Pacers coach Rick Carlisle always had to take winding road to NBA success

OKLAHOMA CITY — The drive between the little upstate New York towns of Lisbon and Ogdensburg, by Rick Carlisle’s recollection, would take about eight minutes. In that part of the world, in the St. Lawrence valley just a few miles south of Canada, that’s like going next door.

That ride is probably a reason why Carlisle — the Indiana Pacers coach — is at the NBA Finals for a sixth time as a player, assistant coach and now a head coach.

The story behind the ride is this: Carlisle went to Lisbon Central, a school where everyone from kindergarten through 12th grade was housed in the same building — that’s quite common in that part of the world — and was the first 1,000-point scorer there. But if he wanted to watch NBA games, the family had to hop in the car and head to Ogdensburg.

The reason? There was no cable TV in Lisbon at that time, and the aerial antenna at the family home couldn’t pick up any NBA games.

“We had a thing, you turn the rotor in the direction and the antenna would move and it would either go towards Kingston, Ontario, or Watertown, New York,” Carlisle said. And back in those days we only got the CBS affiliate, and they didn’t have the NBA back in those early years. But we got Hockey Night in Canada.”

And yes, Carlisle played hockey in those days. He just liked basketball more. That’s why that eight-minute drive would get made, over and over, so he could see NBA games.

Fast forward to now, and Carlisle — who won a title with Boston as a player and with Dallas as a head coach — is four wins away from another championship.

“I can’t say enough about him and the respect I have for him,” said Mark Daigneault, whose Oklahoma City team will face off with Carlisle’s Pacers when the NBA Finals start Thursday night. “I think the whole is better than the sum of the parts. Almost consistently across every year he’s ever coached, the team is better than their sum. I think that’s a reflection of him.

“His teams play a clear identity, stay in character through all the ups and downs. That identity has changed over the years based on his teams, the league trends. But his teams are always in character. This year is certainly no exception.”

There are parallels between Daigneault and Carlisle. Both are incredibly smart. Both might lean toward a dry sense of humour. And Daigneault isn’t exactly a big-city guy, either. His hometown — Leominster, Massachusetts — has a population of about 43,000, which makes it an absolute metropolis compared to Lisbon and its population of about 4,300.

Big city, small town, no matter one’s roots, Daigneault said everyone feels the same way getting to the finals.

“Every single person that’s participating in this, whether it’s coaches, players, staff, there was a time in their life when this was just a dream,” Daigneault said. “This wasn’t a foregone conclusion for them. That’s every player that’s participating. There’s a time when they were in their driveway shooting 1-on-0 with a basket counting down the end of the game. That’s what makes it so special to participate in.”

Carlisle was close friends with Hal Cohen, who played at nearby Canton Central and was part of Jim Boeheim’s first class at Syracuse. Cohen was one of the first players from that part of the world to play basketball at a Division I level; he showed Carlisle the way. Carlisle went to prep school for a year before starting his college playing career at Maine, his lone Division I offer.

He wound up eventually transferring to Virginia and playing alongside Ralph Sampson. “Changed my life forever,” Carlisle said.

Carlisle got drafted in the third round in 1984 — “a round that no longer exists in the draft,” Carlisle says — and played in the league for parts of five seasons, with a brief stint with the CBA’s Albany Patroons thrown in there as well. He was with the Patroons not long after one of their more successful coaches had left; that coach’s name was Phil Jackson, who went on to win 11 NBA titles.

The road here, just like that road between Lisbon and Ogdensburg, was more than a bit winding.

“Had great coaching and a lot of things that were very fortunate,” Carlisle said. “I ended up getting drafted by Boston in a round that no longer exists in the draft. A lot of things fell my way. But I worked hard, too.”