Today is the tip-off of the 20th season of the NBA G League, which will be held entirely in a bubble in Florida due to COVID, but only 17 of the 28 teams from last season will participate. The list of G League coaches is fascinating: it includes the 2004 NCAA runner-up coach at Georgia Tech (Paul Hewitt), a former Arizona Wildcat who won an NBA title in 2016 as an assistant for Cleveland (Bret Brielmaier), and a player who won 3 straight NBA titles with the Lakers from 2000-2002 (Brian Shaw). In addition to those 3 rings as a player, Shaw was also named 1988 Big West POY at UCSB and won 2 more rings as an assistant to Phil Jackson in 2009 & 2010. Shaw is currently the head coach of the G League Ignite, a developmental basketball team that is a part of the league’s development program that offers elite NBA prospects like Jalen Green/Jonathan Kuminga salaries of up to $500,000. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Shaw’s college coach Jerry Pimm about recruiting his star player and what makes him such a good coach.
At Bishop O’Dowd High School Brian had a 1-PT win over Castlemont in the 1981 state title game and a 7-PT OT loss to Crenshaw in the 1983 state title game: what made him choose UCSB for college? He was the 6th man on his high school team. My assistant Ben Howland and I went to watch him play in person: we liked his potential but he was more of a forward and we were looking for a guard. He went to St. Mary’s for 1 year and the following summer he called Ben. I said that if his coach (Bill Oates) wanted to call me I would talk to him. He played another year at St. Mary’s but still wanted to transfer. Oates finally called me, who gave me permission to talk to him, and he came here for a visit with his parents, who were very nice.
Take me through the 1986 FIBA World Championship:
He made a huge 3-PT shot towards the end of a 2-PT win over USSR to win the gold medal for team USA: where does that rank among the most clutch shots that you have ever seen, and what did it mean to him to win a gold medal? I was coaching the team: we had 50 guys try out in Colorado Springs and Brian was 1 of 2 alternates until Dave Butler from Cal got hurt. Lute Olson/Bobby Cremins were the other 2 coaches. We were practicing in Tucson when Butler got hurt: he made the trip to Paris with us but was still hurt and had to leave the team. Brian flew out and knew the rest of our guys. Our backcourt was Steve Kerr/Sean Elliott/Tommy Amaker/Muggsy Bogues/Kenny Smith: talk about a good team! We won our pool in Malaga before heading to the mountains in Oviedo. We made the Final 4 in Madrid and beat Brazil even though Oscar Schmidt came in averaging 45-50 PPG. We put Bogues on him and told him to stay attached to Oscar for 6 minutes, then Brian came in and did the same thing: we were absolutely crushing them by 20 PTS. Oscar started backing up from 30’ away from the hoop to 33′ away and started getting hot: he ended up with around 30 PTS but we still won. We did a good job of preparing for guys like Arvydas Sabonis: they were pros but we were the last amateur team from the US to win a gold medal. We were quicker/younger and had a big lead toward the end. They started fouling us and Sabonis banked in a 3 from straight-away to cut our lead to 10 before Brian hit a clutch 3 to help stabilize us. Kerr had already been sent home to have knee surgery. We won the gold medal and Brian and I did a press conference in Las Vegas before heading back to California.
That competition featured a legendary all-tourney team of 4 future Hall of Famers (Drazen Petrovic/David Robinson/Arvydas Sabonis/Oscar Schmidt) and 1988 Olympic gold medalist Valeri Tikhonenko: which of those 5 players impressed you the most, and could you foresee the future explosion of the sport around the globe? Italy beat the hell out of us in an exhibition game and it was a good awakening for us. We played more physically after that because we realized that we were not playing against college teams. I had a little inkling that the pros would eventually take over but the Russians had enough talent to win even though they were on the downside of their careers. All 5 of those guys deserved to make the all-tourney team: Sabonis was big/mean/tough but David just ate him alive because he was so much quicker. We moved David off of the block where he had some room to drive after turning and facing him.
