The Post’s Steve Serby caught up with new Knicks coach Derek Fisher for some Q&A before the season tips off next week.
Q: What are your expectations for this team?
A: I expect us to learn how to be great. How we quantify that, what that means in terms of number of wins, and making the playoffs and all those things — no doubt we want to make the playoffs and we’re capable of doing it. What I expect us to learn — how to be great. It doesn’t mean we’ll be great all the time. I expect us to, when you think about from now to the end of the regular season — we’re talking close to 175 days of getting better, and working at it every day. Elite athletes, elite basketball minds and coaches and organization — with 175 days, we’re blessed enough to be able to wake up all of those days — we should learn how to be great over the course of that time.
Q: Do you realize you were born after the Knicks’ last championship?
A: Yes. I am very aware of that.
Q: Why would you be so aware of that?
A: Because it’s my job to be aware of it at this point. It’s my job to be aware of not just where we’re going in the present and in the future, but where we came from as an organization. And that history is a part of who we are. It’s been 41 years since this city and this team was able to experience that feeling. And we hope to be there one day. All these names hanging up in the rafters here — none of us will ever maybe be as great as these guys up here. But being a championship team is not about always the names on the back of the jerseys. How do we blend our talents so that the name on the front of the jersey is what ends up being successful, and a winner?
Q: Have you visualized what winning a championship with the Knicks in this city would look like and sound like and feel like?
A: Yes. I have absorbed and digested friends, and people that have expressed how great the city is when the Knicks are winning, and what that feels like and what that means to the people and to the communities … that’s the vision. That’s what you work towards accomplishing. But it takes time. But you have to remain committed to the day-to-day process. Even if you think back to the teams in the early ’70s that won those championships — a lot of things that happened and changed and evolved over the course of that time. 1970 wasn’t the first year that some of these guys had come together. It wasn’t the first year that Red Holzman was the coach. So it takes time to blend a lot of egos and personalities and talents. We live in a different era now, where expectations are higher and quicker. So we have to respect that, but at the same time, we can’t let the outside world rush the work that we have to do inside of here. We can’t do that.
Q: Are you the right man for this job?
A: I believe so. It doesn’t mean I’ll be here. I see Red Holzman’s name up there with 613 wins — that’s a lot of wins. I don’t have to be up there and I can’t compare myself to him. But I believe strongly that where we are now, where this team is, where this organization is right now, I along with my entire coaching staff, we’re equipped enough to do the job needed to be done right now, and that includes helping us win.
Q: What have you learned about Carmelo Anthony that maybe you didn’t know?
A: How much he truly wants his teammates and everybody else to be successful as well. I think he’s at times been kinda painted as a guy that thinks about himself first. It has been very apparent from conversations we’ve had over the summer, after he signed as a free agent, even a little bit before that when we talked to him as a free agent, and then the rest of the summer and into training camp, that he really is a team guy. And so, I don’t even know if I was surprised by that — I didn’t know that. As a coach, to have your best player be that way is very important.
Q: Why will the triangle offense make him a better player?
A: It makes the game easier, for everybody, including him. He doesn’t have to work as hard to do the things he’s capable of doing. And so I think there’s a level of efficiency that will continue to grow for him, and that will allow him to be a guy that we can count on to be able to play strong the whole time he’s out on the floor. Because we’re not going to put him in a position where he has to carry the entire bucket himself. And so our offense is designed for all five guys to be impactful.
Q: What’s your relationship with J. R. Smith, and can you get through to him?
A: My relationship with J.R. is great. In competition over the years, I think there was a mutual respect. I always appreciated the respect that I felt from him as a young player and being a veteran player. I think now that because we had a base level of respect prior to me being his coach, that’s carried over, and so he’s been great to work with. In terms of getting through to him, I don’t know if that’s the way I’m viewing it. There isn’t anything to get through to. It’s just about how we as a team create an environment where he and everybody feels like they fit in to what’s going on. I think that goes for all of us, when we’re not sure where we fit in and how and what’s expected of us at times, it’s tough to find our place, and sometimes we wander. And so, for J.R., for all of our guys, it’s my job and our job as a coach and as an organization to make sure that everybody that ever plays here, feels like they belong, and they’re important. And that’ll help guys just settle in onto the court in a much better way.
Q: What would you tell your team about what it was like winning a championship for the first time?
