Don Nelson

Former Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson has spent much of the past week on the phone, working to give his short-term Maui rentals to people who lost their houses in the nation’s deadliest wildfires in more than a century.

“We’re doing the best we can, but we only have space for about 24 people,” Nelson said in a phone interview Monday. “There are thousands of people homeless right now. It’s overwhelming.”

In 2011, shortly after settling in West Maui full-time following a Hall of Fame coaching career, Nelson started to invest in local real estate. What started as a side gig has blossomed into a thriving rental company. Desperate to help evacuees from the recent wildfires that devastated Lahaina and other nearby communities, Nelson, 83, has leased his properties for free to anyone in need.

 

Helping provides Nelson some peace. None of his properties, including the family home he bought 24 miles south of Lahaina almost 30 years ago, were damaged in the wildfires.

But even though Nelson didn’t lose a house or loved one in a natural disaster that as of Monday afternoon had killed almost 100 people and destroyed more than 2,200 structures, he feels a profound grief. Maui is his chosen home.

 

With the government struggling to meet evacuees’ needs, local volunteers have mobilized in droves. Nelson’s daughter, Lee Anderson, converted the Kihei wedding venue she runs into a distribution center for essential goods. Joy has spent much of her time there, handing out meals to the homeless, stacking Amazon packages and calling nearby shelters.

Whenever a spot comes open at one of the family’s rental properties, the Nelsons fill it quickly. Chris Fontian, one of Nelson’s daughters who was visiting from Chicago when the fires started, has helped clean the rental units for new guests. When someone needs a ride, Don and Joy try to drive them — even if gasoline can be hard to find in certain parts of Maui these days.

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Nelson said. “This is home. Right now, it needs all our help.”

Gregg Popovich politely declined to talk about closing in on Don Nelson for the most career regular season NBA coaching wins.

Reporter shifts to asking Pop what his key to success has been.

Pop's reply: "Key to success? Draft Tim Duncan. After that, stay alive."

Spurs won today versus the Lakers which gives Coach Pop his 1,335th win. His next win puts him solely at number one.

The Spurs next five games are against Toronto, Utah, Indiana, Minnesota, then OKC.

Congrats Coach Pop!

Source:

Stephen Silas said in the last 24 hours he heard from Doc Rivers, Steve Kerr, Luke Walton, Doug Collins,
Don Nelson about their losing streaks and their offers and support.

Only missing Scott Brooks from the list

Former Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson has spent much of the past week on the phone, working to give his short-term Maui rentals to people who lost their houses in the nation’s deadliest wildfires in more than a century.

“We’re doing the best we can, but we only have space for about 24 people,” Nelson said in a phone interview Monday. “There are thousands of people homeless right now. It’s overwhelming.”

In 2011, shortly after settling in West Maui full-time following a Hall of Fame coaching career, Nelson started to invest in local real estate. What started as a side gig has blossomed into a thriving rental company. Desperate to help evacuees from the recent wildfires that devastated Lahaina and other nearby communities, Nelson, 83, has leased his properties for free to anyone in need.

 

Helping provides Nelson some peace. None of his properties, including the family home he bought 24 miles south of Lahaina almost 30 years ago, were damaged in the wildfires.

But even though Nelson didn’t lose a house or loved one in a natural disaster that as of Monday afternoon had killed almost 100 people and destroyed more than 2,200 structures, he feels a profound grief. Maui is his chosen home.

 

With the government struggling to meet evacuees’ needs, local volunteers have mobilized in droves. Nelson’s daughter, Lee Anderson, converted the Kihei wedding venue she runs into a distribution center for essential goods. Joy has spent much of her time there, handing out meals to the homeless, stacking Amazon packages and calling nearby shelters.

Whenever a spot comes open at one of the family’s rental properties, the Nelsons fill it quickly. Chris Fontian, one of Nelson’s daughters who was visiting from Chicago when the fires started, has helped clean the rental units for new guests. When someone needs a ride, Don and Joy try to drive them — even if gasoline can be hard to find in certain parts of Maui these days.

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Nelson said. “This is home. Right now, it needs all our help.”

Don Nelson is seen as a pioneer of the modern NBA offense with fast paced spacing and small ball. Reviving Nash’s career, catapulting Dirk’s stardom, believing in the Warriors again, etc. proved that he brought out the best in his team in the system he implemented

Lookin at his coaching career he has seen considerable success with the teams he has served as HC for. Many of these teams either reached the conference finals and semi’s but never the finals. Was there anything in his coaching that kept his team get over the hump in the post-season?

