Hopefully
Clifford now makes rest part of winning
new coach Steve Clifford can make Orlando Magic fun and exciting again like it was under old boss Stan Van Gundy, writes Mike Bianchi.
On Dec. 4, Steve Clifford left his downtown Charlotte condo early in the morning, drove several blocks to the Charlotte Hornets’ arena and starting prepping for his team’s game that night.
He had repeated the same routine countless times throughout his head-coaching career. But on that day almost six months ago, Clifford just could not function. His body shook. His head pounded — a pain so constant that he could not concentrate.
Clifford called Pat Delany, the Hornets assistant coach who had game-planned for that night’s opponent, and told Delany, “You’re going to have to do shootaround today.” Clifford decided to go home. He felt so ill that he decided it would be too risky to drive himself home. Instead, he walked.
Two days later, after an examination by a team doctor, Hornets officials announced Clifford would take an indefinite medical leave of absence.
He spent 5½ weeks away from the Hornets. After a barrage of
medical tests ruled out a brain tumor or a stroke or something else, doctors determined that a persistent lack of sleep had caused Clifford’s debilitating headaches. A neurologist informed Clifford he needed to do more than change the way he worked; Clifford needed to change the way he lived .He needed to devote more time to sleeping.
“Going through it was professionally the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to go through,” Clifford says now. “It impacted our team in a bad way. I feel terrible about it.
“Now, personally, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The change, Clifford says, has been profound. For years and years, he had subsisted on no more than five hours of sleep a night — a product of his work ethic and the demands of his profession. Since his leave of absence, however, he now sleeps at least 6½ hours each night, and the headaches have disappeared. He says he feels healthier now than he’s felt in years.
Orlando Magic officials believe him. The Hornets fired Clifford in April after five seasons as their head coach, and Magic President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman and General Manager John Hammond considered Clifford for their team’s coaching vacancy. In two lengthy job interviews during the search process, Weltman and Hammond repeatedly asked Clifford about his health scare, and Clifford described what had happened and the steps he took to regain his health. Clifford also agreed to give a Magic team physician, Kent Hoffman, access to his medical records and allowed Hoffman to speak with his physician.
On Wednesday, the Magic named the 56-year-old Clifford their new coach, signing him to a four-year contract.
“It was very important for us to hear his take on his own health and his ability to control the issues that he had,” Weltman says.
“I’m not a doctor. So what we did was we involved our doctor with their doctors. All I can tell you is they allowed full disclosure on all records, all meetings, all events. And our doctors came away confident that Steve was OK.”
Clifford will be 60 years old when his contract ends, and for his Magic tenure to be successful, one of the things he must do is continue to avoid the health issues that plagued him in Charlotte.
In 2013, early in his first season with Charlotte, he needed to have two stents inserted into arteries leading to his heart. He missed just one game, and he led Charlotte to a 43-39 record — a 22-win improvement over the season before — and to its first playoff berth since 2010.
The headaches started during the 2015-16 season. Clifford, who is divorced, took medicines to reduce the pain, but the medicines merely served as Band-Aids. The medicines did not eliminate the underlying problem.
The pain worsened the following season, concerning physicians enough that they had Clifford undergo an MRI.
What they did not know then was that, in his mid-50s, Clifford could not tolerate a lack of sleep as well as he did during his 20s, 30s and 40s as he worked his way up the coaching ladder. After stints at a bunch of colleges, Clifford eventually became an assistant coach under Jeff Van Gundy with the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets and an assistant coach under Stan Van Gundy with the Magic.
“I certainly saw him putting in the hours,” Stan Van Gundy says. “I wish I could say that I was benevolent enough to think that was a concern. It was just sort of the way he went about his business, and I think so did the other guys on my staff. You took it as business as usual.”
Marvin Williams, a Hornets forward who played four seasons with Clifford as his coach, recalls the team plane landing from road games sometimes at 2 a.m. and then Clifford being in his office at the arena at 5:30 or 6 in the morning.
“That’s how much it meant to him,” Williams says. “He was constantly watching film on us, trying to figure out ways to make us better, trying to figure out the scout[ing report] for the next team. That goes back to him being prepared all the time. That was just the everyday norm for him, and obviously it just kind of caught up to him. I think it wore him down a little bit.”
Clifford and many of his coaching brethren believe they can learn a lot by poring over film of prior games, by studying the strengths and weaknesses of their own players and by analyzing the opponents’ tendencies.
He and others grind away at their jobs.
It can take a toll — a toll that only became obvious over the last two years.
“You have to kind of bear in mind that Steve comes from that Van Gundy tree, and those guys are famous for landing at 3 o’clock from a road trip and being in the office at 5,” Weltman says.
“I think that’s who Steve Clifford is. He’s a workaholic and he’s a burn-it-at-both-ends guy all in the effort to make his players better and his teams better. But I think he came to the realization at some point that, ‘I can’t continue to do this. I need to lead a more well-rounded, wellbalanced life and especially as it relates to sleep.’”
When Clifford’s leave of absence started, he could not sleep more than five consecutive hours, no matter how hard he tried to do so. He had to retrain his body. Sleep now is a priority. These days, he’ll still stay up late to watch a game, he says. But instead of waking up at 5 or 5:30 a.m. no matter what, he’ll instead set his alarm for 6:45 or 7 a.m.
Clifford also delegated to his assistant coaches a bit more than he had done in the past.
On some occasions, Williams says, Clifford had his assistants run some of the shootarounds or a few of the practices.
Van Gundy remained in close contact with Clifford this past season, offering encouragement and support.
“Sometimes you need to be slapped in the face, so to speak, to do things a little differently, and I think he did that,” Van Gundy says.
“All of his friends, we were all worried about him. I think that’s natural. But I think that, especially what this last one has done, will turn into a positive for Steve. I think it has caused him to approach things a little bit differently, do the job a little bit differently. [He’s] no less thorough but just a little smarter in the way he works, and I think it’ll help him take care of his health.”
When the Magic introduced Clifford as their new coach Wednesday, he looked well-rested and at ease.
But how will he feel during the doldrums of an NBA season, after, say, a stretch of four games in six nights?
Clifford insists he’ll be fine.
“I had just let my body get to a [bad] place,” Clifford says. “I should have never done it. It’s not a place I’m ever going back to again.”
“You have to kind of bear in mind that Steve comes from that Van Gundy tree, and those guys are famous for landing at 3 o’clock from a road trip and being in the office at 5.” Jeff Weltman, Magic president of basketball operations