I was reading this article, thought i wanted to share...sorry if i wasted everyone's time if this was posted before, i didn't see it on a search... Posted 9/25/2003 6:43 PM Updated 9/27/2003 5:10 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Houston Rockets • Schedule/results • Statistics • Roster • Notes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Top Sports Stories • Snyder dies after wreck; Heatley charged with vehicular homicide - 5:01 PM • Pens, 'Canes sign drafts top two picks - 4:18 PM • Roundup: Graf gives birth to second child with Agassi - 12:57 PM • Chiefs sink Broncos on Hall's 93-yard punt return - 1:14 AM • Yankees leave little doubt in sealing return to ALCS - 4:05 AM Add USATODAY.com headlines to your website What's this? Buy and sell tickets to premium and sold out events Search a region for basketball events: Location Select a region Atlanta Baltimore/Washington D.C. 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Register now. Changed Van Gundy ready for blastoff By Ian O'Connor, USA TODAY HOUSTON — The man is searching for balance and identity and there is no better place to find it than here, in Texas, with the Empire State Building on one side and the World Trade Center on the other. Jeff Van Gundy eats in this Manhattan Pizza joint each and every day, between framed, oversized portraits of a big-city majesty present and past that provides fitting borders for a New Yorker trying to figure out who is he and what he has become. At least Jeff Van Gundy doesn't have to undertake a rebuilding job in Houston. By Brett Coomer, AP Van Gundy is a wandering soul in this near-desert. He is wearing this flimsy white Houston Rockets t-shirt while the construction workers outside are dressed in boots and cowboy hats, trying to look their Bum Phillips best. This lunch place gives Van Gundy structure and refuge. It gives him a chance to say he's forever gathering here with the four Rockets assistants who were with him in New York, including Patrick Ewing, and to recall maybe three days in 13 years of Knicks employment when he actually left his desk to join staffers for a meal. (Related story: Ewing now seeking elusive ring in Houston) "It's not something I'm proud of," Van Gundy says. But that was then and this is now. Some 21 months after walking out on the Knicks and the $7 million-plus he had left on his contract, quitting 19 games deep into a season he knew he should've never started, Van Gundy stands at the door of his first Rockets training camp committed to seeing the world through a broader lens. He will change, that much is sure. How much he will change is open for debate. "It's early," Ewing says. Too early to call this race between a 41-year-old husband and father attempting to hold fast to a fresh perspective, and a reborn coach of the Rockets who would strap himself to Alonzo Mourning's ankle for 82 games if it meant convincing Steve Francis that Houston's championship aims would be best served with Yao Ming as the lead float in their parade. "The trick is you don't want to change anything about you that might help you win," Van Gundy says. "There's a lot more balanced, full-of-perspective people around, but I don't know how many of those guys win big." So for now, the concessions are as small as a coach's eyes after breaking down film in the dead of night. Van Gundy is done getting to the office at 5:30 in the morn; 6:15 will have to do. He will at least consider staying home on his players' off-days; he never once stayed home on a Knicks off-day that didn't land during the All-Star break. He will try to quit being that grim, joyless, sleep-deprived, tape-obsessed tangle of frayed nerves who dismissed the thrill of victory and thrived on the raw pain of defeat. Van Gundy was addicted to that pain, at least until it created something that had to be caged for good. "When I got on a plane after a loss and we made eye contact," Mark Jackson told Van Gundy, "I was sure that if it were possible, you would've killed me at that moment." The men in his life, important men, keep warning Van Gundy against devolving back into that tortured soul. "Jeff didn't bring me here as a yes man, but as a person he respects," Ewing says. "So when he asked, I told him: 'You have to change. You have to enjoy it when we win, and you can't always wear it on your sleeve when we lose.' He agreed. He knew it about himself. Even as an assistant, he'd look like he hadn't slept in two weeks. But those are the things that made him a great coach, so we'll see how different he really is." How different? There's a part of Van Gundy still wondering why he should be so different. He did take the Knicks to the Finals, didn't he? He did just score a four-year, $17-million deal with the Rockets after turning down much bigger offers from the Cavaliers and Wizards, right? Van