THE BERNIE SYSTEM : Bickerstaff Is Trying to Put the Super Back in Sonics

It’s just the kind of situation that appeals to Bernie Bickerstaff. There he is in Seattle, a coach nobody wanted to hire, leading a bunch of players nobody wanted to keep in a playoff series nobody thinks they can win. You know what that is? It’s the view from a glass-bottom boat. All you see are the depths.

Or perhaps it’s nothing like that. Maybe, just maybe a guy like Bickerstaff is right. Could be it’s not so bad after all. It’s all in the way you look at it.

In only his second season as a National Basketball Assn. coach, Bickerstaff’s sight-lines seem pretty remarkable. Here’s a guy who spent 12 years as an assistant coach with the Washington Bullets before getting his big break. He worked for Dick Motta, and he worked for K.C. Jones and he worked for Gene Shue. And what did he learn from these guys? Just one thing. Do it your own way.

Soon after he arrived in Seattle for the 1985-86 season, the SuperSonics learned there were two ways they could go. Bernie’s way or the highway. Bickerstaff replaced Lenny Wilkins, whose record the previous year was 31-51. The SuperSonics promptly went right out and went 31-51 again with Bickerstaff.

“Something was wrong,” Bickerstaff said. “Lenny Wilkins was a good coach. I felt that I did my job well. Obviously, we’ve made some changes.”

Obviously. There are only three players on the SuperSonics’ team playing the Lakers that finished last season playing for Bickerstaff. K

Swingman Dale Ellis came from Dallas in a trade for Al Wood. Center Alton Lister came from Milwaukee for Jack Sikma. Backup center Clemon Johnson came from Philadelphia for Tim McCormick and Danny Vranes. Forward Maurice Lucas was picked off of waivers from the Lakers. Forward Russ Schoene came from the Italian League. Guards Eddie Johnson and Kevin Williams came from the Continental Basketball Assn. Guard Nate McMillan and forward Curtis Kitchen were drafted, McMillan in the second round, Kitchen in the sixth.

The only three guys who knew each other from the year before were forwards Tom Chambers and Xavier McDaniel and guard Danny Young.

No less an authority than Red Auerbach figured the SuperSonics chances this season were not very good. They would not only finish last in the Pacific, but they would sink so low in the Pacific that you couldn’t find them on sonar. Auerbach was wrong, it turned out, but Bickerstaff could see why some people thought the same way as Auerbach.

“It wasn’t some people, it was everybody,” Bickerstaff said. “Everybody in the free world was saying, ‘What the hell are you guys doing in Seattle?’ I could understand it. I like to give people opportunities. Somebody finally gave me a break. Once you get that opportunity, you don’t have an excuse. You do everything you can and then if you can’t make it, fine.

“We basically brought in people who had not had an opportunity to excel,” he said. “What we said was, ‘OK, here’s your platform.’ I think it’s worked.”

Bickerstaff doesn’t have to think hard to come up with this philosophy because he has lived it. He is 43 and he has been around the NBA a long time, but until last season he was always the one sitting at the right hand of the head coach.

But Bernie did his job well--the most important job an assistant has is to be loyal--and earned a reputation as a tactician. Then Bickerstaff decided he was ready to become a head coach. In 1979, he interviewed with the Cleveland Cavaliers. They hired Stan Albeck. In 1983, he interviewed with the Chicago Bulls. They hired Kevin Loughery. In 1984, he interviewed with the Indiana Pacers. They hired George Irvine.

That’s three strikes, but Bickerstaff didn’t sit down and feel sorry for himself. Instead he took the Seattle job, even though the team was so lightly regarded that it didn’t need a coach as much as a paperweight. Bickerstaff signed a three-year contract that’s got one more season to go. By then, the guy’s signature might be a pretty hot little number. Bickerstaff just remembers what he went through to maneuver into such a position.

“Everybody else looks at it like it was such a long wait, like it was a real long time, but I look at the times in Washington as a helluva learning experience,” Bickerstaff said.

“I’ve never been surprised at my coaching ability. There are a lot of great coaches who don’t have players. So I give credit to the players. The players make you look good. In Washington, I was known as an Xs and Os man, then all of a sudden I’ve got personalities to deal with as a head coach.

“But look at the guys I’ve worked with while I learned--Dick Motta, K.C. Jones, Gene Shue, Bob Ferry. Even if you’re an idiot, some of it will rub off on you. Those are household names in basketball.”

Dick Motta.

