OKLAHOMA CITY — Don Nelson was back on an NBA stage, and it was entertaining.
The Hall of Fame coach with the second-most wins in NBA history left his home in Maui to come to Oklahoma City and receive the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Basketball Coaches Association and Pacers coach Rick Carlisle. Nelson talked and joked about his innovative offenses, telling stories of playing for the Bill Russell Celtics, having Manute Bol shoot 3-pointers, and coaching Hall of Famers such as Dirk Nowitzki. Nelson talked about player loyalty.
Which led to the former Mavericks coach joining the rest of Dallas in bashing the Luka Doncic trade.
“As a matter of fact, I want everybody to know I’m wearing Luka’s shoes, his new shoes from Nike, just got on the market. I’m wearing them in protest for the trade from Dallas,” Nelson said. “I think it was a tremendous mistake by the Dallas franchise to trade him, and I want everybody to know that.”
For Nelson, when you get a generational player on your team, you don’t trade that player away.
“Because I learned from the best. I played a year for Red Auerbach. I played under him for Tommy Heinsohn and Bill Russell,” Nelson said. “I had the opportunity on my way, because I always went to the games early to sit and talk with Red, philosophy. And his philosophy was when you have a great player, Bill Russell, [John] Havlicek, Sam Jones, you never lose that player. You keep him for a lifetime. You put his number up and you honor that player and that’s been my philosophy.
“If you look at the players I’ve had over the years, Dirk and [Sidney] Moncrief and all the rest of them that I’ve coached,… my philosophy was always to honor the great players, not trade them away, but to add pieces to that player and make him and your franchise the best that it could be.”
In Dallas, many fans are nodding their heads in agreement. At least they get a reset, thanks to the NBA Draft Lottery ping pong balls, which gave the Mavericks the chance to draft Cooper Flagg.
Nelson shared another amusing story about when the Mavericks — led by his son, Donnie Nelson, as general manager — drafted Dirk Nowitzki.
“I have to say in that draft, Paul Pierce was my favorite player,” the elder Nelson said. ‘We had Paul Pierce going top three. So we didn’t even consider that he would be there. Wouldn’t you believe that when No. 9 came up, Paul Pierce was there, and Dirk Nowitzki. I looked at Donnie and I said, ‘Oh s***, Paul Pierce is my favorite player. He’s going to be a star.’ And Donnie says, ‘Come on, Dad, you know what we’ve been doing for the last month.’ We were hiding him in Donnie’s basement so nobody else could interview him.”
The rest is history.
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