Gundy won't comment on his free-agent business, but a high-ranking league source confirmed that the Cavaliers did offer him $25 million before settling on Paul Silas, and that the Wizards did offer him $35 million, including 2% of ownership, before hiring Eddie Jordan. That's a whole lot of love for a coach being told by everyone, including his old man, that this second time around can't be the same as the first. "I have a hard time believing there will be much change, but I hope there will be," says Bill Van Gundy, a college coach for 41 years. "Jeff's got to be less hard on himself. He's returning with stronger priorities on things other than basketball, and maybe he's not as narrowly focused, but time will tell." Time. Van Gundy had loads of it during his sabbatical. "I loved what I was doing the last couple of years," he says, "which on many days was absolutely nothing." He loved going to spring training games with his father. Loved taking his daughter, Mattie, to first grade. Loved the quiet time with his wife, Kim. Loved working Turner games with Marv Albert and Mike Fratello, too. Van Gundy didn't love the notion of another all-consuming coaching job. He had to get away from the Knicks, and all he says now is that "it was the right time to leave." His father says more. Though Jeff now regrets referencing the 9/11 attacks and the loss of his good friend and college teammate, Farrell Lynch, when resigning on Dec. 8, 2001, Bill Van Gundy believes that tragedy inspired his son's stunning career choice. "It's my theory and I've never talked about it with Jeff," Bill says, "but I think he saw Farrell's wife and three daughters and said, 'I haven't done what I should do with my family.' And Jeff felt if he took care of his family he'd be cheating the Knicks." With the Twin Towers rising proudly behind his right shoulder, on the Manhattan Pizza wall, Van Gundy says his new approach doesn't mean he'll be cheating his new team in its new arena. The Rockets are among the eight teams that have plunged into the draft lottery each of the last four years. "We're in some bad, bad company," Van Gundy says. "We have to break that cycle of mediocrity." The coach stops himself there. He wants it made clear he has the utmost respect for the two-title reign of Rudy Tomjanovich, the Rockets lifer who spoke with Van Gundy during the recruiting process to sell the candidate on his old job. "Rudy's a beloved icon here," Van Gundy says, "and it's a challenge to follow that." Challenge is an every night phenomenon in the Western Conference, and Van Gundy has little clue how — or if — his Rockets will embrace it. Van Gundy won't say so, but he'd clearly be happier if the likes of Francis, Cuttino Mobley and Eddie Griffin showed up for Houston's voluntary 3-on-3 workouts. Yao has an excuse; he's playing in the Asian Games. Van Gundy has sent him playbooks and tapes, and Yao emails back from China "with messages so polite," the Rockets coach says, "you say to yourself, 'This can't be a player.' He says things like, 'My best wishes to you and your family.'" Sometimes Van Gundy thinks he's the one speaking Mandarin in Houston; yes, there have been a few "My Cousin Vinny" moments. "He got off the plane and kept looking for cactus and desert," says Rockets GM Carroll Dawson. "He kept saying, 'You have a lot of green grass here.'" When one cowboy greeted him by saying, "Hey Van Gundy, what's going on?" the coach snapped, "Why do you want to know?" before apologizing for his Times Square sensibilities. When one Rockets suite holder promised that Houston fans won't boo too loudly on the bad nights, Van Gundy said, "I hope you do. The greatest thing about New York was that you were held accountable every night." Van Gundy still reads the New York tabloids every day, over the Internet. He is slightly homesick, even though he's found a comfortable home. "I told him in Texas the difference between a Yankee and a damn Yankee is that the Yankee leaves," Dawson says. "Jeff said, 'Well, then I'm a damn Yankee.'" And one hellbent on kicking up a Western Conference dust storm worthy of attention from his old antagonist, Phil Jackson. "Sometimes more is better and sometimes it isn't, and I have to figure that out," Van Gundy says. "I just don't want to change my intensity or my desire to win." Both are apparently in check on the walk back from lunch. Van Gundy opens his office door and hears an aide calling his name. "Kelvin's been looking for his earrings, Coach." Van Gundy reaches into his right pocket and pulls out the two diamonds Kelvin Cato mistakenly thought he could wear during a voluntary 3-on-3 drill. Somewhere between balance and identity, perspective and patience, there remains a basketball coach who will leave no shiny stone unturned. Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
