Yahoo Sports Rudy Tomjanovich: ‘You’re not going to win big with young players’
Rudy Tomjanovich, or Rudy T as many call him, has been involved in the game of basketball throughout his entire life. Along with Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and Bill Walton, Tomjanovich will be in Houston for the 2023 Final Four at an event called On Location, where they will engage with fans and take photos.
Tomjanovich was kind enough to sit down with HoopsHype to discuss his illustrious career, his Hall of Fame experience, X’s and O’s, and his thoughts on how the current league has moved away from traditional big men.
All of the Final Four teams are essentially Cinderella stories. Can you talk a bit about what you hope to bring to these new group of fans here this weekend?
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Rudy Tomjanovich: I am really excited about this Final Four. None of the No. 1 seeds are here, they did not survive, and we’ve got some other teams that are really inspiring. We’re going to be bringing a lot of new people to where the Final Four is here in Houston. I along with… I believe a team like [Hakeem] Olajuwon and other basketball players here are going to be available to meet with fans and take photos. Do a lot of things that you wouldn’t normally see in your college town. So I think it’s going to be a fantastic, sensational weekend and Monday for the fans.
Out of these four teams, who do you think will win and do you have anyone in particular you are rooting for?
RT: Yeah, I’m not rooting for anybody. I love them all. I have been touched deeply by some of the relationships with the coaches and their players, mainly Miami coach [Jim Larranaga], when he wound up kissing his point guard on the postgame interview, it just touched my heart that beautiful relationship they have. And then also, some of the similar stuff with Kansas State. Just that interpersonal relationship coach and player, which is not the easiest relationship sometimes. That was very inspiring, and I’ve been pumped up and happy for a lot of these new teams to have an opportunity to grab the gold.
Just recently guys like Pau Gasol, Dwyane Wade, Gregg Popovich, and others were named finalists for the Hall of Fame. What was yours like back in 2020?
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RT: [For] the Hall of Fame, honor is something that is so big. It’s almost hard to get your head wrapped around it. I was nominated several years and went through the process and [it was] very tough waiting for that call. I got two of them that were like. “We’re sorry, you’re not in” and then on the third one they did. So I went through a couple years with a lot of people talking about why isn’t this happening or whatever. And it made me uncomfortable because with honors like that, I don’t expect anything. You don’t campaign for them and all that, but every year around that time, I had to hear all the things, and I had no answers. When I finally got it, the relief, the joy was just amazing. To go through that process, it was absolutely fantastic. Being there, we did it in Connecticut, and not in Springfield, but it was still fantastic. Absolutely life inspiring.
I’m happy for those guys that had a great career, you know, [Gregg] Popovich at the top of all coaches. His point guard Tony Parker, and everybody is very curious how is this French point guard going to do in the NBA and he showed what he could do. [Dirk] Nowitzki, another one, you know, tremendous long-term career, just awesome player. Dwyane Wade, he was fantastic. Then he goes and gets his buddies to come down and get it done. Really, really great stuff.
How did that feeling compare to winning your first title in Houston?
RT: Well, those are all wonderful things, you know. Those are the things that you sort of, as a fan sort of see, the happy times, but there are so many down times when you’re feeling we’ll never win a game again, how can I keep my job, all these different things. Then to get something so beautiful like that, it’s so positive that it’s almost overwhelming.
A lot of coaches like yourself thrived as being a ‘players coach’. Especially in the league today, where it is essentially a players’ league. In terms of teams that look for coaches that are more analytics-friendly rather than players, how do you feel about that?
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RT: Well, I’m an analytics guy. In fact, what I did for the Lakers the last 14 years that I was in the league, my son and I created a database [that] we came out with the analytics and things like that, that were a lot of fun. Do I think analytics is the only way to do it? Absolutely not. But I like to have all these different factors to consider, not only what I can see, but I also go on my emotions too. But you gotta watch emotions too because you could make a mistake. Analytics are an important part of basketball and a lot of guys don’t like them but I want all the information I can get.
Going off what you said about analytics, it’s important for teams to pinpoint players that do things on the floor that go beyond the box score, sort of like glue guys. Analytically speaking, what sort of things do you look at when you evaluate a player?
RT: Here are some analytics that can help: what is somebody’s plus or minus when they’re playing. How does the score change when they’re in the game. To me, you’d never hear people talking about that. That would be something you’d better not be directly responsible for. Because over a good amount of time, it shows that when you’re in the game, you’re usually picking up points instead of losing points… that’s a valuable stat that you want in your favor.
