Dallas Mavericks champion head coach Rick Carlisle caught an unnecessary stray shot from the folks at ESPN's “The Last Dance” docu-series. In the documentary, he had an unflattering cameo appearance as a reserve player for the 1980s Boston Celtics who got his butt kicked by Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan in a particular sequence in the NBA playoffs.
Despite that though, Carlisle still watched the show and even learned a lot from it — lessons that he think will be able to help NBA players today as they tread on the partly glamorous path of the NBA.
“He doesn’t talk about it in the series that much, about legacy. But during that era, the dominant teams and the dominant players of that era – (Larry) Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, and then, ultimately, Michael – these guys knew that their ultimate legacy was going to be about the number of rings. And that’s something that I think is such a great message to today’s players,” the Mavs coach said about “The Last Dance, per David Aldridge of The Athletic.
“Because back in those days, you didn’t have social media, you didn’t have a lot of the distractions. You didn’t have the same amount of money that’s being thrown around, the shoe deals; some of the big players had them. Now, there’s just so much more money and so much else going on. You can find other things to do than obsess about winning a championship ring, or winning two in a row, or three in a row, or six of eight.”
There can ultimately only be one champion per year in the NBA — one team and a dozen-plus players receiving rings to immortalize the achievement of winning the best basketball league on the planet. For Rick Carlisle, the players of his era never lost sight of how difficult it was to compete for a title.
Carlisle won the 1986 championship with Larry Bird and Co. on the Celtics as a bench player. Later on, as a coach, he guided the Mavs to their first title in 2011.
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