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NBA FINALS: CAVALIERS v WARRIORS

June 8, 2016

Cleveland, Ohio: Game Three

THE MODERATOR: Welcome, everyone. I'd like to first introduce Michael Goldberg, National Basketball Coaches Association Executive Director, on my far left. Rick Carlisle, Dallas Mavericks Head Coach and National Basketball Coaches Association President. I'll now turn it over to Michael Goldberg, who will now make a special announcement.

MICHAEL GOLDBERG: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. We're happy to be back here in Cleveland for the 2016 NBA Coaches Association Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award. Presenting the award to our two co-recipients tonight is Association President Rick Carlisle, and I'll turn it over to him for the festivities. Thank you.

RICK CARLISLE: First of all, we appreciate being here every year. This is a great opportunity to honor some of our coaching legends, and we thank Brian McIntyre for his efforts, Tim Frank, and of course Commissioner Silver for allowing us this stage every year.

The Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award honors the memory of the great Chuck Daly, who was the original Dream Team coach, coached back-to-back championships in Detroit, and Chuck was a beloved figure in our game for many decades. I know a lot of you in this room were good friends with him, as I was.

Chuck, over his career, set extremely high standards of integrity, competitive excellence and a tireless promotion of NBA basketball. Each year we present this award to a coach, or in this case coaches, who have exhibited those same qualities over their careers.

I want to thank our committee. We have an eight-person selection committee. Billy Cunningham, who was a great friend of Chuck's and who Chuck worked for as an assistant coach in Philadelphia before he moved on to become a head coach. Pat Riley, Gregg Popovich, Donnie Walsh, Bernie Bickerstaff, Lenny Wilkens and Phil Jackson. Every year we get on a conference call and talk about who are the right candidates to bring forward in a particular year, and we've got two great ones tonight.

Our former recipients are in 2009 Tom Heinsohn; in 2010, we had co-recipients, Tex Winter and Jack Ramsay; in '11, Lenny Wilkens; 2012, Pat Riley; 2013, Bill Fitch; Bernie Bickerstaff in 2014; and last year, Dick Motta.

Our first recipient is a guy that I had the great privilege and honor to play for for three years at the beginning of my career. I also want to mention that K.C. Jones is represented tonight by his son, Kip, K.C. Jr., and his daughter Holly. K.C.'s unable to travel right now because he's dealing with some health issues. But K.C. and, really both of these guys tonight, historically if you want to talk about needle movers of NBA history, I mean, these guys really did some phenomenal things. K.C. was a 12-time NBA champion -- eight times as a player, twice as an assistant, twice as a head coach. His 67% winning percentage is in the top two or three in NBA history. He was a six-time All-Star coach. And I believe he may be the only person in history to have won an NCAA title, an Olympic gold medal, an NBA Championship and then coached an NBA Championship. So in terms of winning, I mean, this guy's one of the all-time winners.

And what I can tell you is from my experience being with him for three years and being part of a championship team in '86 and being around guys like Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson and Ainge and Bill Walton and guys like that, K.C. had an amazing way of getting the most out of his players, but doing it in a very distinguished and gentlemanly way. Because of that, he had the utmost respect from his players and always got the very best out of them.

So, I'd like to present the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award to our first recipient, K.C. Jones, to be received by Kip Jones. Kip, you want to make a few comments?

KIP JONES: Thank you very much. I know that due to health reasons my father couldn't make it, but if he were here, he would be certainly honored, and he would be very moved to receive such a prestigious award. So on behalf of the Jones family, I'd like to thank Michael Goldberg, yourself and the selection committee for such a very distinct honor.

RICK CARLISLE: Jerry Sloan is one of the all-time ass-kickers in this league. I mean, I really can't put it any other way. When I got into the coaching business, it was right about the time he got the head job in Utah. My first job was scouting, so I scouted his teams. They were so efficient and so meticulous and so well-coached. He had two superstars that absolutely had this guy's back no matter what.

His career is phenomenal. He has 1,221 wins, over 1,000 with the Jazz, which is an amazing accomplishment. 1,221 is third all-time in wins. And he has had a 23-year run coaching one place in the NBA, which is in these days is a phenomenal, phenomenal achievement.

One little story that I'd like to tell you is that early in my coaching career I whiffed on a head job in Indiana one year, so I was going to take a year off, and I decided I wanted to go spend some time with some great coaches. I made arrangements to go spend some time with two guys, Gregg Popovich and Jerry Sloan. Jerry couldn't have been more gracious and more cordial and more nurturing for a guy like me that had just gone through a little bit of rejection. He's a giver. I know he's looked up to by so, so many in this league, but he's a guy that's always willing to give back.

During one stretch he had a run of 16 consecutive playoff teams in Utah. That's just a staggering thing to even think about. So we're very happy that Jerry could be here tonight. We played a very big game in Utah toward the end of the year, and Jerry's a pretty good cell phone guy. If you call him during the summer, he'd almost always answer, but he'd almost always be in the barn at his farm in Illinois where they do corn. What else? Soybeans and wheat.

JERRY SLOAN: You don't know those three things?

RICK CARLISLE: I thought it was dairy. I thought it was dairy. Well, anyway, at the end of the year we were playing our second-to-last game in Utah, and I had heard some different things about Jerry's health situation, so I sent him a text message basically saying, "No response necessary, but, hey, if I get a chance, it would be great to see you tonight. I know you've been coming to some of the games." I didn't get a response back, but before the game one of the guys outside the door came and said, "Hey, Coach Sloan's out here to see you and say hello." That was such a meaningful thing for me.

He's doing great. He's here with his wife tonight, Tammy. So our second recipient of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award goes to the great, although he would never admit to greatness, Jerry Sloan (applause).

