Like his brother Jeff, Stan Van Gundy (63) has been around the NBA since the 1990s and, like his brother, he is a living encyclopedia of basketball with his experiences in Miami, Orlando and Detroit in particular. With the Heat back in the Conference Finals for the third time in four years, his informed opinion is worth a look to define what is often summed up in a famous phrase: “Heat Culture.” Unsurprisingly, it all started with the arrival of Pat Riley in 1995.
The Big Bath in South Beach
Arriving in the League through the back door, namely second-class universities in his early days (Vermont, Castleton, Fordham) then a Division I team (Wisconsin) to make himself better known, Stan Van Gundy had his first experience in NBA on the Miami side. Through his brother…
Because Pat Riley, in transition between New York and Miami, wanted to bring Jeff, his first assistant at the Knicks in his suitcases. If he couldn’t get Jeff back, on his advice, he was at least able to convince the brother, Stan. The latter was quickly put in the scent, thrown unceremoniously into the deep end!
“Pat had just arrived. We are a month away from the start of training camp and we are holding our own camp with about thirty players, former CBA players, the equivalent of the G-League at the time, rookies who have not been drafted. Personally, I had observed the Big Ten [en NCAA] and I had seen talented players. But I had never seen so many talents gathered in a single gymnasium. I was like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of these guys who know how to play’. At lunch break, we chat with Scotty Robertson and Pat who has just sat down. Scotty tells Pat that there’s not much to chew on, that none of these players will be able to play for us. Pat confirms: it’s disappointing. I was on my ass! (…) I recently heard JJ Redick talk about it too, he who was a star at Duke. The level difference is huge between the NCAA and the NBA. Because in a university team, the best teams have two or three NBA players. In the NBA, guess how many there are on each team? All ! Any player can come off the bench and spank you. »
Having grown up in a family of coaches since Bill, his father, was himself a coach at SUNY-Brockport, in the third university division, the young Stan Van Gundy also quickly learns to be a pedagogue and close to his players, to pass his message.
“Brendan Malone, Mike’s father, always told me to explain the reason for each exercise”, he explains in the podcast The Knuckleheads. “Players will execute things better if we explain to them well the reason for doing them. »
They beat the “Invici-Bulls” with 8 players in uniform!
From his first year, Stan Van Gundy also tasted the playoffs, even if it was only for a short turn and then left, facing the invincible Bulls fresh out of their record season with 72 victories (a record beaten by the Warriors in 2016).
“We weren’t very good that year. We had made trades and we had managed to make the playoffs, but at the start of the season, we were not very good. That said, [l’année suivante]the guys knew how much this series [face aux Knicks, au deuxième tour] was important for [Pat]. I seem to remember that we had provoked four passages in force in the first quarter! I remember when Pat came on the field, it was crazy. As an assistant, you arrive a little early but when he arrived on the pitch, the crowd was incredible, there were names of birds flying everywhere! I turn around and there I see a guy, he was all red, with his daughter right next to him, and he is throwing insults at everyone. With her daughter next door! They booed him throughout the game. I had never seen such an outpouring of hate… The guy took you all the way to the Finals, and all he did was accept another job! »
A generation before Erik Spoelstra, Stan Van Gundy too experienced the unlikely rise from junior video assistant to head coach in Miami. At the time, SVG had to carefully store the video cassettes of the matches to be analyzed. Except this evening of February 21, 1996…
“The trade for Tim Hardaway was also memorable, we were in Philly and I think it was a day or two before the trade deadline. We beat Philly but it was one of the worst scores in history since the invention of the 24-second clock! We won 59 to 56, something like that [66-57 en vérité, ndlr], in an NBA game! Scotty Robertson was nudging me the whole game, ‘Look at the scoreboard!’ As an assistant, I was preparing to do the video analysis with the TV-VCR set, two in one, as it existed at the time. I had everything set up to do that on the plane, and then Pat comes and says to me: ‘Don’t even bother with that, tomorrow we’ll have a whole new team!’. The next day, we traded five guys for five other players. We got Tim Hardaway, Chris Gatling, Ty Corbin, Walt Williams and Tony Smith. In three different exchanges. The next game, we had the Jordan Bulls, the 72-win season, on the schedule… We didn’t have all our new players, we only had eight. In this case, Tony Smith had never done any training with us and he found himself starting against the Bulls, playing 30 minutes for his first match with us. We took Jeff Malone off the injured list. The guys played without any pressure, like Rex Chapman who finished on 39 points [à 12/17 aux tirs dont un incroyable 9/10 à 3-points]. He was coming in from everywhere, the crowd was bowing down to him, it was crazy. And we beat the Bulls [113-104] ! »
The “Heat culture” is not for everyone
Assistant for eight seasons, it was only in 2003 that Stan Van Gundy will get his chance to become the No. 1 coach of an NBA franchise. Luckily, it was then the first season of a certain Dwyane Wade, who notably offered him a victory shot for his first playoff game, on the head of Baron Davis and the Hornets…
“I was in my office. And I see Pat’s head appearing in the doorway. He asks me: ‘Are you ready?’ I say to him: ‘Why, for training? I already left my notes on your desk for you. ‘No, not that, are you ready?’ He tells me to follow him to his office. He sits down and repeats to me again: ‘Are you ready?’. I ask him: ‘But Pat, ready for what?’. And there, he spills the beans: ‘Ready to take over, I’m going to take a step back and I want you to be the head coach, are you ready for that?’. I told him that I didn’t know if we could really be ready for this but yes, I’m ready to go. And a few hours later, it was when my children were still small, we were at the concert of Wiggles in the room [du Heat] ! »
Trained at the Riley school, which he succeeded in 2003, but who will also replace him during the season, on December 12, 2005 (with the first franchise title at the end with the duo Wade – O’Neal) , Stan Van Gundy was in any case a privileged witness of the culture of the Heat.
The one that is so often mentioned, dreaded by many players who do not want to have to measure their body fat every four mornings. Made above all of defensive toughness and an irreproachable work ethic, the “Heat Culture” has certainly been synonymous with success in recent years, with three conference finals in four years.
“The culture of the Heat worked in their favor in the end because the players who don’t want to train as hard, who aren’t ready to put in that much, move on. On the other hand, those who come know that they will be respected for their work and they will have a chance to get by if they show that they have the level. Spo often says it anyway: we’re not made for everyone! »
A physical test that ends in the hospital!
More specifically, the Heat are going through a rather rigorous battery of tests ahead of their training camp. To ensure that its players are not only able to play their style of play all year round, but also to assess the physical form of each other after the summer period.
Stan Van Gundy remembers that this frenetic pace proved to be too dangerous for the health of the players. The requirements have since been lowered…
” The fitness test each year was to make seventeen crossings [de terrain], and do it five times! The leaders were expected to average 58 seconds per set. Scotty Robertson had lost track when Bimbo Coles was doing the test and he ended up doing nineteen sprints, knowing he had to do the last ones at 56 seconds on average to catch up. He was screaming: it’s nonsense! I want someone else to count my times! It was hilarious because Bimbo was the fittest guy on the team. The worst thing is that, if you missed it the first time, you had to pass it every day until you succeeded, in addition to the training sessions that follow one another. [au cours du camp d’entraînement] ! But all that stopped, at least to my knowledge, with the Sean Lampley case. He totally fainted during the test! He had been training with us all summer, but he had accepted a contract in the Philippines and he had fallen ill there. He had come back [à Miami] but he was still weak and had lost weight. And that test led him straight to the hospital. The condition test was never the same afterwards [on est désormais à dix traversées de terrain]. Seeing one of your teammates hospitalized on the first day of training is quite chilling! »
