Nate “Tiny” Archibald played fourteen years in the NBA. He is a member of the basketball Hall of Fame and was named one of the NBA’s Fifty Greatest Players. Currently, he’s the head coach of the ABA’s Long Beach Jam. Recently he was generous enough to sit down for a lengthy interview. What follows is the first of a three-part series.
Broken Cowboy:
So how are things going with the Jam so far? I know it’s real early...
Nate Archibald:
Well, I’m excited to be here. I think that it gives hopefully the guys and also myself an opportunity to learn. And I’m fortunate and lucky that I have a young bunch of guys, we’ve got some old vets, okay, but I have a young bunch of guys that are hungry to play on the next level, and that’s the bottom line. People talk about teaching and coaching, we’ve got guys that their vision is a different vision than mine. I’ve been there, done that. And it’s different, and I’m just glad to a part of that. I’m hoping that they are receptive to learning, ‘cause I’m learning them. And when you talk about teaching and learning, the ABA is kind of a different league. They’re trying to trade off this new ABA as the old ABA -- running and gunning and stuff like that. And I tell my guys it’s also about teaching and learning, because when you play on this level, it’s a minor league, but it’s still a professional league. Your vision should be “I’m gonna get better, I’m gonna learn, I wanna be taught, and I’m gonna kind of fine tune my skills.” Because when people -- and they call it “called up” -- when they get called up, I told people that they have to be ready. We had a couple guys from the team that got called up, and some of them got called back. And I think you have to be ready. I think you have to be prepared, and I also told them that you have to be lucky. Because there’s a lot of talent...
BC:
...that’s not in the NBA.
NA:
That’s right. And all over. But sometimes the situation doesn’t fit for you right at that particular time. You look at clubs around the league now, and you say man, there’s a couple guys on people’s benches that don’t seem to fit. They’ve got a good attitude, they don’t give people a hard time, and that’s the fit. Well, you know, management is looking for the least resistance from anybody. They don’t want problem guys, because sometimes you’ve got superstar guys that are uncontrollable, but they don’t want that to filter down as a cancer to the team, so they pick guys with good attitudes, positive, old players...
BC:
I guess if you’re ten, eleven, twelve on the bench, they’re not gonna put up with any of these problems.
NA:
And I think that that’s kind of gotten blown out of proportion a lot, because a lot of guys do want to play. But if you look at the league now, it’s probably eighty, eighty-five percent Afro-American, and a lot of guys don’t fit with certain teams. The reward system is different now than it ever was. You’ve got AAU’s buying kids and not really teaching them and coaching them because they get the best kids. And early on, they miss that teaching and coaching. There’s some [coaches] that are genuine about what they do, but as a whole? So now, you’ve got a kid in junior high going into high school, that’s getting stuff.
BC:
I actually coach middle school basketball, and I see that already.
NA:
And then you have guys that are in high school, hopefully going on to college, that don’t give themselves a chance. ‘Cause I think a lot of guys are thinking about playing in the NBA out of high school now, and I don’t think that’s a good thing, I really don’t. This year eight guys out of high school. And I told people, “Did you all look at the McDonald’s All-America game?” Because all those eight guys were in that McDonald’s All-America game. I mean, the publicity that a high school kid is getting is enormous. They’re in the papers, they’re on TV. LeBron James, I think, set the bar.
BC:
When you look at LeBron, he’s obviously handled it. Based on his ability, he’s okay. But then you get these other kids...
NA:
But don’t you think that there are exceptions? When you talk about setting the bar... I don’t see that many, and we’re talking about eight guys that got drafted, I don’t see them getting the same publicity as LeBron James. Matter of fact, I don’t remember any of those guys.
BC:
They disappear real quick.
NA:
I remember one kid from Brooklyn [Sebastian Telfair], went to Lincoln High School, he’s up in Portland, and I don’t hear anything about him. First round pick. So I think it’s a gradual learning process, and that’s a quantum leap for me when you talk about going from high school to the NBA because you’ve got players that are very envious that you came from high school, and making it to the NBA, and probably making more money than they are, first of all. But then, I think it’s a different kind of barometer when you look at, “I gotta make that adjustment, I gotta learn the players, the players are probably, maybe not abilty-wise, but intellect, knowledge, and experience, far more than I have from high school now.” And now you’ve gotta get along with eleven, twelve different people, you’ve gotta learn a coaching philosophy. To me that’s a quantum leap. I don’t see that many guys making that adjustment unless you are a type of a player like LeBron, and the team is catering to your type of game.
BC:
And you know what, when I watched him last year in the beginning of the season, what blew me away, even more than his talent, was the fact that you had this eighteen-year-old kid, and his whole team, like you said, was catering to him on the court. When they would have him running the point, you’d have these veterans deferring to an eighteen-year-old kid. I think that was the most amazing thing.