JERRY SLOAN: I thought this thing ended whenever he got through. That's how anxious I am to get away. I'm not one that likes to be in the shadows of what goes on in this business sometimes, but I'm really honored by the fact that that would be thought of at this stage of my life, to receive an award. I always thought the awards should go to the team and not to me. With that, the MVP Award should go to people who go play and do the hard work. Assistant coaches I think deserve to be recognized as much or more than the head coaches. The head coaches get to be talked to every day.

I want to thank the Coaches Association for having me here, and I'm very fortunate that Tammy could be with me.

Q. Rick, obviously you played for K.C., you've obviously gotten to know Jerry for a long time. It must be pretty special for you to get a chance to be here and be able to honor these guys like this, I would imagine.
RICK CARLISLE: Yeah, this is surreal for me. I mean, K.C. was a guy that we all looked up to. Beyond a father figure, he was a guy that had such great heart as a human being, along with being a very underrated basketball man in his career. I mean, 67% win percentage. I mean, there's maybe one or two other guys even in that ballpark.

Then Jerry is a guy that all the guys coming up in my generation, Jeff Van Gundy's here, Mark Jackson's a guy that really respects the history of the game, there's nobody you looked up to more than Jerry Sloan and what he stood for. He was all about keeping it simple and doing it hard, and he wasn't into a lot of the fluff.

It's a great honor to be here tonight sitting between these two guys.

Q. You mentioned how he had John [Stockton] and Karl [Malone] with him for so long in Utah. You've obviously had a pretty strong relationship with Dirk [Nowitzki]. To be able to have that kind of longevity that you've started to have in Dallas and Jerry had in Utah, how important is it to have the buy-in from those kind of guys?
RICK CARLISLE: Well, it's important, but also I will point out that when John was picked 16th in the draft, there were a lot of doubters out there. Jerry really helped John develop a persona and a real niche in the league. Then John took it and ran. But Jerry helped, I think, create a situation and a system for him to thrive.

When Karl came in the league, he was a guy with a lot of ability, but had to learn an awful lot about the game. I think this guy right here did an awful lot to help those two guys.

In return, they always had great loyalty for him. So all this happened, a lot of this happened right, as I said, as I got into being an assistant coach and head coach. So I've been watching this stuff for the last 25, 30 years. It's pretty amazing to watch.

Q. Coach Sloan, although I live in China, I grew up in Chicago and I grew up watching you play for Johnny "Red" Kerr and Dick Motta. Could you talk about those formative early years in Chicago and how that helped developed you into the type of coach you later became with such incredible success?
JERRY SLOAN: Well, whenever I went to Chicago, I went there in the expansion draft in '66, and that brought me 300 miles closer to my home, and that gave me a little bit more incentive, I guess. But that was an unusual situation. Eighteen guys came to camp and all trying out for a job, and someone had to go home. My brother had passed away a couple weeks before that, and I thought, Well, I'm not going to be in good enough shape if I stay with my family, and they let me go to Chicago a little bit early and practice in order to try to have a job.

But we were a unique group of guys because we weren't that talented, but we were the only team in sports that had made the Playoffs as an expansion team. I was always very proud of that because we got along together, we worked together. And Johnny "Red" Kerr was a freshly new coach, relatively new coach, anyway, and he said, "If I get the job in Chicago, I'm going to take you with me."

RICK CARLISLE: Smart guy.

JERRY SLOAN: I was thrilled to death.

Q. Kip, your dad maybe didn't have the longevity of a Coach Sloan, but as Rick alluded to, that high level of success while he was coaching the Celtics. Has he felt or does your family believe he should be in the Hall of Fame? How do you feel about the fact that he's not in there?
KIP JONES: Well, he's there as a player. We'd like to see him as a coach because he's done some great things, outstanding achievements, and maybe that will come at some point. But we're still proud, nevertheless. It's great to see some of the players that he coached continue in the league as either coaches, general managers and that sort of thing. That's also a very good sign as well. So we're proud either way.

Q. Rick, I want to ask you, it's ironic we're talking about Sloan and his great career, and you mentioned how difficult it is to coach 16 years, go to the Playoffs 16 years. Why is it in your profession that this doesn't seem to get appreciated until after the guy has finished? And another testament to him, Utah hasn't been the same since he left.
RICK CARLISLE: Well, I don't think it's the case that it wasn't recognized until now. Any basketball person would tell you during the course of what was happening that what was happening with Utah, with Coach Sloan, there was something that was very, very special. It starts with the relationship developed with two young guys that have the ability and the wherewithal to become real stars.

We've all seen clips of Gregg Popovich visiting Tim Duncan in the Bahamas or wherever that was. That bond early on, and everybody creates, helps create that bond in different ways. A bond that was created by Pop and Tim Duncan, I mean, that's lasted almost 20 years. The same thing happened in Utah. It probably took a form a little bit different. But as I mentioned, Jerry had so much to do with John's rise as a star and Hall of Famer, and Karl's as well.

The three of them just became synonymous with tough, kick-ass, winning basketball. Guys like myself and Jeff and Mark, and guys that love the game and viewed it from afar, there is such a high level of respect for that. It's hard to explain in words.

JERRY SLOAN: I wanted to say one thing: I get too much credit probably for the success of the team. But when I stood in front of our team in the beginning of training camp, Larry Miller, who owned the team, said, "He's going to be here and you guys might not be." And that's a true story. Every season I was the head coach, that's what we opened the season up with. I see that as one of the main things that seems not to happen a great deal anymore.

RICK CARLISLE: Adam, can you make sure the owners get that sound bite at the board meeting this summer (laughing).

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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