A: That none of what we ask them to do, and none of what they’re even asking themselves to do on a daily basis will make sense until the final buzzer goes off if we ever have a chance to play in the NBA Finals and win a championship. It’ll all seem like, “Why are they asking us to do that?” … “This doesn’t make sense” … “We should play the pick-and-roll a different way” … “Why are we running the triangle?” … “We should be able to do this.” And none of it makes sense, until the final buzzer goes off. Because it’s ALL an experiment unless you win. Because you go back to zero if you don’t win it. And so, when you win that first championship, that’s when you finally realize that all the sacrifice and the days when you thought you should have had a day off but the coach made you come anyway, and all the weightlifting and the training and pushing through the pain and back-to-backs and getting in at 3 in the morning and having to come back to practice at noon the next day — none of makes sense until then. That’s when they’ll realize what they thought they didn’t have all along, they already had it.
Q: Have you or will you trot out one of your five rings to show your team?
A: At some point. I’ve done it with some of the teams in the last several years that I played on. Because visualization is important. There’s visualization and then there’s also the tangible, that sometimes the vision doesn’t connect to anything. There have been a handful of times, not many, where I felt like showing the team this is what it results in if we can just buy into the common purpose. We didn’t go on to win the championship every time I did it, but I think there are times where it’s appropriate to show guys … if you ask them to a man, everybody will say they want a ring. So sometimes I think it’s good to just show them, “When you say you want a ring, this is what you want.”
Q: Have you used visualization yet with this group?
A: Yeah, we have. I’ve done some. We’ve also done some other things that we’ll continue to do from a mental performance standpoint that we think is important for our guys. Because it’s not just who can run the fastest and jump the highest and shoot the most 3s. The brain is arguably the most important part of basketball. So we have to train that as well.
Q: Describe the ideal Derek Fisher basketball player.
A: Love for basketball … loves the game, loves to compete … passionate about the success of the team, guys that can put the team first, and even with great individual talent, find a way to blend that with the team … guys just committed to winning. Guys that can shoot or dribble or rebound and defend — if you’re in the NBA, on some level, you can do a little bit of everything. It’s more do about the ideal guy being a guy that can be committed to the culture we’re trying to instill here with this organization. And that’s just a culture of excellence and a commitment to winning that goes beyond individual aspirations.
Q: What would you want Knicks fans to say about a Derek Fisher team?
A: That we work hard every night. We won’t win every night, but that our teams will work hard and we’ll be unselfish and selfless. You’ll see a group of guys that enjoy making each other successful, and are not thinking about themselves, but thinking about the team. Our hope is that that’s evident in the way we play the game every night.
Q: What drives you?
A: Possibility. The possibilities that exist in life that due to lack of working hard or lack of effort or lack of trying, should never be the reason why you don’t achieve at a high level. What drives me is the idea that there is no ceiling in life. There’s no stopping point. It’s constant evolution.
Q: Coaches in other sports you admire.
A: Bill Belichick; Jimbo Fisher; Geno Auriemma; Nick Saban. There’s just a common thread of consistency that they’ve been able to establish with their teams, that kind of year in and year out, they find a way to not force the players to be at their best, but to create an environment where players want to be their best, and hold themselves accountable to being great, and it’s great to see.
Q: What won’t you tolerate?
A: Lack of desire … lack of commitment … lack of work ethic … just basic things that speak to not wanting to maximize this great opportunity that you have to be in the NBA, to play for the Knicks. Those are things that we can’t accept.
Q: How do you motivate?
A: I try and just be consistent in who I am, and if that’s motivational, then that’s fine … I try and lead by example. As a coach now, you obviously have to be vocal in your leadership as well. And so I just try and help guys understand that they’re not in this alone. We’re partners in this process. Motivation is really an internal entity, not necessarily external. But I just try and offer guys stories, examples, analogies, metaphors, whatever it is I can do to help them to help themselves.
Q: Do you have a favorite inspirational or motivational quote?
A: There’s an old Japanese term that has kind of stuck with me over the years is Kaizen. I think as far back as World War II it was starting to be used as a common term for continuous improvement. And just this idea that’s really what we’re all trying to do or should be doing on a daily basis, finding a way to just continually improve, who we are, what we’re doing, what we’re trying to become. That’s generally our goal every day.
Q: A quote from Derek Fisher: “I am not a passenger in anything I do.” And another: “I am and always will be a leader.”
A: Some of that by choice and by design, and other times, folks that I was working with or partner with in some different capacities kind of chose me to be a leader.
Q: So what would be your definition of leadership?
