San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘A very good dude’
G Leaguers love playing for ‘super-down-to-earth’ Aussie
Tom Tucker wouldn’t let it go. When a very tall teen squeezed into one of the desks in his math class at Penrith High near Sydney, Australia, Tucker, who also happened to run the school’s basketball program, launched a relentless recruiting campaign.
Nearly 30 years later, Austin Spurs coach Matt Nielsen is grateful Tucker wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I think I was 6-foot-7 at the time, 6-6,” Nielsen said. “Whatever it was,
I clearly had an OK build for basketball, and he just really hunted me down and wouldn’t leave me alone until I at least gave it a go. And I will be forever thankful that he introduced me to the sport.”
The Spurs also owe Tucker a debt of gratitude. In the 43-year-old Nielsen, they have a caring, personable coach with a passion for pushing and prodding young players to new heights in charge of their developmental team.
“He is perfect for us with his developmental skills,” Spurs coach
Gregg Popovich said. “He played a gazillion games for the Australian national team. He has been around our program. He knows what we want to do and is able to instill it. He’s got a great way about him. He’s a people guy, and it’s worked out very well.”
In his first season as a head coach, Nielsen has led Austin to an 8-3 record in the G League bubble in Orlando, Fla. It’s an impressive showing, especially considering the Spurs recalled Austin’s two stars, 2019 firstround pick Luka Samanic and 2020 second-round pick Tre Jones, last Sunday when the developmental team was 6-1.
Along the way, Nielsen has worked to improve his coaching skills.
“It’s been such a learning curve for me,” he said. “For me, I’ve enjoyed learning the ingame management. I haven’t got it right all the time, but I think most coaches would say they could always keep working on it.”
What has seemed flawless is Nielsen’s ability to bring out the best in his players through what Jones called a “super-down-to-earth” approach.
“I love him as a coach,” said Jones, who played for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. “As a person, he is a really good guy, easy to get a long with and talk to on a day-to-day basis. As a coach, he is super encouraging, allowing us to play and be ourselves . ... He is always on our side with so many things.”
Austin Spurs rookie guard Anthony Mathis, undrafted out of Oregon, called Nielsen a
“very good dude.”
“You can have conversations with him off the court, laugh, joke, have a good time,” Mathis said. “It’s not always about basketball. Sometimes with head coaches off the court, it’s always basketball, basketball, basketball. But he is easy to talk to. We have conversations about things other than basketball, and that goes a long way.”
Mathis said he was “super timid” when he joined Austin but now is brimming with confidence thanks to Nielsen.
“Ever since training camp, he’s told me to shoot the ball every time I get a clean look,” Mathis said. “(Before) I wasn’t even looking at the rim when I caught the ball. He would get on me, (saying) ‘Man, you’ve got to shoot the ball. Do what you do. Shoot more. Why aren’t you shooting?’ ”
A three-time Olympian for Australia’s national team who twice captained the “Boomers” and enjoyed a long playing career in his native country and in Europe, Nielsen is one of most revered former hoopsters in Australia.
“Matt Nielsen was the epitome of what we want Australian basketballers to be and how we want them to play,” said Roy Ward, a sportswriter with The Age, a newspaper in Melbourne. “He was skillful, canny, fearless and uncompromising and could take on much bigger, (more) athletic power forwards and still hold his own with his reliable midrange shot, many moves around the basket and tireless rebounding and defense.”
The 6-foot-10 Nielsen spent almost a decade starring for the Sydney Kings of the National Basketball League, the top pro men’s league in Australia and New Zealand, after making his pro debut at 17. A two-time NBL champion, he capped his successful run in the league in
2004 when he was named its MVP after averaging 22.2 points, 10.6 rebounds and 3.5 assists in a title-winning season for the Kings.
After a stint with the Denver Nuggets’ summer league team in 2004, Nielsen was one of several elite Australian players who joined the EuroLeague in search of better pay. In nine seasons abroad, he played for teams in Greece, Lithuania, Spain and Russia and was twice on teams that claimed the EuroCup.
But his proudest moments as a player came when he captained Australia at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. It fulfilled a lifelong goal and gave him a chance to go against the NBA’s best, including a turn defending LeBron James in London.
“Tough, very tough,” Nielsen said of the assignment. “I was either going to go LeBron or (Kevin) Durant. They weren’t great options.”
But Nielsen never backed down, gaining the respect of his teammates, including Spurs guard Patty Mills, who calls him “the most underrated Australian captain of all sports.”
“He always knew how to get the best out of me, and it was never the same approach every time,” Mills said. “Sometimes it was a pat on the back. Sometimes it was giving me a mouthful.”
After retiring in 2013, Nielsen became a part-time coach with the NBL’s Perth Wildcats. His big break came when then-Spurs assistant Brett Brown, who was also coach of the Australian national team, helped him get a job in player development with the Spurs after the 2013-14 season. “I learned from the best of the best in Pop and everyone involved, (assistant coach) Will Hardy,” Nielsen said. “They’ve had a lot to do with my development.”
From 2015 to 2019, Nielsen was an assistant coach with Perth, helping guide the Wildcats to three NBL titles. During that time, he also was an assistant with the Spurs’ summer league teams.
Nielsen spent last season as an assistant with Austin. The Spurs promoted him to head coach after Blake Ahearn joined the Memphis Grizzlies.
“I really want to try to (stress) the defensive end,” Nielsen said of his coaching philosophy. “I want us always to be on top of it. I also believe in letting them play freely on the offensive end and not bogging them down so much. I want them moving the ball. But defense is the part I really enjoy the most.”
What the players enjoy most about Nielsen is just who he is.
“He is a great coach all the way around, on and off the floor, a great guy,” Austin Spurs forward Robert Woodard II said. “He knows the game so well and is so passionate about it. I would do anything for him.”
This summer at the Olympics in Tokyo, Nielsen will be an assistant coach for the Boomers. But for now, his focus is on developing young players for the Spurs.
“I like to help the guys compete and get after it,” Nielsen said, “and it hasn’t been that hard because these are an amazing bunch of guys.”