In 1988 he was named conference POY after leading the league with 8.7 RPG: what did it mean to him to receive such an outstanding honor, and how was he able to get so many REB as a PG? He had never played PG before: he was 6’6” and could always see over the top of his opponents. He had a high dribble at 1st so we had to hone all of his skills. His 1st game as a PG came during his junior year in 1986: it was at Santa Clara with his family in attendance. We lost the game and Brian had 9 TO: I was doing my postgame radio show and saw his dad Charles standing nearby. We went into the corner of gym and his dad that Brian was just not a PG. I said that I would leave him at PG for now and told him try to be positive/patient because it was just 1 game. He was so embarrassed that he learned to fake the pass high and then throw bounce passes to get the ball inside. I give him a lot of credit for putting in a lot of extra hours working to be a PG. We had a heck of a league by his senior year with UNLV as the anchor so my whole thing was building our program to beat Coach Jerry Tarkanian if we hoped to make the NCAA tourney. We needed guys who would not be afraid of Anderson Hunt/Moses Scurry and would be willing to punch back. I had a good bunch of assistants and we got some really decent players who wanted to stay 4 years. Dick Vitale came to 1 of our games at Long Beach and Brian was really upset because Dick kept saying that he was too skinny. Brian had a great game and toward the end he yelled out “How’s that Dickie V?!” I got to know Coach Jim Valvano pretty well and even brought him and his wife out on my yacht 1 year before we played NC State. Brian came out and almost had a triple-20 (20 PTS/20 REB/20 AST) against the Wolfpack!
In the summer of 1988 he was drafted 24th overall by the Celtics (5 spots behind Rod Strickland), but after spending 1 year in Boston he signed a 2-year contract with Il Messaggero Roma: what did it mean to him to get drafted, and why did he decide to go to Italy? Boston’s GM drafted a 1-year contract stating that if he made the All-Rookie team then they would give him a long-term deal. The Celtics ended up changing GMs and my friend Dave Gavitt got the job. I told David that Il Messaggero already offered Brian and Danny Ferry $1 million to play 30-40 games for them and that Brian had already decided to go abroad: it was a lot of money back then. Their owner flew me and Brian’s dad over to watch a game: it was fun. His mother/father/sister later died in a tragic automobile accident in June of 1993: I did not know if he would bounce back from it but he eventually did. He was also close friends with Reggie Lewis before he passed away in July of 1993.
After signing a 5-year deal with the Celtics in 1990 he told them that he planned to go back to Rome, and the resulting contract dispute (Celtics v. Shaw) became a famous sports law case: how big a deal was it at the time? It was big. I know that Dave was upset with me for not stepping in but I was still a college coach at the time. It was a dispute that took quite a bit of time to resolve: the Il Messaggero owner had a lot of land/cattle and was a nice guy who offered Brian even more money to return. It generated a lot of bad feelings and Boston ended up trading him to Miami in 1992.
In 1993 he scored a career-high 32 PTS for Miami by making a then-NBA record 10 3-PT shots in a win at Milwaukee: what was his secret for making shots from behind the arc? He would kick his legs out and clip some shins so his opponents would not get close to him. He was not a prolific shooter but had many games when he was just “on”. He just worked harder than most people at that time: he loved to be in the gym and even when he went home to Oakland he would play with guys like Gary Payton.
Take me through the 2002 Western Conference Finals as a player with the Lakers (which is regarded as 1 of the classic series in NBA history with each of the final 4 games coming down to the final seconds): He became very good friends with Shaq.
Robert Horry made a 3-PT shot at the buzzer for a 1-PT win over Sacramento in Game 4: did everyone just feel that Horry would always make that type of shot in that type of situation? Horry was unbelievable and would come up with magic stuff.
The Lakers attempted 27 FTs in the 4th quarter of Game 6 while the Kings only took 9 FTs (convicted NBA referee Tim Donaghy later said that this game was fixed by 2 referees): at the time did you think that the refs called a fair game, and looking back on it now do you think the game was fixed? I do not think that it was fixed but 1 of the refs in that game made an exorbitant number of calls as if he had it out for the other team.
His team swept New Jersey in the 2002 Finals for the 1st 3-peat since the Bulls in the late-1990s, then he won 2 more titles as an assistant coach for the Lakers in 2009/2010: what kind of relationship did he have with Phil Jackson, and what makes him such a good coach? Phil was unique as a coach: I knew his college coach at South Dakota very well. He was a big gangly guy who learned the game extremely well and then developed a bunch of techniques as a coach such as zen/tai-chi. He got the guys to concentrate on things other than basketball. I remember the time when Scottie Pippen refused to go back into the game: Brian told me that Phil did not go back into the dressing room because he would let the players work it out themselves.
When people look back on his career, how do you think that he should be remembered the most? He was very well liked by most of the guys I talked to: Kobe loved him. He was a good person, a hard worker, and a loyal teammate. He is a good coach because he can really relate to his players.