A: I think consistency in habits, in terms of being able to be an example of the things that you’re asking the people that you’re leading to do, you either have done or are willing to do yourself at the drop of a dime, like no question about it. I think that that gives me some confidence, at least in the leadership positions that I’ve been in thus far and even now as a new head coach, that I wouldn’t ask any player to do anything that I’ve not done myself. And I think that’s important in leadership.
Q: Is it difficult for a rookie head coach to command respect?
A: I don’t think it’s difficult to command respect as a rookie head coach. I think it’s difficult to assume that you’re going to have it, though. There’s a level of credibility that’s required in any job or profession. And so, I can’t assume that because our players, which they have from Day 1, respect me as a person and as a man, doesn’t automatically mean that there’s a high level of respect as a coach — that has to be earned through our time together, the work that they see me putting in, my commitment to them and to us being successful, which will further allow me to command more and more respect over time.
Q: Your first impressions when you first met Phil Jackson.
A: That’s a good question. I recall more the tension or apprehension prior to meeting him because of everything I’d heard about he doesn’t like little guards. All the guards that he coached before were big guards, and here I am, this smaller guy, he may not like ME. I wasn’t really even thinking about whether I would like him or not, or what I think about him. I just remember thinking that I want to try and do everything I can to show this guy I can play and I can help our team win. So I don’t even know if I got fixated on what I thought about him, I was just trying to impress him.
Q: The single reason he was such a successful coach.
A: Attention to detail. His attention to detail is … almost unhealthy (laugh), in terms of how aware he is of the smallest, most minute things that happen on the floor, from footwork, to positioning, to the angle of passing. And being true to that idea that success is really in the details, and that, yeah, OK, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and Kobe Bryant and Shaq and Pau Gasol and all these great names — but his ability to impact his players’ focus on their attention to detail is what makes him special.
Q: He was also almost a psychologist in a way, right?
A: He may not have the degree or the doctorate to show for it, but he definitely unofficially was psychologist, in terms of a keen awareness and understanding in a lot of ways to the human psyche, and how our minds work and our brains work, and in particular athletes and high performers. He was able to take the elite of the elite athletes and elevate their performance, or help them to elevate their performance. And that’s not easy to do. I don’t even think that he is often times regarded as a great a coach as he actually was because of how elite the players were. My high school coach was one of the first ones to tell me that coaching guys that don’t know how to play is easy. Coaching guys that can play, that’s harder. So for Phil to be able to take guys that obviously knew how to play before he ever showed up, and help them to be successful, to me that says it all.
Q: Best motivational ploy you’ve seen from Phil.
A: I think one of the great things that he does when he was coaching was when we would watch film, he would sometimes leave the sound on so that the players could hear what the announcers of the game were saying. And for some players, it helped them to kind of understand that my coach or my teammates, they’re not the only ones that are seeing the game a certain way or saw that play a certain way. Because what he just said, yeah, that was selfish, or yes, that was a lack of effort. But he didn’t have to always say it. So he was really smart at using other voices to get his point across.
Q: Do you consider yourself a good judge of character?
A: That’s a tough question, that’s a good one. I think I always assume that people are good until they’re not though, so maybe I’m not a good judge of character, maybe I’m just not a good judge (laugh). I try and allow my experience with people to be organic and natural and no assumptions or expectations or judgment per se.
Q: What were those 1one-on-one practices with Kobe like?
A: (Smile) You know the movie Wolverine, and Hugh Jackman has the blades sticking out of his fingers? It was like two guys, like Wolverine (laugh), going back and forth with each other and just scratching and clawing and literally fighting for survival. And he obviously won almost every time because he is far more talented than I am. But it was not without a fight. We got after it.
Q: How often would you do that?
A: Probably once or twice a week in our rookie season. I think it forged a level of respect between the two of us that’s never been really broken.
Q: Your on-court mentality as a player.
A: It was pretty intense (laugh). There was a will to win, and a desire to win, and just love for competition, that was sometimes hard to contain. I played really, really hard every time I was out there. Sometimes I wasn’t good enough, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. It was … it was intense.
Q: Why do you think you played that way?
A: I think growing up, my parents really instilled the concept of hard work and work ethic. At a very young age, I understood that any success I ever wanted to have at anything, I had to work my butt off. It wasn’t going to just be handed to me. So I think just that foundation of thought, kind of birthed everything else that happened the rest of my life, because I always will be willing to work extremely hard to be successful. It doesn’t guarantee the success, but it won’t be because I’m not working as hard as I can to be successful.
