First, before Hawks coach Larry Drew tackled the many problems of a compressed schedule, the loss of Jamal Crawford’s 14 points a game, Josh Smith’s three-point urges and civic ennui over his product, he had to deal with Christmas.
That is a hard, hard holiday when you work in one town, yet keep a home and family 1,900 miles away.
“My boys, they expect me to be there,” Drew declared.
So, here’s how to turn a family Christmas into a grueling NBA road trip: Practice at Philips Arena on the morning of Dec. 24. Fly cross country. Wake up in Los Angeles on Christmas morning. Do the gift thing. Eat an early dinner. Fly back across three time zones that evening. Get up the next day and prepare to open the season in lovely New Jersey.
Such is the fragmented life Larry Drew has chosen for himself.
It is not only on holidays that the Drew duality is difficult to maintain. There is a constant pull from two compass points — east, where he holds one of only 30 head coaching positions in an ultra-competitive profession, and west, where his wife and three sons reside.
The family made the decision years ago to anchor in Los Angeles, the last stop of Drew’s 10-year NBA playing career. The last time he uprooted his family was as an assistant coach in Washington (2000-03). He discovered that when momma and the boys aren’t happy, nobody’s happy.
“They were homesick, missed their friends, missed L.A., and they wanted to go back,” Drew said. “We decided, we’ll make the commute. I’ll miss some [my sons’] games, but get some opportunities to see them when we go out west to play, during the All-Star break, Christmas time, the offseason. Some way, somehow, we make it work.”
Handling the business
The business half of the equation is complex enough, here at the beginning of Drew’s second season in charge (his eighth overall on the Hawks staff).
Like every other coach in the post-lockout NBA, Drew is in hurry-up mode. The Hawks open up at the Nets on Tuesday, the first of nine games in 11 days in six cities. That’s a schedule that sounds more suited for Bon Jovi than an NBA team.
When his players finally reported to camp, Drew had a couple basic messages for them.
First, like any good patriarch, he told them he missed them. So strict was the no-contact policy during the lockout that when the coach accidentally ran into Smith at a Los Angeles restaurant a couple months ago, they had to leave by different exits in order to avoid one another.
Then Drew got down to business. He told his players that he thought they got complacent last postseason, after eliminating Orlando and Dwight Howard. They should not make the mistake of feeling sated after the first round again, he said.
Also, he tried to underscore the physical and mental challenges they are going to face with the condensed 66-game schedule. It would be up to them to do right by their bodies like never before, as it would be up to him to manage their work load in new and imaginative ways.
“They’re going to have to learn to push through that threshold of pain, the days they don’t feel like giving it up,” Drew said. “Me, as a coach, I have got to help them push past that. With all the games piled up one on another, I’m going to have to monitor guys’ minutes, going to have to just make sure that they don’t get worn down. And our practice time is going to be very, very limited.”
The coach’s tent is hardly pitched on solid ground. He is in the second year of a two-year contract, with an option for a third. And, until the deal was scotched early last month, Drew was all set to start over with a new owner.
Coach and father
He doesn’t leave all complication and stress behind at the end of the work day, for playing long-distance dad to three budding basketball players is hard duty.
He went through all kinds of drama last season with his oldest son, Larry Drew II. When Drew Two suddenly left North Carolina in January after losing his starting guard position, all the Drews came under criticism.
Young Drew left school without meeting with the coaches, leaving it to his father to inform Roy Williams of the move over the phone. Wrote Seth Davis in Sports Illustrated: “It does not speak well of the player, but frankly it also does not speak well of his parents.”
All parties seem to have moved on without further scarring. North Carolina is ranked in the top 10, as usual. And Drew Two is at UCLA, sitting out the required year after his transfer. All that mattered to the elder Drew was that his son was smiling the last time he saw him, just prior to the opening of Hawks camp.
“It was a tough experience,” he said. “He’s a very confident kid, and [North Carolina] certainly wasn’t the right fit for him.
“Just watching him during practice, I can see he’s back to being himself. I’m happy to see he has accepted [sitting out] and he’s already talking about next season knowing that it’s going to be a great opportunity for him. He’s just chomping at the bit to be back playing at home, be back playing with a coach he really feels he can play for.”
His other two sons are in school in West Hollywood — Landon, a senior starting guard, and Lindsey, a freshman just beginning to assemble his game at the jayvee level.
During their parallel seasons, the father follows his sons’ games through the magic of video. He and his boys review the games together.
“We could be on the phone two or three hours,” Drew said.
No matter the clarity of the video, it can’t match the experience of actually being in the bleachers, sitting up high and away from the crowd like he prefers while his son brings the ball up the floor.
The separation is difficult for all parties.
“It’s like Christmas has come any time his dad comes to a game,” said Harvey Kitani, Landon’s coach at Fairfax High School.
“I know they want me there,” Drew said. “I was there three weeks ago, sitting in the stands. After the game, Landon said, ‘Dad, it sure was good seeing you sitting there.’ That was pretty moving. He has never said that before. The boys always say they like me coming to their games, but there was something about the way he said it that time and the look in his eyes. It’s tough when I’m not there, but we seem to make it work.”
This looms as a taxing season for all the Hawks, and certainly a season of many difficult decisions for their coach.
None of them will strain him, though, like the one he made to set up shop in one town and home in another, far, far away.
Next for Hawks
What: Season opener at Nets
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday
TV; radio: SPSO; 680, 93.7
What: Home opener vs. Wizards
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
TV; radio: SPSO; 680, 93.7
Sunday’s games
Celtics at Knicks, noon, TNT
Heat at Mavericks, 2:30 p.m., ABC
Bulls at Lakers, 5 p.m., ABC
Magic at Thunder, 8 p.m., ESPN
Clippers at Warriors, 10:30 p.m., ESPN
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