Cartwright coaching in Japan

OSAKA, Japan, April 13, (AP): A decade removed from his last basketball head coaching job, Bill Cartwright is back on the bench — bringing the five NBA championship rings he won as a player and assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls to Japan.

Cartwright was hired by the Osaka Evessa of Japan’s professional league in January. When he took over, the team had a dismal 5-19 record. Since arriving, Cartwright had raised Osaka’s record to 20-26 headed into the weekend, including a 10-game winning streak from March 3 to April 6.

“This was a great opportunity,” Cartwright said in a recent interview. “I’ve always wanted to come over here and have a look around. It seemed like a great adventure, and why not? The timing was good and there was nothing stopping me.”

After being fired as head coach of the Bulls in 2003, Cartwright worked as an assistant for the New Jersey Nets and Phoenix Suns, then spent a season out of the NBA for the first time since being drafted by the New York Knicks in 1979.

A basketball lifer, Cartwright said he’s glad to be back in charge.

“I always felt, even as an assistant coach, I could make a contribution,” he said. “But I think that every assistant coach wants to be a head coach at one point in time. I do like it.”

The Osaka team is the most successful organization in the Japanese league, winning the championship three times from 2005-2008.

But things fell apart when the team’s leader, two-time Most Valuable Player Lynn Washington, was arrested in 2012 on suspicion of smuggling a small amount of marijuana into Japan. Washington was later exonerated of all charges following 18 days in an Osaka jail but the controversy forced him to retire last April and eventually cost head coach Ryan Blackwell his job.

Washington was a fan favorite and his departure — and how it was handled by the team — left many fans bitter. Even though Washington was cleared, Osaka ownership was eager to clean house and started the 2013 season with a revamped roster.

Serbian coach Zoran Kreckovic was fired after an 0-4 start and the team didn’t do much better under Takao Furuya, who became an assistant coach when the 55year-old Cartwright was brought in.

With his reputation as a patient mentor of young players, Cartwright was considered the perfect fit to restore a sense of order.

“We always say that you can’t coach players unless you teach them first,” Cartwright said. “If a player is not doing what he needs to be doing, he needs to be taught better.

We teach guys how to play, if we can’t teach them one way, we have to teach them another way.” Osaka forward Rick Rickert, who played in the NBA Development League, Slovenia, Greece, Spain and New Zealand before arriving in Japan, says the team is a lot more focused under Cartwright.

“He’s got us really focused on fundamentals in practice,” Rickert said in an interview with The Japan Times. “He’s preparing us to play aggressive and make smart decisions. He’s very knowledgeable, and yes we’re learning stuff.”

Cartwright said there were no glaring weaknesses that needed to be addressed when he came in but the team needed a new direction.

“These are hardworking guys,” Cartwright said. “All I did was give them a philosophy of play. I gave them a system of play and now I hold them accountable to the system. They understand clearly what they have to do within the system and are executing it.”

Cartwright, who played for four NBA Hall of Fame coaches — Red Holzman, Hubie Brown, Rick Pitino and Phil Jackson — has impressed rival coaches with how quickly he has adapted to Japan and the domestic league.