Rowan Kavner
LOS ANGELES – The Clippers who played and coached alongside Alvin Gentry don’t doubt the former Clippers head coach and assistant and current Pelicans head coach will eventually thrive with his group in New Orleans.
It can just take time, as Corey Maggette knows.
“They have to learn to play this up-tempo offense,” said Maggette, who was on Gentry’s early-2000s teams with the Clippers. “Some guys who aren’t accustomed to it have to really get themselves into good condition.”
Gentry served as an assistant coach for the Clippers during the 1990-91 season and later as the team’s head coach for three seasons from 2000-03 before returning to the Clippers again as the associate head coach for Doc Rivers during the 2013-14 season.
He helped shift the Clippers and their nucleus of stars from the fourth most efficient offense to the top-rated offense in the league during his most recent stint in Los Angeles. Gentry then went on to serve as the Warriors’ associate head coach last season, where he helped guide one of the league’s most prolific offenses to a championship before getting the New Orleans head coaching job.
Gentry has young, talented players at his disposal with the Pelicans. But as one of the many young, talented players Gentry coached on a particularly youthful Clippers team 15 years ago, Maggette knows the transition doesn’t happen overnight.
Maggette, who was one of five Clippers players 21 or younger when Gentry got to Los Angeles in 2000, believes Gentry is an offensive mastermind who allows his players to grow. But the high pace and up-tempo offense can be demanding on players who aren’t used to it.
Playing in Gentry’s offense requires the athletes to be in better shape than their opponents. Maggette said the young players in his system wouldn’t get on the court if they didn’t prove themselves in practice.
While Maggette’s team admittedly didn’t have the talent of this New Orleans team, he said there are parallels. Namely, both teams were young groups trying to find their way, which Maggette believes will happen for the Pelicans, despite the sluggish start.
“You look at his track record, he understands this,” Maggette said. “He understands how to be a good coach. He understands how to be a champion. He was an integral part to (the Warriors) winning a championship last year, as well as the first assistant to Steve Kerr. He has the knowledge to better their team, but it takes time.”
Gentry helped double the Clippers’ win total the first year he was there in 2000. He then turned a 31-win Clippers team into a 39-win team the next year. The youth is the first thing Gentry remembers when he thinks back to those teams with Maggette, Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson, among others.
“I think we had seven guys on that team that had college eligibility left,” Gentry said. “I think the thing that happens is that you’re in most of the games, you have trouble finishing games with a lot of young guys, and it’s a learning curve that you have regardless of how good they are.”
That’s something Gentry’s finding out with his young players in New Orleans, though the offensive success is evident.
Maggette, who kept in touch with the head coach long after he left the Clippers, said where Gentry might’ve developed the most in that respect was with Mike D’Antoni. Following his stint with the Clippers, Gentry went to Phoenix, where he spent his time as both assistant coach and head coach from 2003-13.
There, Maggette said, Gentry fully began utilizing his players’ strengths to turn offense into defense.
It’s only a matter of time, Maggette says, until the Pelicans players start to do the same and figure out Gentry’s run-and-gun style and up-tempo play in transition. He believes once they can start getting the spacing right, things should start to work out for a Pelicans team which fell to 4-12 after its loss to the Clippers on Friday.
While Gentry’s team hasn’t started the way it planned, with injuries not helping his cause, he has talent in New Orleans he hasn’t seen in previous head coaching stops.
Rivers said most coaches need to take their first job given to them. After that, they need to figure out where they can be successful, and he believes Gentry can do that with the Pelicans.
“At the end of the day, they had a guy named Anthony Davis on their team and they have a lot of players on this team and you just thought it was a place he could have success,” Rivers said, “and he will.”
