Waves Put Westphal Into a New Basketball Region

Paul Westphal is a novice. A rookie. New to the game.

It’s hard to believe he could be up to new tricks at 51, after almost three decades in basketball spent playing at an all-star level, competing in what some consider the best NBA championship game ever, and coaching some of the league’s most colorful players.

The NCAA tournament is different territory. He never reached the tournament playing for USC, because in the early 1970s the only team from the Pacific 8 that went to the NCAAs was the champion, which meant UCLA.

But in his first year coaching at Pepperdine, his Waves gave him his first crack at it, thanks to a 22-8 season. How long they stick around could have a lot to do with how well Westphal can make the adjustment to coaching a tournament instead of a series.

Westphal quickly acknowledges that this one-loss-and-done world is different. It’s even different from a conference tournament, where at least he has the experience of playing those opponents earlier in the season.

Can he come up with a game plan for a team he doesn’t know? If the Waves win their first-round game against seventh-seeded Wake Forest today, how quickly can he whip up a scheme for the Oregon-Montana winner? Can he have his team ready for such pressure-packed situations?

“Every game it’s like a seventh game,” Westphal said, “only you don’t have the six games to draw on, you don’t have all the experience to draw from. It’s an exciting thing.”

When he coached the Phoenix Suns, Westphal was usually at his best in the latter stages of the series. In 1993, they lost the first two games in a best-of-five first round but won the last three. The Suns dropped the first two games of the best-of-seven Finals at home against the Chicago Bulls that year, came back to win two of three in Chicago and came within a John Paxson basket of pushing the series to seven games.

Westphal was known for trying different--even daring--matchups. A key switch in the 1993 Finals was assigning Kevin Johnson to guard Michael Jordan in Game 3. Johnson bothered Jordan with his quickness, Jordan and the Bulls focused on posting up KJ and they got away from what won the first two games.

We’ll see if he is so willing to experiment in an NCAA tournament game.

One successful element of Westphal’s style that you know will stay the same: He won’t worry.

When the Bulls were on the verge of wrapping up the series in five games, Chicagoans boarded up storefronts and taxis deserted the streets in anticipation of a repeat of the previous year’s post-championship violence. Westphal developed a simple, whimsical rallying cry for his squad: “Save the City.”

They won the game and peace prevailed.

Westphal’s so mellow he wouldn’t look out of place if he wore sandals while coaching. I’ve read haiku poems with more words than Westphal spoke to his players during the last 30 minutes of Pepperdine’s open practice at Arco Arena on Wednesday.

It worked perfectly with Charles Barkley in Phoenix, but sometimes Westphal’s laid-back approach backfires. It cost him his job last season in Seattle, when he rescinded Gary Payton’s suspension for insubordination and lost the rest of the players in the process.

His style is working with the college guys in Pepperdine. He lets the players play, and everybody’s OK.

“He allows us to open up our game,” senior guard Craig Lewis said. “He doesn’t really worry about the quick shots. He just lets us play our game. If you feel like you can take your man, go on and take him. It just creates a loose atmosphere to your whole game. That really helps you out as a player.”

Westphal even engages in some trash-talking with his players. He also likes to show he still has some skills, such as when he reenacted a turnaround jump shot from the corner that he made while playing for the Phoenix Suns in the triple-overtime Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics.

“He hits a few trick shots now and then and makes you ooh and ah a little bit,” said Cedric Suitt, the team’s defensive force in the middle. “He tries to shoot a few threes. But he doesn’t get out there with us and go up and down.

“I know he won’t bring it to the hole on me. He knows better than that.”

Westphal sat down behind the microphone as his players left and said: “I would take it to the hoop on you.”

Even if his players don’t think Westphal could score on them, they respect him.

“Being a player, you have that experience,” Westphal said. “Being a coach you can see both sides of the game.”

With that two-sided experience he can bring a lot to the table, more so than a lot of the other NBA coaches. He’s played and coached in the NBA, as well as the college level, so he knows the ins and outs of the game.

The tournament has its own ins and outs. As in, win and stay in, lose and you’re out.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com.