I just read Paul Shirley's book "Can I Keep My Jersey?" and he's got some interesting insight into this from a unique perspective (having played for Tim Floyd at Iowa State and then again in training camp with the Hornets).
A part of me was intrigued by the prospect of training camp with the Hornets just to see how Tim Floyd would go about coaching a professional basketball team. I played for Floyd for two years at Iowa State before he left Ames for the thankless job of replacing Phil Jackson as coach of the Chicago Bulls. I had heard from varied sources what Tim Floyd: Version 2.0 Pro was like, but was intrigued to judge for myself. (Most reports out of Chicago leaned toward a mellowing I thought to be impossible fro one of the most intense coaches i have ever seen in action.)
Watching Coach Floyd do his open-the-season speech in New Orleans was surreal. it had never occurred to me that I would be on the receiving end of such an event again. The first time I was subjected to the experience, I had walked to the team meeting with absolutely no idea what to expect. It was my third day on campus at Iowa State. I could barely find my way to class each morning, so I was in no way prepared for the three-hour monstrosity that passed as our welcome meeting. I had never seen such intensity. To consider interrupting Coach Floyd as he stood at the front of the room going through the twenty-page booklet he had prepared for the occasion was seemingly to consider having one's person, along with one's basketball career, thrown out the nearest window. I left the meeting with sweat running down the inside of my shirt. I was scared.
Fast-forward to the Hornets' welcome meeting. The atmosphere was slightly more relaxed than it had been in college, not in small part because we were all seated at a swanky restaurant in the French Quarter and not in a dimly lit basketball office in Ames, Iowa. The proceeding with the Hornets were delayed about forty-five minutes while we all awaited Baron Davis' arrival. When he did grace us with his presence, he was neither frazzled by, nor apologetic for his tardiness. (I think his basketball upbringing might have been a mite different than mine.) Stacey Augmon drank five Heinekens through the course of the evening and seemed much more interested in the events in other areas of the restaurant than anything his coach was saying. Meanwhile, Coach Floyd seemed relieved just to get through his opening remarks without being shouted down from the microphone. It seems that coaching in the NBA takes a slight change in mind-set from coaching in college.
Practice is not exactly the same either. NBA players are not used to a lot of, shall we say, criticism, so Coach Floyd is forced to be a bit more positive than I remember. The famed intensity is still present, of course. But now after a defensive breakdown, instead of spewing forth a rant containing several unprintable expletives and an allusion to the fact that the player's mother was not known for her defensive ability either, he will say something like, "That wasn't really what I had in mind there, George, why don't you try it another way?" Which, of course, is hilarious to me, because I know exactly what is whizzing around in his head. The player involved, having had no prior experience with the man, has no idea of the bulled he just dodged because he plays for the New Orleans Hornets in 2003 and no the University of New Orleans in 1992. (Floyd coached at UNO earlier in his career).
Anyways, I just figured it might be interesting to some of you like it was to me.
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