Mike Smith: How are the Indiana Pacers up 2-1?
all right let’s welcome in our next guest you can catch him on Jazz Broadcast Nights it is uh our friend Mike Smith what’s going on Mike hi Ben how are you i’m doing excellent uh what’s your level of surprise at where we sit in the finals right now with the Pacers up 2-1 i think it’s so cool it’s just I don’t know i just I love basketball at the purest form i love obviously what the Thunder have built and what they’re doing and then the Pacers are just out of nowhere like a team that couldn’t get healthy early you know and couldn’t find their groove they find their groove late and then Rick Carlile just an offensive juggernaut and a fantastic coach and they kind of just keep beating you with all their numbers right like all their different ways to score seakam’s proving he’s not a one-hit wonder hallebertton’s proving I guess through game three games that he’s the real deal even though there was a little disappearance in game two but he really responded it’s so fun i I just I think the Thunder win it in six still that’s kind of I don’t know how many people would take that bet right now but I think they’ll respond and win Friday i think they’ll go home and win game five and then I think they beat him in game six but heck uh it’s been the Thunder defense all year and I would say Indiana has come alive defensively during the playoffs and good for them what I I’m with you i mean I I still probably lean towards the Thunder and I guess I’m curious why can we not fully buy into the Pacers even though they’ve done nothing short of prove over and over that they can win these big games i I don’t know um maybe because I want the Thunder maybe because I always root for the West you know maybe that’s at the heart of my stuff and maybe with Shay winning MVP I want it validated with a title and I look at the Thunder as kind of this jazz model in the future like draft well and young guys contribute and find yourself a superstar like they did through a trade and then go be good for six seven years so there’s part of me I guess rooting for that scenario or that narrative to play out but I have nothing but the best of thoughts and the and the most praise for a Rick Carile who you know barely makes the NBA he’s part of that great 86 Celtic team and just you know decides to go into coaching and becomes an assistant forever and then head coach and everywhere he goes he wins and everywhere he goes he just proves it and I mean his title team in Dallas is so different than this team and yet he’s doing it again so like to your point I I guess we should say we shouldn’t be surprised if Indiana were to go on and win a championship and to him to do that with two different teams he joins an elite group that’s for sure uh what do you know about Rick Carlo yeah what’s your Do you have any experience with him and his backstory again he’s a Boston guy he’s got Celtics roots uh as a player but what do you know of him because he is quietly even though it’s hard to say quiet now he’s quietly just been one of the best coaches very consistently for the last two decades so the Celtics used to do something that was kind of unique and like when they had their eye on a guy in let’s say my case me they would bring him out to be a counselor at like their youth camp the Celtics would do this and so after my sophomore year they invited me out to come be a counselor at their youth camp so it was like a paid position you come out and you’re working with the little kids but midday and after camp you played like you got to play pickupball with all of their guys and whoever was in town or whoever showed up so that was the case with me after my sophomore year at BYU and Rick Carlo was there so I kind of got to know him then as a player he’s older than I am a little bit he’s on the Ralph Samson Virginia team right that doesn’t allow BYU to get to a Final Four in Danny Ang’s senior year so I think he’s he’s of that team um but a journeyman for sure right and hung on for a few years he has really big feet by the way they called him nicknamed Flipper so now everyone who’s listening and you included Friday night when the next game is on the sideline and he’s wearing tennis shoes with the new coach’s attire right you’re going to look at his feet and you’re going to say “What the heck?” Cuz I think he’s like 64 or five but he has size 16 shoes so it that was his nickname back then was slipper that’s just what they called him so that was my one interaction with him as like fellow player other than you know maybe my team playing against his team later on but then as a broadcaster I’ve had the opportunity to not only be at some clinics that he taught where it was brilliant and borderline genius like the thoughts he came up with and the things he said always made me listen and I’ve been around NBA coaches for a long time Ben so like I’ve been in every press conference for 30 years right as a broadcaster and there’s many times I walk away from I said “There’s no genius there i never said that with him right?” Like he always had some thought that made me go “Oh okay.” Like I never thought of that he became a little uh distant and cynical a little bit like having to deal with the media like he’s prickly in our He’s very prickly yeah he’s that he’s become that and I always thought I had a good relationship with him and you know I used to tease him about looking like Jim Carrey and you know being a doppelganger for him when he wore his hair straight and longer and then one year he just showed up with his head shaved and I thought he was sick or had cancer or something i was like “What’s up with the hair?” And I thought we had that relationship and he just looked at me and he goes “What’s it to you?” I was like “Oh like I like I was just in genuinely curious is something are you okay?” And he goes “Yeah this is the way way I’m going to wear my hair.” But he’s like an afficionado pianist and you know he’s he’s an interesting guy like kind of a renaissance guy he loves the arts loves music uh I can’t remember the name of a great piano player that he’s like dear friends with you might be able to know but it’s a guy who just plays instrumental piano music and has sold millions of albums he’s Oh I can’t think of that guy’s name but um but I just He’s friends with Bruce Hornby Clinic he’s close that’s the one i’ve seen Bruce Hornsby in concert there you go thank you um but I remember one clinic and we’re all watching as broadcasters and he’s the coach of the Mavs and he’s doing the clinic and he says “Gosh in my day you know how stupid were we we we ran sets to get 15 foot jumpers we’re so stupid