Secrets from the NBA bubble
First-year Suns coach Monty Williams had the Phoenix Suns glowing hot when their Disney World bubble burst.
With only a sliver of an opportunity to make the playoffs, Phoenix went undefeated. If a Brooklyn Nets buzzer-beater had dropped in, the Suns might still be playing.
Williams was selected as the Coach of the Seeding
Games, an honor that recognizes his squad’s 8-0 run and the all-but-impossible circumstances under which it was accomplished, keeping his guys focused through a national reckoning on racism and the seemingly obvious statement that “Black lives matter” as much as any others.
Cynics might say the Suns didn’t accomplish much, having finished below .500 (34-39) and failing to break one of the NBA’s longest postseason droughts, but that would be a stretch like power forwards shooting three-pointers.
The Suns did something special in Orlando, and with Williams on the bench, there’s no reason to think next season they won’t have a strong chance of picking up where this season left off. Williams spoke with The Arizona Republic to give a sense of how he did it. (Answers have been edited for length and clarity.)
Question: Coach, you’re a protégé of Gregg Popovich, but at a certain point, you’ve got to do things your own way, right? How did you come into your own as a leader?
Williams: “I think there were a few moments in my life, one was when Pop told me. He would always say, ‘Mont, just be you. That’s good enough.’ That was when I first started coaching.
“And then when I became a head coach, I said something one time in the media that wasn’t really me. And he called me right away, and he basically said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’
“He was trying to get it across to me that that wasn’t who I was. That was something that he might do.
“I guess the other moment was just living through everything me and my kids have been through (with the death of his first wife in a 2016 car crash). It made me look at life in its simplest form.
“The coaching is really cool, and we enjoy competing and the money is great. But at the end of the day, who are my kids going to look up to, look at and be around on a daily basis? It had to be the most authentic version of me possible.
“That’s my biggest challenge: leading my kids.
“And if I can do that somewhat well, I think I can leave the house and try to steward our program the best I can. “It always goes back to my family.”
How did you handle the social justice movement?
“We told our players from the jump that we didn’t want them to feel like they had the right answers in this situation. So many times, stuff happens in society and everybody’s looking for the athletes to come save the world, and I don’t think that’s fair.
“We talked to them about their emotions, and their feelings were all valid. We supported them. And we didn’t want them to feel pressure to have to do anything. But we also wanted them to know that because they’re in a position of influence, they have an opportunity to be a voice who can’t speak for themselves — if they choose to.
“I’m thankful that we didn’t put a lot of pressure on them to step out and do something that they weren’t ready for.” Q: And did it translate to the court?
Williams: “You know, I don’t know; I’ll never figure that one out.
“We did have organic, spontaneous conversations even before we went to Orlando — maybe three Zoom chats, where we had really good conversations that weren’t just about basketball.
“Then when we got to Orlando, we just dialed in to what we say every day, ‘Family on three.’
“It was just amazing to watch our guys grow up and play well and play for each other.”
Q: Coach, our experiences shape our perspectives. Do you think that being Black helped you navigate this experience?
Williams: “Not only being Black, but growing up in Colonial Virginia helped me understand the emotions of so many people that were protesting and crying out.
“I understood it, in part, not in totality.
“I experienced some of that in Virginia. And I listened to my family members talk about their experiences with inequality and racism in that part of the country.”
Q: And that helped you contextualize things?
Williams: “Finding out the information is one thing, but we’ve shared with our guys that you have to look at that information through the lens of love and understanding.
“If you just look at it with the emotional lens, you might not make good decisions going forward. It’s hard to hear some of that stuff. It’s hard to hear about your people being marginalized and segregated the way that our families have been.
“But if you look at it through the lens of love and want to educate your family and educate the people around you, it allows us to have some type of healing.
“We can’t have the best society possible if everybody’s not on the same ground as far as competition. I think once we let everyone compete at the same level, we’ll see a society that’s even greater than the one we have.”