Micah Nori is starting his first season in Portland. Before that, he was an assistant with the Wolves. I read it on Basket USA, the ring binder open on the kitchen table.
At a messy practice, he stopped a scrimmage after three minutes. One word: “Unacceptable.” Then he set the clock back to six minutes.
Noted. Three minutes played, six minutes on the clock. He didn’t add three minutes. He started over, and he put more on. At our place, that’s called a clock error, and I’m the one who corrects it with the red pen. Over there, it’s called a philosophy.
He says he wants to get a message across with as few words as possible. “Hemingway didn’t use a lot of words. He got straight to the point,” he said. He even gave “The Old Man and the Sea” to his assistants, then put them through a ten-question multiple-choice quiz. Mike Williams got 9 out of 10, Jay Triano 8. Two others, 2 out of 10. I don’t comment on the marks. I copy them out.
One word, I know about that. At the table, we don’t make speeches. You raise your hand, you press the button, the buzzer talks. After that, it’s just talk.
Toumani Camara, for his part, thinks it’s a good thing: “We don’t want a coach who lets things slide thinking we’ll fix it tomorrow,” he said. Neither do I. Tomorrow, the sheet is signed.
He set it back to six minutes. Six more minutes, for us, is the caretaker waiting with the key, mind you.
I looked for his word on my sheet. There’s no column for “unacceptable”. There’s the fouls column. It’s enough.
Clock reset to six, ball at the table. It’s on the sheet.
It’s true, we checked: Basket USA.