True shooting percentage or effective shooting percentage is important. The old way was 45 percent shooter, but they’re not factoring in the three-pointers. If he did that, he’d be in the high 50s. So you got to look through those things, and try to put those things together. And I think a lot of teams that do more and more of that. But yeah, I’m a believer.
Teams now rather stock their rosters with young inexperienced players than having veterans around. Then you look at the recent events with Ja Morant and the gun incident or even the Houston Rockets with a lot of talk about the lack of accountability with the team. What are your thoughts on all that?
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RT: Well, first of all, you’re not gonna win big with young players. It’s just ain’t gonna happen. They haven’t grown up enough, and they haven’t been through all the situations you have to go through like how to hold leads, how to take care of clock situations… all those things. So you have to have those veterans that are coaches on the floor, too. And, it can’t just be the coach saying it, the players sorta hearing it, it’s got to be a way of life. And you get that when other players have had success, and they say, “Hey, this is how we do it here. This is Rockets basketball. This is how we play that pick-and-roll.” It helps the young guys. But it also reinforces the system that the coaches are trying to put in.
The league has changed a lot as well in terms of going heavy on small ball and shooting the three. How do you like that?
RT: I think it’s good, even when I was in coaching, studying the game, and looking for solutions. I think the person who could find a way to play the middle pick-and-roll without switching and not getting hurt by dunks and three-pointers, whoever could do that really has a chance to, and there have been some teams who have had some success in that. But I think that’s the biggest breakthrough. Several years ago, Draymond Green changed the way people play pick-and-rolls because he’s so good at switching and everybody wanted to do that but they weren’t Draymond Green. But you try to do the best you can. If people can find a way to do it by keeping the big man not switched on to the small guy and not getting a play for threes, you’re gonna see somebody have some success in the league.
Having Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon playing together on the floor and dominating in the paint back in the day, what is it like comparing your time as a coach and what it is today?
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RT: It’s a different defensive league than it used to be with the illegal defense of rules… I’m not going to say easily run post-ups, but running an efficient post-up game, it’s not easy to do. You have to work on it all the time, because people know where the ball is going. And they’re going to try to do everything they can to not let you just throw it in there. But with the way the rules are now, you could actually put two or three guys on the post-up guy, as long as they’re one arms-length away, you could do that. Of course, you’d be leaving other people open, but I could see if your team had it going that’s the way people would have played him. So I think part of the reason that it’s harder to post up now and teaching the inside game is tough now. A lot of the coaches now were point guards and they know the guard game but they don’t know the big man game and all the different things because we have to work at it with Hakeem [Olajuwon], but we did have the rules on our side. The way it is now, they could be swarming that guy even before he catches the ball, so I’m so glad the rules weren’t like that back then.
You were a consultant with the Minnesota Timberwolves not too long ago, so I got to ask... With their acquisition of Rudy Gobert, and now having both Karl-Anthony Towns there with Gobert, do you feel like they can still thrive together in today’s modern NBA?
RT: It’s a very good question. I do not have the answer to that one. No one does. Let me say this… Karl Anthony Towns is one of the most skilled players in the league. Amazing three-point shooter. I mean it’s effortless for him and he’s a good post-up guy who can drive. So he’s as versatile a big man as you can have. And [Rudy] Gobert is the best defensive center in this era of basketball. He definitely improved the defense of the team, and now offensively is completely different. If you’ve got two big guys in there, Towns would stay on the outside and he could make those threes, but he also has to guard the smaller guy. And to me, it’s the defensive side that you have to find a way to make it work. Offensively, they have enough skills that they could make it work but defensively I don’t know. You got to move your feet pretty fast to play those smaller guys when you’re over seven foot.
You know what I think you will see more of is athletic players posting when a lot of these centers like Brook Lopez who can shoot the three like that. They’ll use the center as the outside passer and have a wing or even a guard post-up trying to use his quickness and all that to score from the inside. I think you’ll see more of that. What was good to see is in the college game, you do see the post-ups. What I do miss about the game is you rarely see five-man plays where five guys are moving in an offense. Usually now, it’s isolation. I believe in all those things, but I’d like to see the mix of some of those five-man basketball plays come back into the pro game.