SAMPSON BACK IN OKLAHOMA
A stint in the NBA led former OU and current Houston coach Kelvin Sampson to be more offense-minded
TULSA — Hollis Price's eyes light up at the thought.
What would Price's game look like playing in a system like the one Kelvin Sampson runs now at Houston?
“I probably would be second on the scoring list at Oklahoma,” Price, now Sampson's director of player development, said Thursday as the Cougars prepared for their NCAA Tournament opener at the BOK Center. “It's kind of hard to pass up Wayman (Tisdale). But I probably could've caught those other guys and held off Buddy (Hield) probably.”
The team Sampson brings into this NCAA Tournament and the ones he took to 11 NCAA Tournaments in his 12 seasons as the Sooners' coach have a lot of similarities.
Sampson still preached defense, taking care of the ball and rebounding as a part of his “power triangle” of core components of his system.
But unlike his time at Oklahoma, Sampson likes to force the issue on offense.
Instead of grinding out shot clocks, he's pushing his team to find good scoring opportunities no matter how quickly they come.
“He's a lot more liberal with the first 10 seconds of the shot clock,” said Kellen Sampson, who played for his dad for two years with the Sooners and is now an assistant coach at Houston. “We give our guys a lot of freedom to explore and probe and do a lot of that.”
It was his stint in the NBA that helped change Kelvin Sampson's philosophies.
Sampson spent some time as an advisor with the San Antonio Spurs before moving on to three years as an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks and three more with the Houston Rockets before returning to college coaching with Houston in 2014.
“I knew how to space,” Sampson said. “I wasn't as good at maintaining space and all the intricate rules the NBA guys have.
“I wish every coach could take a sabbatical and go spend some time with those guys so they can learn.”
Then there were the individual lessons he took from the coaches he worked under.
From Gregg Popovich, he took the delegation of authority, noting the way Popovich allowed his assistants to make decisions on how to guard different teams.
“I never done that before,” Sampson said. “I made all the decisions.”
From Scott Skiles, he learned how to be a better tactician.
“He lived for the last two minutes of an NBA game,” Sampson said. “That's the only reason I wanted to be an NBA coach — I wanted to coach those last two minutes. I love that.”
And then finally from Kevin McHale in Houston he learned again how to be a head coach.
“He gave me a lot of freedom, lot of rope to do things that I had learned just coaching against the other teams in the league,” Sampson said. “I don't know that I'd compare it to a Master's degree or anything, but I know it made me — it made me better and I appreciate everybody that I coached in the NBA with.”