NA:
Well you know that was by design, now. Come on, now. ‘Cause he’s the marquee guy. Maybe that wasn’t his natural position at first, but he was forced into that. And you know, the coaching philosophy is “get him the ball, y’all get open, we’re gonna run everything through him.” And now he’s got complimentary players. He’s got a guy that can handle the ball like McGinnis, you’ve got other guys that fit into that equation where the spotlight is still his, okay. But he doesn’t handle it as much. He’s more of an off-person. He can be a point forward, or he can be in the back court, but he’s not the guy that’s handling the ball all the time. If you’re playing against him, what do we do to stop him? Now he’s off the ball a little bit, other guys are trying to complement him, and they’re winning more games in the beginning. And I think that gradually it was gonna change, and gradually it will change, because, you know, a guy like that, being so young, you put a lot of pressure on him thinking that he’s gonna be carrying the team to the promised land, and it’s not gonna happen right away. It’s not gonna happen.
BC:
You kind of touched on this a little bit, but dealing with the players in this league, you know a lot of them are looking to the NBA. How does that change the way that you approach your coaching job? Because you’re not just trying to shape a winning team, but like you say, you’re also trying to teach individual players to give them a shot to get called up. Does that make your job more difficult, or just a little bit different?
NA:
I think that it’s a challenge that you try to kind of envision where guys would fit in in the league, not with one in particular team. And you try to individually break them down where you can actually teach them more. We have veteran guys who played center, and we’ve got a veteran guy (pointing to himself) who played guard, so what I try to do is split them off where we have our bigs on one end and our guards on the other end, and whether you’re a small forward or not, I think you’ve gotta learn how to handle the ball. I think passing is a lost art in this league, ‘cause we’ve got a lot of guys who can score, but you don’t have any true point people. And I’m not saying I want a boy to be a point person, but I tell my guys that the person who has the ball is the point person in the attack cause he has the ball. The rest of the guys are running their picks and screens and stuff, but you’re the point person ‘cause you got the ball. You have to lead us even though a guard is supposed to be doing that. What we try to do is -- I’m teaching, coaching, and also learning from them. Because on another level -- you know, people always think, “Oh, well this is gonna get you ready for the NBA.” Maybe not. I think a lot of coaches when they get into minor league basketball play, their vision is, “I’m gonna be in the NBA.” That’s not my vision. My vision is to teach, to learn, to coach, and if other opportunities present themselves, I’m gonna entertain those before I’ll entertain the league, because the league is just like playing. I broke it down for somebody, and they didn’t understand it, maybe you’ll understand it a little better. You’ve got more high schools than colleges. You’ve got many more colleges than NBA teams, cause you’ve only got thirty NBA teams. You might have thirty colleges in this 100 mile radius. So where do you think that I would fit better? People say, you played in the NBA. But that doesn’t carry a lot of weight anywhere.
BC:
So far you’ve said that you like the coaching and the teaching, but the NBA is clearly a player’s league. If you really want to influence some kids and pass on some knowledge, that sounds like high school and college.
NA:
That’s what it sounds like to me. I would like to get back into doing that teaching and coaching and having student athletes. And first of all, I’m not a proponent of bringing guys out early, but I think in a good situation, you can talk about the reward system for your student athletes. And the reward system I look at is I would love to see my guys, if I’m in a college situation, get a college degree and maybe go on to the NBA. ‘Cause you know and I know that percentage-wise, there’s not a whole lot of guys in the NBA with college degrees. The percentage is not great for people to think, “Well I’m gonna come out early ‘cause I know I’m gonna be in the league.” And that’s what’s happening. And the drop out rate in high school -- and not because people are thinking about playing sports -- but the drop out rate is higher than it’s ever been, and a lot of college coaches are looking at, “I might have you for two, three, four years,” and they might only have a guy for one, ‘cause the guy’s watching ESPN and says, “Shit, man, I played with that guy and I was better than that guy -- I’m leaving!” And that’s the situation I’m gonna hopefully try to control if I get into a college situation. You talk about contracts in the NBA, I’m gonna make a contract with the parents, okay? You give me a chance with your kid, and he comes and does what he’s supposed to do in school, I’m not guaranteeing he’ll be in the NBA, but I guarantee you that he’ll get his college degree. And I just see too many guys falling off like that. I’m from the city, I got guys like Omar Cook and a couple of other guys from that St. John’s area, that played in the league one or two years, and now they’re nowhere. And it’s sad. A lot of kids just look at the headline guys, they read about, “Oh, this guy’s making so much money!” But they don’t look at the overall picture, like “Maybe that’s not gonna be you.” They say, “No, they’re not gonna make it; I’m gonna make it.” And we fall short.
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