Q&A with Grizzlies assistant Chad Forcier
Chad Forcier joined the Grizzlies coaching staff as lead assistant this past summer, after working under Frank Vogel in Orlando. Before that, he spent almost a decade on Gregg Popovich's staff in San Antonio, working extensively in development with players such as Kawhi Leonard and George Hill. Forcier learned from legendary performance coach Tim Grgurich, and worked for George Karl and Rick Carlisle in his early years in coaching.
He talked with The Commercial Appeal about his decision to come to Memphis and about his new team:
Why did you join the Grizzlies?
The first piece was J.B. (Bickerstaff ) because I've had such a long-term relationship with him and I've always been a huge believer in J.B. himself. So that was attractive right off the bat, wanting to be part of what he's doing and helping him be successful, that really matters to me. Looking at the basketball side, knowing the tradition here over the last decade, perennial playoff team, and when you start with bookends like Mike (Conley) and Marc (Gasol), if you're a coach, that's a great place to start. Knowing you have a nice blend of veterans and young talent, there is a lot of optimism. I found it really attractive.
What is it about J.B. Bickerstaff and his charisma? He's had two different interim stints with two difficult situations — he's had to put out some fires, but he seems to have a real calming effect. Is that your impression?
Yeah, for sure. The thing I've always felt about J.B. is that he's always known who he is, and he's really comfortable in his own skin. I've never known him at any point in his life to try to
be anyone but himself. He's always got a quiet strength about him in terms of his confidence, and his comfort with being who he is. That's how I would describe him.
When you look at the Grizzlies' roster from a player development standpoint, what do you see?
I just see young talent that isn't just "talent," because you're not going to accomplish things in a developmental context just by talent alone. You have to have the right mixture of enough talent so the player can do something on the court, but also the character to go along with it, in terms of the professionalism, the work ethic, the desire to improve, the coachability, the teachability. You have to have that.
And the other piece in terms of development that people don't recognize enough is it doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it also doesn't happen just with a "player development coach." You don't just go over to the lab, coaching a player, and get all that accomplished. There's a lot of different avenues that feed into what allows a player to grow and reach his full potential. A lot of times, I think of that in terms of what's your overall ecosystem? Now, the head coach has a lot to do with that; the veteran teammates have a lot to do with that; the situation; the opportunity a player has to figure out what kind of role he may have or what kind of minutes the player will get, a lot feeds into it.
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A lot of players — very publicly — do individual work in the summer with their own skills coaches. What's the difference between what they do and the player development that happens within the context of the team?
What you're seeing in the summer in terms of the different publicity it gets
the motives are interesting to me. I'm not the expert, but some players want to put it out there that they're on the grind and working. For sure a lot of the guys they're working with are running their own businesses, so it's a heck of a marketing avenue for whoever the workout guy is. I can appreciate that. I've never worked in that field in terms of having my own private business, but I can understand what it means to their business to do that.
If you don't have collaboration with the actual coaching staff, and sometimes you do and sometimes you don't; there can be a conflict it can be counterproductive unless there's a partnership or an open dialogue about what the priorities are in the summer for a player. If it's done in a vacuum if you're just over there working on stuff that a player is not going to have an opportunity to use in a given role, you can
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You've worked with many talented young players in the past. Do you develop individual frameworks for each guy? How do you go about planning the future for a guy like Jaren Jackson Jr.?
I'm probably not equipped to give you a step-by-step process because not everything is sequential. You have to make real careful decisions. You have to take a look at where a guy is and what he does already, and you also have to pair that with what you anticipate a guy's role is going to be. You have to marry those two things, and you're usually best off taking a much slower approach than diving into the deep end of the pool. Because what you really need to do is you need to give players – it doesn't matter if they're a rookie or where they are in their career – an opportunity to start to show you who they are, and what they do or don't do. You need to give them time to produce a body of work, so there's a little more science to it than meets the naked eye, but that's kind of how we do it.
Early in their careers, young players might see their stats drop off, or their minutes drop, as they progress. Is it hard to keep players mentally on board throughout the process when things like that happen?
It can be. A lot of that ends up coming back to the character of who you're dealing with, and their maturity, and helping them understand their progress isn't always going to be married to a metric we can see on a stat sheet or what someone writes in the paper. If they use the framework of the long haul – it's kind of like the stock market; you may make an investment today and your stock portfolio may take a dip, but you're looking at the long game.
A lot of times when people evaluate player development or their growth, I think they can get myopic and lose that
You've worked with Kyle Anderson in the past. He's said he likes to play with the ball in his hands. He was the point guard in college at UCLA and did that more in San Antonio last year. Do you see him as a primary initiator? How do you see his role going forward?
I don't know for sure what the details of his role will look like or the full scope of how we'll utilize him. But when you talk about his skill-set, his comfort level, his history, everything you said is spot on, and we're aware of that and really enthused by that. I'm looking forward to seeing how it unfolds, and I really love the fact you get a lot of versatility because it doesn't really matter what position you play Kyle in, he's comfortable. He's tall. He can see his teammates. He's a great passer. He's got great vision. He loves to make plays for his teammates, and I think that gives a coach a lot of avenues you can go down.
Is there a deliberate attempt on your part to zig while others zag? You can't be Golden State or Houston, so do you then have to develop your own unique strategy because of the specific talent you have?
Absolutely. You used the word "deliberate" but I'd use the word intelligent. I think J.B.'s assessment of who we are, and his embracing of who we are, is very intelligent. He's right on. We can't keep trying to chase the pack out there and have a herd mentality. You have to realize who you are; you have to identify what you believe is the best way to play to your strengths; and try to take pride in becoming the best team you can. Of course, they'll be adjustments made along the way, but you have to take pride in becoming the best team you can and embracing the reality of who you are. I love how he's looking at it.