Don Nelson on Tyrese Haliburton, coaching the Knicks and Small Ball

Had a few leftovers from my weekend reunion with the Hall of Fame coach that I couldn't resist passing along

Game 2 is probably the only game in these NBA Finals that I'll be attending in person.

And I did so, in all candor, because I couldn't bear to miss Sunday's pregame press conference at which Don Nelson received the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Basketball Coaches Association.

Covering Nellie was one of the most pivotal chapters in my career. The Mavericks hired him to be their GM — not the coach — in February 1997. I arrived in town in April 1997 after I received an opportunity to join the vaunted staff of The Dallas Morning News assembled by legendary sports editor Dave Smith.

It meant leaving The Los Angeles Daily News and the Laker beat … before Year 1 of the Shaq-and-Kobe partnership had reached its completion. Yet as I tried to explain to some disbelieving colleagues in Lakerland when I told them that I was really leaving to go cover the NBA's laughingstock franchise of the 1990s: This was a chance to join what could be described as the Lakers of newspapers.

Early in my first full season of coverage for what Smith christened Sports Day, Nelson fired Jim Cleamons and installed himself as coach ... as many skeptics believed he would soon after taking the job. The next several years, with Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash being acquired by Nelson and his son Donnie on the same day in June 1998 and the ultimate maverick Mark Cuban buying the team in January 2000, put a brighter spotlight on my work than I ever imagined when I made the move to North Texas and realistically changed the course of my career.

So …

Even though I had written the story above about Nellie on Sunday morning to break the news of his impending honor, making sure I had a seat in that press conference audience Sunday night at Paycom Center was a must. And it duly became somewhat of a This Is Your Life experience for yours truly, hearing the 85-year-old — who was plenty unfiltered three decades ago but really willing to say pretty much anything now — expound on his small-ball philosophies ... and admit that he had an advantage over rival coaches in the early days of illegal defense enforcement because then-commissioner David Stern had quietly asked him to co-write the original rules for those defensive violations alongside Cotton Fitzsimmons ... and rehash some of the lengths he and Donnie had gone to in 1998 to hide Nowitzki from other NBA teams after they discovered him.

"It was tough for a while in Dallas," Nelson said of his first few years in charge, before the Nowitzki/Nash/Michael Finley trio blossomed during the first full season of Cuban's ownership in 2000-01.

"People though I was a mad scientist. They may have been right."

If you like your basketball history as much as me, I urge you to watch the full video of Nellie's presser from OKC. He covered lots of ground:

I also want to share a few snippets from my interview with Nellie last week that didn't quite fit in Sunday's story but which were too good not to share in our latest Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza.

Nellie on Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton … which reminded me of how he used to talk about Nash on occasion before the Canadian became a Phoenix Sun via free agency and went on to win two MVP awards:

"Oh, I love his game. I do wish he was a little more aggressive. He's very unselfish — probably too unselfish. He should probably be a little more aggressive offensively. But he makes the right play almost every time."

Nellie's response when I pointed out to him that the Knicks have a head coaching vacancy and asked if he has any interest in returning to Madison Square Garden:

"Well, I'll tell you what, I enjoyed New York more than people think. I mean, I just loved it there when I was there, but I wasn't there very long. I got sideways with [Patrick] Ewing because there was a time when Shaquille [O'Neal] was being talked about to wind up with the Lakers. I had coached Shaq on the USA team [at the 1994 World Championships] and I found out that he might also come to New York — those were the two areas he was looking at. If the L.A. thing didn't work out, he liked the idea of being in New York — in the big city. I mentioned that in a private meeting with the owner and with the GM. And it wasn't long before it got back to Ewing. It pretty much ended our relationship when he found out about it."