Q: Did you play with a chip on your shoulder?
A: Yeah, I’d say so. There were times where, it was from as a kid, coaches or other authority figures that maybe their own evaluation, which is fair, whether it was basketball or football or a music instrument or whatever, where someone felt I wasn’t good enough or talented enough to excel at that particular sport or whatever. You still hear that song sometimes, that you can’t. And so appropriately used, that becomes the internal motivation that you need to just … there are no days off. You never get complacent, because you appropriately use the doubt that other people have. And maybe sometimes, we all kind of doubt ourselves at times, but when you can appropriately manage that, you use that to just continue to propel yourself to higher levels and that’s what I’ve tried to do.
Q: You’re almost a symbol of what this team is, hearing all the doubters, etc., etc.
A: I’m learning more every day being here in New York, about what it’s like to play in New York City, to be on the Knicks, to have people in the past question where this team is going, what’s happening, why isn’t the team winning? And, in a lot of ways, even though we’re all kind of new, those expectations will be placed on us. Rightly or wrongly, that’s the reality of it. And so, I think that’s another area where for our players and being in this leadership position that I’m in, I’m going to embrace the idea that that’s not unique to New York. That’s the reality of life. That’s what everybody that’s working hard every day putting food on the table for their families, that’s what they go through. When they show up to the office, the manager or the supervisor’s coming down on ’em or telling them something they’re doing wrong, or “You can’t be late to work, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, you can’t get off early, you can’t get that sick day, you can’t take a vacation that day.” So, we don’t have to feel sorry for ourselves because somebody said it as we can’t do something. We just have to go out and prove that we can.
Q: Why and how were you able to do what you did when your daughter had the eye operation in New York and you flew back for the playoff game in Salt Lake City?
A: There was definitely a divine component to being able to do that, for sure (smile). Definitely never have been alone, but I or we were not alone during that time. But I think that mental toughness that we just spoke about. And one thing I came across in some of the articles that I’ve been reading over the years about culture and success, and elite performers in business and in sports, elite performers have the ability to compartmentalize greater than any people on earth — masters of compartmentalization. Maybe not always healthy in the rest of life in some ways, but in terms of being elite at what we do, there’s an ability to compartmentalize that is supernatural in a sense. And so during that time, being able to compartmentalize the personal and emotional feelings, the adversity from a family standpoint, being to compartmentalize that and still perform professionally in a different compartment, that’s the only way I think that happened.
Q: What was that moment like when you walked out of the tunnel?
A: It was surreal. It was almost like — and I’m not trying to turn this into an inspirational piece — but people that have described either a glimpse of heaven, or the moments in between, where they see the light — that particular night, all the fans were given sky blue, light blue T-shirts. So as I’m walking in, the bright lights in the arena, and then a sea of like this light sky blue was also happening at the same time. And then everybody starts cheering and it was just … it was a moment that I’ll never forget. It was pretty powerful. I think what ended up really turning that story into what it has become, was Coach Jerry Sloan, before I could even sit down on the bench, calling my name and putting me right into the game. And I never had a chance to really sit down and start to think about the gravity of the moment and “Oh, it’s the playoffs, and ohmigosh, like what’s gonna happen?” I literally walk out the tunnel, everybody cheers, I speak to a couple of teammates, and before I can get to the empty seat on the bench, he calls my name to go in.
Q: Probably good strategy on his part, right?
A: Very good strategy (smile).
Q: First time you played in the Garden?
A: I actually better remember the first time I came to New York City. I was terrified (laugh). Here I was a kid that grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York City was everything that I’d seen on television and on movies, and police and crime, and not clean and … so I literally checked into my hotel room, put the dead bolt on, closed the door, did not come out until the bus went to the game the next day (laugh). At that time, it wasn’t kind of managed the way it is now with trainers and food available before the game, so we got to the Garden, and I was starving. And there was like a little deli or market right across the street on 33rd, and I probably ran as fast as I possibly could across the street to that deli to get a sandwich, and sprint back into the Garden before something bad happened (laugh). So, to think about now, 20 years later this is my home, is quite interesting.
Q: What did it feel like turning 40?
A: It felt good actually. When I think about my life and experiences, to be one of those guys that probably — not even probably — was never necessarily destined at least by other people to be in this position in life — to play so long in the NBA, and to now be a coach — turning 40 in August, after being named the head coach of the New York Knicks … I don’t know how turning 40 could be bad after that (laugh).