The Oldest Rookie

So the next thing Pete Carril knows, the time machine has deposited him generations into the future, to where he will live basketball-as-rock-concert, replete with flashing lights during introductions and MTV videos on scoreboards during timeouts.

To where players suddenly aren’t hanging on his every word.

The Pete Carril who settles into a courtside seat as an assistant coach in Arco Arena before a recent Sacramento Kings’ game is still Ivy League, his past, either a few months or a few million light years ago. Red V-neck sweater, blue collared shirt, blue and white polka-dot bow tie. Professorial.

If he looks out of place, it’s because he might be. Toto, we’re not at Princeton anymore.

“I enjoy it,” he says. “I wish we were winning more. I’m not sorry that I’m here. If I were someone else, I’d feel the same way. I am committed by my style and principles of life to make the best of whatever situation. It’s been the way I’ve done things my entire life.

“I could have been a high school coach for 35 years, and it wouldn’t have bothered me that no one would have known who I was or anything like that. It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit.”

He is asked what is the most fun in his new job.

“Well,” Carril says, “I’m not having a lot of fun, because basically I’ve never permitted myself to have too much fun. I get my happiness out of seeing things done right, out of being successful, out of seeing the interaction of people working together for a good cause, spilling their hearts out on the floor, giving you the best of what they have.

“That’s where I get my happiness, and I don’t think that in the pro level you’re going to get as much of that as you did in college because their senses of motivation are different. Of course there’s money involved, and only a fool doesn’t know the effect money’s had in the world.”

Never permitted yourself to have too much fun?

“It’s the nature of my being. I’m always thinking, if I’m too happy the roof’s going to fall in on me, or I’ll walk into a moving car or something like that. I was that way as a coach too.”

He means as a head coach. Carril’s basketball mind, described as brilliant by one of his many admirers, now works with the Kings, who will play the Clippers tonight at the Sports Arena. Carril was brought to Sacramento by Geoff Petrie, the vice president of basketball operations and former Princeton star and team captain.

Ask him how he likes it, and he’ll say something along the lines of, “Fine, near as I can tell.” It looks OK from the airport to his apartment, from his apartment to the arena. And the mashed potatoes. He can get mashed potatoes any day at restaurants, which is crucial. Pete Carril loves mashed potatoes, but he laments that back East they were more of a special, like every Thursday or something.

The rest is still in the feeling-out stage. He is a 65-year-old NBA rookie fresh off 29 years at Princeton and the back-door layup against UCLA that made his name the most dreaded two words in the Jim Harrick household this side of expense report.

Twenty-nine years with a record of 525-273, nine outright Ivy League titles, four others shared, 11 trips to the NCAA tournament, one near monster upset of Georgetown in 1989, the one against the Bruins last season, the 1975 NIT title, a nomination to the Hall of Fame’s class of ’97. And now, starting over.

“Why retire?” said Utah Jazz assistant Gordon Chiesa, who met Carril as an assistant at Dartmouth in 1979 and has been a friend since. “He’s too young to retire. He has too much to give to other people.”

Added Petrie: “I’ve always said this and really believed this: He made an incredible career as a coach basically by outsmarting people, with the way he taught and coached his players. He was hard on guys and hard on me, but very rarely wrong when he’ll tell you what you need as an individual player or how your team needs to take advantage of what it has. I just felt like there was a tremendous amount of knowledge.”

Actually, Carril had no plans to retire even when he made his retirement announcement last spring. He had talked with Petrie long before then, told his former player of the impending plans, and been told there was a job if he wanted it. Carril knew he wasn’t leaving the game, only the school, but he wanted to avoid any farewell-tour scenarios around the league, so he held off on going public until just before the start of the tournament.

Then, the NBA.

“I’ve sort of been typecast as a college coach, that I couldn’t function at this level or didn’t know this type of game,” he said. “All the time I listened to that, I thought it was ridiculous in view of the fact that I had followed the NBA teams for so many years. Our own team, you put them all together and have them count all the tapes they’ve looked at down through their careers, it wouldn’t even equal half of what I’ve done.

“I had had enough of being a head coach. I had been a head coach at some level for 43 years, and when you’re the head coach you make all the decisions, all the plans, take all the flak. You get a little tired of that, who plays and who doesn’t play. The hundred little things that make it difficult for you to enjoy your life.

“As an assistant coach, no matter how hard you root for the team, and I do, the psychological gap exists to where you can never feel the same way, so it’s a lot easier to be more dispassionate.”

Problem is, sometimes the players are too.

“It’s interesting,” said Carril, who has played a role in the improvement of forward Corliss Williamson, for one. “They could be a little bit more, oh, attentive to what you’re trying to tell them. I think as time goes on, that’ll get better and better.

“What I’ve learned is that I have to prove myself, again. You have to prove yourself every day.”

Rookies always do.