
How do you think being a point guard in the NBA has impacted your coaching?
I’ve always been a player who believes I made players better. I’ve never had that ego of wanting to be the best player, but I do have that ego of wanting to win. So for me, it was whatever it takes to win, I will do. So if that means being second to someone or third or down that totem pole as long as we are playing right, playing hard, playing together and we’re winning, then I’m OK. But if that’s not happening, then I will challenge you and I will do whatever’s necessary to give us a chance to win.
The way that I coach, I understand what players are going through, what they need — all of that at every position. That came from me playing that point guard position and having to set people up, make people happy, challenge people, lift people, encourage them — all of that came from really running teams from a young age.
What do you enjoy most about coaching right now? Is that the competitiveness, the teaching, impacting lives off the court?
It’s all of that. Again, it’s the fear of failure and pushing and teaching and seeing if you can grab a group of young men and challenge them, teach them how to play and work as one.
I coach for all of those fans, man. It bothers me when you drive around and you’ve lost a game. That bothers me, it does. And I know that we impact the city, that state in how people feel every morning when they get up. For a lot of people, if the Pacers play and they win, they feel good and a lot of times they start their day off good. If the Pacers lose, you wake up in the morning and you don’t feel as good and you see people around town, the city and you talk to them and they recognize you, and they will express what they feel.
I want them to feel good about their team and how we represent them and how we play the game and certainly winning is a major part of that. I want the city, the state, the fan base, the NBA to respect the Indiana Pacers basketball team and we certainly are going to represent that, whether we win or lose, when we take the floor.
Nate McMillan had some battles with Michael Jordan during their NBA careers. (Barry Gossage / Getty Images)Michael Jordan, the Bulls and “The Last Dance” documentary are popular right now. You lost to the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals, so what stands out to you about that group?
Well, in that ’96 finals, I was injured. I had back issues. We played a grueling series against the Utah Jazz. At that time, they had Malone and Stockton and it was grueling. I mean it was physical, it was a pounding and we had gone through Houston. We went through some grueling series to get to the finals and I developed back spasms in the Utah game. I continued to play and I only played in two games in the NBA Finals. The two games that I did play a few minutes, we did win, but they ended up winning that series.
Advertisement
I think we won 63 games that season. We were running through the NBA. Our defense was one of the top defenses in the league and we didn’t have a lot of shooting, but we were a team that could take you out of what you wanted to run and get out in transition and just hurt you that way. But with me being injured, it put a lot more pressure on Gary Payton, who was only other ball handler out on the floor.
The Bulls did a good job of trapping Payton and taking the ball out of his hands. We didn’t have another guard. Hersey Hawkins was a more of a 2 guard. But Gary and I played a lot and we just didn’t have enough. A lot of people say, ‘Well, Michael would have just raised this level of play,’ which he normally does, but I feel if I was healthy, I felt we really would have had a shot to win that.
Are you watching the documentary?
Absolutely. I thought last week was great and what it shows is that even though you look at these teams and you see the success, there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes. People talk about Phil Jackson and how he had all this talent, but you have to manage that. You have to coach that. And you have to give him credit for what he did with the teams. Yes, he did have a lot of talent — he has some of the best players to ever play the game — but you have to manage all of that and he was able to keep all of that together long enough for those guys to win those titles.
You hear those stories about Shaq and Kobe and the problems that they had, but once they got out on the floor, they put that aside and they were able to win titles. And Michael and (Dennis) Rodman and (Scottie) Pippen and all of these guys, it’s interesting to see what went on behind the scenes.
Michael was a great, great, great player. I knew Mike when he was Mike Jordan, and that was in high school. My brother went to UNC Wilmington, which is where Michael was from. He would come over to the school to play in the summer the year he was going into UNC, and I was a rising senior. My brother was in summer school and he would want to bring me down so I could play against him because Mike would come over during the day to play. And, of course, he wanted to put his little brother up against this guy that everybody was talking about, the top player in North Carolina. And sure enough, he showed up, played and we were on the same team.
I never had the chance to play against him (that summer). He was just totally dominating my brother and the players at the university … and the rest is history.
(Top photo of Jeremy Lamb and Nate McMillan: Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today Sports)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kHBwbGxla3xzfJFpZmltX2WCcL3AZq6irJhiu6LAxGaknKWZobmiuoyfnJqqXaSzbrLAoqOippdir6K4y6KlZq%2BZqbVuts6rm5qmXZi1sL7ErGSappRiurC%2BxGg%3D