ONE STOP AT A TIME
Rockets assistant Jeff Bzdelik builds his reputation on defense
With a day off to step back and think of all the years and all the stops on the road map they had crisscrossed together, Jeff and Nina Bzdelik allowed themselves a moment to consider fate.
They thought about all the times in the nomadic existence of coaching lifers that moving trucks pulled up outside and took them to the next challenge, the next line on the résumé. They considered the jobs that had tested and strengthened them. They thought about how it added up to this moment in ways they never could have guessed.
Until now, it did not make sense on all those occasions that Jeff, 64, had rebuilt programs and cultures only to be sent on before he could finish the job and enjoy the results. But maybe fate had a plan.
He did not learn from Pat Riley so that someday, when he would become Rockets associate head coach charged with guiding an offensiveminded team’s defense, he would know just what to say in that motivational Rileytype way to get through.
He did not take the job at Wake Forest, two years after his daughter Courtney began her studies there, so that one day Mike D’Antoni would be in town with son Michael, who was considering Wake Forest, and would stop by Bzdelik’s office to “talk basketball” and unintentionally plant a seed for a partnership years away.
He did not take college rebuilding project after project, though he had long since become hooked by the “pure basketball” of the NBA, so he could learn how to “change a culture.”
“I have a strong faith,” Bzdelik said. “Every job in my 42 years of coaching that I’ve gotten I did not apply for. Any job I did apply for I didn’t get. All the stops along the way, every stop I had, somebody has always just called. It is by fate? It has to be.”
It adds up to his place on D’Antoni’s right, with respect and freedom to more than run the defense, but to change the mindset of the team happy to fire away but that has come to understand it must do more.
Comprehensive plan
“We discuss everything, how we want to do things, how we want to present it,” D’Antoni said. “He has a great connection with players. He has to be the little pest to get them to pay attention to detail. He’s great at it. It works for me because I trust him completely. It allows me to concentrate on relationships, the offensive side, dealing with (media). I knew he was thorough. He’s perfect.”
Right coach, right place, right time did not come easily.
It took those stops when he methodically — too slowly for some who want just-addwater success — built from the ground up.
“My wife and I were talking about that yesterday,” Bzdelik said. “Throughout my career, I’ve been kind of the starter. Like my first head coaching job at UMBC (Maryland-Baltimore County). I inherited a team that won six games in Division II and they’re going Division I. I’m the rebuilder. We won 25 Division I games in the first two years as opposed to the two previous years, they won six Division II games.
“I go to the Washington Bullets, the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks. I get my head coaching opportunity with the Denver Nuggets and we had the sixth-best turnaround in NBA history. We go from 17 wins to 43 wins in the Western Conference. They figured ‘Jeff took them to a certain point, let’s bring in George Karl. Jeff can pass the baton off to him’ and off they go. I never got to see that.
“After the Denver Nuggets let me go, I went to the Air Force Academy. We were 50-16 in two years, got to 11th in the country, went to the NCAA Tournament, the Final Four of the NIT. The University of Colorado comes, they won only eight games the previous years.
“I go to Wake Forest and I inherit six kids that were arrested for various reasons and they wanted me to rebuild that. My fourth season, we had a winning season. I beat Duke. I beat North Carolina. I beat North Carolina State. I beat Notre Dame twice. But they let me go because my first couple, three years in changing that culture, we took some losses. Now I had nine freshmen and sophomores and we won.
“My point is rebuilding in today’s society, it takes time. Changing a culture doesn’t happen overnight. That’s been my reputation. ‘Jeff’s the rebuilder. Jeff’s the guy who has to go in there and painstakingly change the culture.’ ”
Rebuilding process
It required incredible twists of that “fate.” He got into coaching when, as a gym teacher, he was working at the Duke camp, met Davidson coach Eddie Biedenbach who was looking for assistants from the Midwest and North Carolina and hired Bzdelik, a native of Mount Prospect, Ill., and Rick Barnes. That led to an assistant position at Northwestern and when the associate athletic director there moved to UMBC, the head coaching job.
There, Bzdelik caught the eye of Wes Unseld, the Hall of Famer who was taking over with the Bullets and Bzdelik was in the NBA.
“I go to the NBA and Jeff Van Gundy calls me and says, ‘Pat Riley wants to speak with you.’ I go and meet Pat and Pat hires me. Stuff just happened.”
Bzdelik’s reputation grew under Riley, first in New York and then Miami, as a meticulous and thorough advance scout. That led to the position with the Nuggets. And even after he was fired 28 games after that breakthrough season, he was respected in the league.
Family matters
But Colorado has just one NBA team and Bzdelik was not moving. Bzdelik was fired in December 2004. In 2005, Courtney was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Even after the surgery, after she was well and her father changed by the experience, he was not about to chase the next NBA job.
“It keeps things in great perspective, it does,” Bzdelik said. “We are so blessed to walk out of that hospital. I remember a nurse saying to me and it’s so true. ‘Not a lot of people walk out of there.’ It’s true, so true. It brings you to your knees. It gives you a whole new perspective on things, absolutely.”
Bzdelik was in his daughter’s hospital room when he read about the job opening at the Air Force Academy. That began his years as a college coach, forced to mix recruiting and alumni functions with the basketball he loved most.
He returned to the NBA to run the defense in Memphis and when Dave Joerger took the job in Sacramento last summer, hoping to bring Bzdelik with him, the Rockets had to not only choose a head coach, but to compete with the Kings and Grizzlies to land D’Antoni’s right-hand assistant that was key to making it all work.
“It stood out to us that he had so much head coaching experience,” Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said. “That level of experience and gravitas really helps when you are explaining the battle plan.
“Second, the coaching tree he comes from is second to none. And there was a lot of respect from being the primary guy with the Memphis defense.”
Working with D’Antoni
When he landed the job, James Harden and Pat Beverley heard from friends with the Grizzlies praising the new assistant. D’Antoni quickly gave Bzdelik autonomy to run the defense, though Bzdelik said he runs everything — from practice routines to game plans — through D’Antoni. The defense worked in fits and starts, ranking among the league’s best in the December run, falling to 17th with the late-season slide and then excelling in the first-round victory over the Thunder.
The Rockets improved in the ways they needed to most, in defending the arc and in transition. But Bzdelik knows that changing mindsets takes more time.
“The first thing we talked about when we got together in the summer was ‘If you don’t defend, you’re not going to win,’ ” Bzdelik said. “History shows that. It’s that simple. You’re not going to run around scoring a lot of points, getting open shots in the playoffs. You better guard. And you can’t just turn it on and turn it off.
“All year long, we’ve worked on our habits for this moment. There needs to be an understanding that it takes all five players on the court to get stops. Through the whole course of the year, we’ve been on players to understand we need to have the right habits. When you talk about championship cultures, teammates don’t just play with each other, they play for each other. They refuse to let each other down.
“That’s the culture we’re trying to create defensively.”
Creating culture does not happen quickly or easily.
But it is a change that can be built to last, especially when the long road leads to the place where the journey finally makes perfect sense.