For the two weeks of the NBA Summer League, it’s as if everyone gets a promotion and increased responsibilities.
Young players who might not see much time on the court during the regular season get the lion’s share of minutes to develop and learn in games. Video coordinators are upgraded to assistant coaches and are more involved in the day-to-day coaching. For assistant coach Dale Osbourne, Summer League is an opportunity to re-visit a head coaching role during the Trail Blazers’ time in Las Vegas.
“It’s a great experience for me,” Osbourne said after Wednesday’s game versus the Utah Jazz. “[Head coach Terry Stotts] said, ‘It’s your practice, your team, do what you want.’ He’s been very supportive. He looks at the bigger picture. Obviously, we wanna win games, but our guys have got to get minutes. We want to see them play whether we’re up 20 or down 20; it’s about our guys playing and getting better.”
Summer League provides Stotts with a chance to observe the development and growth of the team’s young talent in Noah Vonleh, Pat Connaughton, Luis Montero and rookie Jake Layman over the course of the five games in Las Vegas. During his time as the Blazers’ head coach, he’s employed a rotation of Osbourne and fellow assistants Nate Tibbetts and David Vanterpool handling the coaching duties during Summer League while he takes in the games with a ‘big picture’ mindset.
“[Summer League] allows me the opportunity to just watch our guys, evaluate,” Stotts said. “I don’t get caught up in the X’s and O’s of the coaching. I’m more interested in watching our players and how they’re doing, how they’re developing.”
He continued: “I always enjoyed Summer League as an assistant coach. Whether you’re a head coach, or even for our video coordinators and scouts to be involved in the day-to-day coaching and the gameplan and the game management, I think it’s really good experience.”
Osbourne last served as a head coach for the Tulsa 66ers of the NBA D-League during the 2011-12 season before joining Stotts in Portland for the 2012-13 campaign. The four games of Summer League thus far have provided a refresher course in game management and day-to-day coaching responsibilites for the Blazers assistant.
“For me, I haven’t been a head coach in like four or five years since I left the D-League,” Osbourne said. “It’s a learning experience for me also to run a practice, to call a timeout, draw up a play, to be thinking on the sideline. It’s a different world.
“Just thinking on the sidelines, reacting to certain things, that’s been a big challenge,” added Osbourne. “[Being] ready to draw up certain things in certain game situations, that’s something you have to have a lot of repetitions to do and do and do. Each game I get more and more comfortable.”
Having experience as an assistant for the Seattle Supersonics, Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors and Dallas Mavericks before landing head coaching gigs with the Atlanta Hawks, Bucks and now the Blazers, Stotts knows his current assistants’ time on his staff will expire eventually. With the continuing success Stotts brings to Portland comes head coaching opportunities for his staff.
Just recently, Tibbetts and Vanterpool were rumored to have received interest for head coach vacancies around the league.
“My hope is that all my assistants can go on to be head coaches,” Stotts put it frankly. “I think Nate and David will get an opportunity. The fact that other teams are interested in them and have identified them as up-and-coming coaches and NBA head coaching possibilities, it’ll be even more gratifying when they finally do get that [head coaching] job.”
