Pacers coach Rick Carlisle wins 1,000th sport

Rick Carlisle has coached the Pistons, Pacers and Mavericks to a mixed 1,000 wins.

Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle lastly acquired an opportunity to have fun Thursday night time.

After his workforce set the franchise’s NBA-era report with 13 consecutive losses and he waited a full month to earn profession win No. 1,000. Carlisle turned the eleventh coach to succeed in the milestone when the Pacers received 114-112 at Charlotte. He’s the primary coach to hitch the group since Doc Rivers in November 2021.

All it took was for the Pacers to attain ultimate 5 factors within the ultimate minute towards the Hornets. For Carlisle, the prevailing emotion was reduction.

“I’m so happy for our players,” mentioned Carlisle, who hugged his assistants and gamers after the win. “The last month has been so challenging in so many ways. We have an amazing group of guys who continue to fight through thick and thin.”

As powerful because the final month has been, Thursday night time was excruciating for Carlisle.

Pacscal Siakam scored on a driving layup with 11.5 seconds left and T.J. McConnell stole the following inbounds move. But Ben Sheppard made simply 1 of two free throws, giving the Hornets an opportunity to tie or win. Charlotte’s Collin Sexton missed a jumper to tie the sport within the ultimate seconds.

“Pascal Siakam is one of the most amazing players I have been around and he put his stamp on things at the end,” Carlisle mentioned.

Carlisle’s injury-depleted Pacers misplaced in seemingly each attainable means — embarrassing blowouts, crushing fourth-quarter collapses, freely giving leads late. On Thursday, they lastly discovered a solution — as Carlisle’s groups typically do.

He’s succeeded as a coach as a result of he by no means lowered his requirements, all the time anticipating to compete for championships. That unrelenting method helped him forge a lifelong friendship with Larry Bird and persuaded three groups to rent him as a head coach. He received a championship with Dallas in 2011.

To those that know Carlisle greatest, it was no shock he ultimately joined the membership.

“Obviously, he’s a Hall of Fame coach and I learned a lot from him,” New York Knicks coach Mike Brown, one among Carlisle’s former assistants, mentioned final week. “I’m extremely appreciative of him giving me the opportunity back in the day. Rick’s been great to me and, you know, everybody needs help throughout the course of their journey and he was one guy who gave me a boost in my career.”

Carlisle has come a good distance from his small, hockey-crazed upstate New York hometown, the place he needed to make a brief drive to a close-by institution simply to observe NBA video games.

He performed at Virginia with Ralph Sampson. Then it was off to the Celtics, the place he received an NBA title in 1985-86 alongside Bird and the late Bill Walton on one of many biggest groups in league historical past.

It was as a coach that Carlisle actually thrived.

It took him 23 full seasons plus 38 video games with the Detroit Pistons, Mavericks and two stints in Indiana to gather No. 1,000. His report stands at 1,000-891.

Carlisle didn’t attain this level by counting wins. He made it as a result of he by no means wavered from his core ideas whereas adapting to right this moment’s fast-paced, 3-point heavy offenses.

In Detroit, his first stint in Indiana and even in Dallas, the place Carlisle spent 13 seasons, he referred to as performs from the sideline and publicly critiqued defensive lapses. Over time, he realized to belief gamers comparable to two-time All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton, who led the Pacers to the NBA Finals final season. It’s a transition Rivers, now Milwaukee’s coach, has watched intently.

“I think all of us have had to change,” Rivers mentioned final spring through the playoffs. “Where Rick has been always good, in my opinion, he just coaches the team he has, and I think he realized early on with Haliburton, this may be one of those teams where ‘I just have to wind them up and let them go.’ I think that’s why he’s a sensational coach.”

Carlisle has been round so lengthy that every of the opposite 10 coaches to win 1,000 video games was actively teaching within the NBA throughout his tenure.

“All of the guys on the list (of 1,000 wins) are guys that I know well,” Carlisle mentioned. “I coached against them for many years and have great respect for them.”

Few may have predicted he would wait this lengthy after Carlisle earned No. 993 in April with a 126-118 double-overtime victory at Cleveland to finish the common season. Or after he acquired No. 999 precisely a month in the past.

During the previous seven months, Carlisle presided over a few of the greatest moments in Pacers historical past — eliminating Milwaukee and the top-seeded Cavaliers, beating the New York Knicks 4-3 within the Eastern Conference Finals and rallying inside one win of the franchise’s first NBA title.

He additionally endured a few of Indiana’s bitterest moments throughout the identical stretch — the torn Achilles tendon suffered by Haliburton in a Game 7 loss at Oklahoma City, Myles Turner’s departure in free company and a flurry of accidents which have derailed Indiana’s season and left the Pacers with the league’s worst report at 7-31.

Carlisle’s star pupils embody Reggie Miller, Dirk Nowitzki, Luka Doncic, Jalen Brunson and Haliburton.

He was with Indiana for a sequence of stinging losses postseason ousters to the likes of Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal and the late Kobe Bryant in addition to the suspensions that decimated his workforce following the 2004 Malice on the Palace brawl at Detroit. Those punishments short-circuited what might thought can be Indiana’s run to an NBA title.

But Carlisle by no means stopped teaching his means, returned to Indiana following his departure from Dallas in 2021 and now, at age 66, is a part of one among teaching’s most prestigious fraternities.

“This has never been about me getting a milestone win,” Carlisle mentioned. “It’s about our organization and our franchise. As it has gotten tougher and tougher I have leaned into thinking more about gratitude for the things that we have. We have great people and we have terrific players.”

AP freelance author Cal Reed in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed to this report.