Nellie on the origin story that inspired Nellie Ball:

"Well, when I played with the Celtics and I played for Red Auerbach for one year, and then Tommy Heinsohn and Bill Russell after that, we always played a game [at practice]: Bigs against smalls. And in the full-court game, bigs never won. Smalls always won. You play a half-court game, bigs always won. But you get them in a full-court [game], they didn't dribble, can't pass [or] make plays. So the small teams always won. I always thought in a full-court game, if you made it a fast game, not a slow game, you could beat the bigger teams. I also figured out that there are hundreds of small guards who can just shoot the sh— out of the ball. Not necessarily [that they] can be point guards. They maybe can't make plays, but they could all shoot. If I had a forward that was an average shooter, like a Paul Pressey, and I ran my offense through him, I could run picks with these small guards, get them open in the corner pretty easy because they are all quick and they could all shoot … and I think that helped me beat a lot of bigger teams I was playing against. I was never blessed with having talented big people [in Milwaukee or Golden State]. I finally got Bob Lanier for a couple years at the end of his career and that was the most talented [center] I had ever coached — and still is today. But I only had him for a few years. So I had to figure out ways to stay competitive with smaller teams. Because the hardest guy to find is the big man in the league. The easiest guy to find is a small guy who can shoot. So that was part of my philosophy — those two things."

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Publishing Note

Not a soul has complained, but I still feel compelled to issue such bulletins when I don't/can't adhere to the intended publishing plan:

There was no This Week In Basketball compilation published Monday even though our stated goal was running TWIB every Monday during the playoffs. The combination of travel issues getting back home from Game 2 in Oklahoma City due to bad weather as well as the Knicks' ongoing interest in Jason Kidd required multiple Monday audibles.

Below is Monday's Kidd story … and rest assured that

The People's Insider

Jake Fischer and I have so much more NBA goodness forthcoming that will be published throughout the week:

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Numbers Game

🏀 30

Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton has made 13 of 15 shots to tie or take the lead in the final 90 seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime this season, per research from my pal

Keerthika Uthayakumar

.

🏀 3

Haliburton also now ranks as the first player in league history to sink go-ahead shots in the final five seconds of three separate games in a single postseason.

🏀 1-121

Entering this series, NBA teams were 0-121 when trailing by seven points or more points in the final three minutes of any NBA Finals games over the past 28 postseasons. Indiana's remarkable Game 1 comeback made it 1-121.

🏀 25

The Pacers' 25 turnovers in Game 1 were the most in a Finals game since Portland, remarkably, committed 27 in its Game 6 clinching win over Philadelphia in 1977.

🏀 72

Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, with 72 points, has established a new high total for any player in league history in his first two NBA Finals games.

🏀 50

The previous record-holder was Allen Iverson, who had 71 points in his first two Finals games for Philadelphian in 2001 … and just turned 50 over the weekend.

🏀 4

Injuries announced already this week sustained by Cleveland's Darius Garland (toe) and Memphis' Zach Edey (ankle) are expected to sideline both players for at least four months each.

🏀 2011

Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, presents the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award before Game 2 of the NBA Finals every year. This was the second time since the inception of the award in 2009 that Carlisle was coaching in the Finals and didn't need a special trip. Carlisle was the title-winning coach of the Dallas Mavericks in 2010-11 in his only other Finals appearance.

🏀 79

During Sunday's press conference, Carlisle said that unofficial research he conducted found that Nelson was ejected a record 79 times in his 31 seasons as an NBA coach. Official league statistics on ejections, however, do not appear to be kept anywhere, making verification of the number difficult. Any ideas, friends, on how to confirm that total?

🏀 1977

I thought I knew Nellie's history pretty well, but here is a painful factoid that I didn't remember until last week: Milwaukee's first major trade after installing Nelson as head coach in place of Larry Costello was sending Swen Nater to Buffalo in June 1977 for a future first-round pick. I absolutely loved Nater during his solitary season with the Braves … but somehow I didn't realize that the draft pick became Marques Johnson. The trade meant Milwaukee had both the No. 1 and No. 3 overall picks in the 1977 NBA Draft. The Bucks actually took Kent Benson with the first pick and then Johnson third. Benson then absorbed a punch in the face from Buck-turned-Laker Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — early in Benson's NBA debut no less — that left Abdul-Jabbar with a broken right hand.