K.C. Jones.

Bernie Bickerstaff?

Apparently, the household is expanding. Last week, just before the Houston Rockets were eliminated by the SuperSonics, Ralph Sampson was talking about his own coach, Bill Fitch, and shook his head.

“He ain’t no Bernie Bickerstaff,” Sampson said.

So Bickerstaff has already become a coaching standard? Suddenly, Bernie Ball is all the rage. Here is what Bernie Ball is all about, reprinted courtesy of its author: “We’re intense, we get into it, we don’t back down from anybody and we’re persistent.”

Certainly it’s paid off for both Bickerstaff and the SuperSonics. They finished the regular season 39-43, but once they got to the playoffs, the heavily favored Dallas Mavericks and the slightly favored Rockets quickly fell. How could this happen? Is it a mystery?

His players don’t think so and neither do a lot of other interested parties.

“I will tell you that I’m surprised at some of the things that he’s come up with,” said Johnson, who has played with three other NBA teams. “I thought when I got here, he would be a screamer, but he’s more subtle than that. But it’s his coaching methods that amaze me. Like in the Dallas series, we’re getting blown out by 30, and he comes into the locker room and he’s smiling, like he’s saying to himself, ‘I got the secret to this thing.’ And you know what? He did, too.”

After losing the opener to Dallas by 32 points, the series swung to Seattle when Bickerstaff switched two key defensive matchups. He put Chambers on Mark Aguirre and McDaniel on Sam Perkins. Before the change, Chambers was chasing Perkins around on the perimeter and wasn’t close to the basket to rebound. Seattle won the next three games.

In the Houston series, Johnson said Bickerstaff showed him he knew what he was doing in what turned out to be an overtime victory for the SuperSonics. On one particular play, Ellis was jumping out from behind a pick and shooting the same baseline jumper the whole game. But during a time out, Bickerstaff changed the play slightly.

“He didn’t confuse the issue and diagram a new one, he just varied one of our normal plays,” Johnson said.

Instead of popping out behind the screen, Ellis broke for the basket on a back-door play and accepted a pass from McMillan for an easy layup. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it. But Laker Coach Pat Riley, who has known Bickerstaff since Bernie was an assistant coach at the University of San Diego in 1969, said that these shades of coaching are no accident.

“The whole thing about Bernie is that nothing happens by chance,” Riley said. “I think his strong point is his preparation. What they did this year was incredible. Watch Bernie coach on the sidelines. Eyes open, he’s moving back and forth, bent over. He’s into every possession. You can’t ever exhale when you’re playing those guys.”

Success has cut across just about all SuperSonic age groups. Bickerstaff and his assistants Tom Newell and Bob Kloppenburg have helped old players and young ones alike. Ellis is in his fifth year, but he spent most of the first four collecting dust on Motta’s bench, so he’s really a lot younger than 28. Ellis thinks there’s no way he would have been the same player he is now if he wasn’t playing for Bickerstaff.

“He’s done so much for my career,” Ellis said. “He threw me in the starting lineup and he’s instilled a lot of confidence in me. I haven’t had that before in the pros. Motta played a lot of mind games and sat you down. Bickerstaff is up front with you and builds you up. He’s the type of coach you want to win games for.”

Lucas, a 35-year-old veteran of 768 NBA games, regular season and playoffs, credits Bickerstaff for listening to the needs of his players.

“He doesn’t hold anything in,” Lucas said. “He will confront you immediately with things. He’ll tell you. Believe me, that’s a rarity in this business, somebody telling you what’s up.”

So, what’s up, Bernie? Maybe in the next few seasons to come, it will be the SuperSonics. With all the trades that Bickerstaff and President Bob Whitsett have made, they’ve got first-round draft choices piled up like cordwood outside the office door. The SuperSonics have six first-round picks in the next three years, including the No. 5 and No. 9 picks overall in this year’s draft.

“We think we’re going to be a lot better,” Whitsett said.

But probably not this season, which is rapidly drawing to a close. The SuperSonics are down, 2-0, to the Lakers in the Western Conference finals. What happens the rest of the way is going to be the biggest test of his theories about winning, coming back from nowhere and all the positive things he can possibly find to say about it all.

“We’ve already won,” Bickerstaff said. “We’re just trying to win now. Everything we do from this point on is gravy, as far as I’m concerned. We’re playing a team that nobody else has had any success with during the course of the whole year. We just want to let them know they can’t walk over us. Give us some respect.”