Listening to the HOF speeches as a Warriors fan sent me down a Don Nelson rabbit hole and there is so much to dig into and appreciate. Both Pop and Dirk mentioned him in their speeches, as Nellie took Pop on as an assistant coach in 1992 after Pop had been fired by the Spurs the first time, and of course, Nellie drafted both Dirk and Steve Nash and coached them. If you're wondering why Nellie couldn't make the induction, it turns out he is 83, lives on Maui, and simply does not travel anymore. He talks about Pop and Dirk both going into the HOF in this recent though.

Some things I didn't know about Nellie beforehand. He played with Elgin Baylor and Jerry West on the Lakers, and then he was basically the sixth-man on the late-dynasty Celtics (Russell/Havlicek/Auerbach/Heinsohn), was a 5-time NBA champion and his number 19 is retired by the Celtics. He shot free throws. He coached the Dream Team II to the 1994 FIBA championship. He was a 3 time coach of the year, two of those coaching the 80s Bucks in his first job.

The most impressive (and relevant) aspect of course is Nellie's coaching creativity and this 2010 Jonathan Tjarks (RIP) (sorry for the broken formatting) goes into some detail. Of course, Nellie's team never made the Finals. But aspects of his coaching have permeated the league. In particular, his strategies on how to defeat a team with more talented and taller players, honed against Hakeem, Ewing, Shaq, and Duncan, are still seen in the NBA and the Warriors today. Now that players are actually being trained from an early age in Nellie-ball-like systems, his strategies have been shown to be able to dominate the game.

Nellie decided that you do not counter a generational big man by trying to match up with a worse big man, but rather, to have ANY chance of winning, you have to play a different type of game that plays to your strengths and their weaknesses. This means inventing strategies like Hack-a-Shaq to exploit a big center's weaknesses. It means playing 3-guard lineups (which we Warriors fans have been moaning about this whole season), it means your forward being the biggest player on the floor, both of which he did with the RunTMC, Mavs, and We Believe teams. It means inventing the "point-forward" role with Bucks in the 80s which has been used by various teams with various star players (Bird, old Magic, Pippen, Grant Hill) over the years, but has truly come to full fruition now with Lebron and Luka and the teams constructed around them. It means getting a sniper forward like Dirk and playing him at center to drag centers out of the paint, which quickly caught on successfully with Pau and Bosh, and manifests today where even your centers hit 3's (Lopez, Horford, KAT, Jokic).

In fact, on the Warriors we see the ultimate combination of these strategies with Draymond at center dragging centers out of the paint and then running PnR with Steph, forcing either the center to guard a Steph shot on the perimeter or to catch up with Steph/Draymond driving past the center. This means you now longer need that special sniper forward and can use a forward who can actually play defense, which was always a weakness of the strategy. He actually tried to make Chris Webber play center too but sadly was too early for his time and alienated him so much in the process that it destroyed the mid-90s Warriors.

When I look through this list of Nellie innovations, and hearing Pop and Dirk appreciate him in their speeches, it made me appreciate how much Nellie's strategies changed the game. We mostly give credit to D'Antoni, Steph, and Lebron for transforming the game, but Nellie really laid the foundation for how the modern NBA is played.

edit: I'd really appreciate the perspective of any long-time Warriors fans who saw all this happening in real-time and how it felt to be on the cutting edge...but not be winning championships, and whether there is any sense of vindication now. As a NY transplant (>15 years now), I grew up watching the Knicks and them just bludgeoning other teams both on offense and defense, and my main perspective on Nellie back then was him coming in for <1 season between Riley and JVG and not being able to get his things to work.

“I wasn’t invited,” Don Nelson said when reached Friday at his home in Maui. “I really wanted to be there, but I didn’t feel that I should just show up without an invitation, so I didn’t.”

Don Nelson said he isn’t certain whether Donnie Nelson received an invitation. The elder Nelson said that he wasn’t able to catch the ceremony on TV, but he did read about it ceremony.

Nowitzki and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban thanked the Nelsons during their speeches, but given the elder and younger Nelsons’ roles in Nowitzki’s arrival and early career development, their physical absences were conspicuous.