you know he was embracing the new NBA he was embracing the three ball and the analytics and he’s like “We literally ran six different plays to get a 15-oot jumper at the elbow.” And we did that was the NBA I walked into my Celtic teams had like really about five plays and the rest of the plays were post Larry post Kevin post Robert the other plays were turn Larry turn Kevin turn Robert in other words you turned off them like underneath them while they set a screen on the post you pop to the wing for a shot or throw it into them that was like our sets there was nothing intricate about it and I just remember him doing that clinic and saying you know it it’s so much more intricate now and there’s so much more going on with screen roll action and you know ball reversal and immediately into this and that and so anyway I think he’s I think he’s brilliant i think he’s he’s one of those that just gets it can evolve can adapt his style to his personnel and he proves he can wins where win wherever he goes uh I think what’s really interesting about these two teams that are in the the finals right now is I I don’t know if I would qualify either of them as copycat teams i I don’t know what the Thunder have done other than they’ve done a little bit of tanking they got Chad with the second overall pick um but they haven’t they they kind of designed their own system right they were willing to take on everyone’s bad contracts with draft picks to build out their roster and they were really patient with it the Pacers have kind of done what a lot of people curse the Atlanta Hawks for doing and the Chicago Bulls for doing which is just kind of staying in the middle being even keel hope to make a couple of good acquisitions and trades draft well here and there with you know I think the highest pick on their roster is the eighth overall pick and Ben Mathan and hope that eventually they break through but that’s it’s kind of a it’s not a great model i do wonder if they are going to I mean you even mentioned it a little bit with the Jazz that they they create copycats and teams try to mimic what they’re doing i think that’s a really hard thing to do and I think if you try and do what the Pacers do I do think you can get yourself in trouble and just be mediocre for a long time for sure it’s a really it’s a really well explained point which you tend to come up with quite often but uh I I like it and it’s one of the reasons I like them and I like Carile like that’s to my point of like he’s kind of adapted his own offensive style based on what personnel he has like like Miles Turner is an enigma to me right like he doesn’t score in the post but when he came into the league he’s such a natural shot blocker and you’d think he would develop this game around the hoop that would but he doesn’t do that and he looks like he’s crippled when he walks i don’t get that but then he’ll block a Chad Homegrren shot and I’m like where’d that come from and then of course he’s evolved into this three-point stretch shooting five and they just have a lot of pieces that work n Smith and you know the kid from Gonaga uh Nemhart and then Tyrese emerging as a star and Seakum proving he’s hard to hard to defend certainly in the open court mathan’s play last night was the key to the game for sure like just came in off the band sparked him immediately and continued and gave them the lift they needed and of course down the stretch they were just too good with the home crowd so I don’t know um I think you’re right if you tried to model that you’d come up short like it’s it’s it’s maybe not the way to go but it certainly worked for them and they’re doing it so give them credit the one thing I think you can copy and I hope more teams do because I’ve loved it is just the depth that both of these teams have and I just love I love balancing out your roster with maybe less quote unquote star power at the top and both of these teams still have two all two all-stars at the top of their roster but they really have paid attention to who their sixth seventh eighth even ninth guys are on their roster and you get a Ben Mathan or you get an M Hart like you’ve talked about then you you can’t forget about the T.J mcconnells of the world who are playing really important minutes i think it’s I think it’s a fun brand of basketball to watch when everybody comes in and plays their role agree and I love TJ McConnell uh he he would make my all Maul team right like you just you’d see him in the mall and you’d say there’s no way on earth that guy’s an NBA player and then he can’t shoot but he’s getting better but he’s perfected the things he’s good at the occasional steel right the surprise steel and beautiful passes and just that little uh arms extended wrist jump shot from five feet and in when you just disrespect him so much he’ll just turn and he looks like he’s going to pull a Steve Nash and keep his dribble alive under the hoop and then he’ll turn and face the hoop and make a five-footer and you’re just like okay where’d that come from but he’s a winning player and somebody saw that i like those kind of guys right i I if I could go do it over again own career 40 years back i kind of wish I hadn’t been drafted high that sounds weird but knowing what I know now I was prejudged for being a high pick and then not delivering to that level right expectations just kill you if I had been the kid who wasn’t drafted and showed up in somebody’s camp with the same skill set teams would have embraced it and said “Oh look what this guy can do how come no one drafted him this guy can shoot this guy can pass this guy can do this this guy can do this.” It would have been a completely different uh perception which becomes reality in the NBA as opposed to oh he’s not as good as Larry Bird well yeah duh like nobody is like nobody is he’s the best small forward of all time apologies to all the LeBron lovers but I take Larry over him any day of the week uh speaking of the draft and having a high pick and expectations that come along with it Jazz have the number five overall pick and while there’s some disappointment that it wasn’t the number one overall pick which fans had hoped after having the worst record in the NBA I still think there’s a lot of value there i think that’s an interesting dynamic though is fans are going to want a star traditionally you really don’t get a superstar at number five it’s happened but you traditionally don’t get that player there so how do you look at the Jazz getting the number five overall pick and the type of player coming in i just wish we had the 13th pick right 13’s been good to us uh 13’s been good to the league i’m thinking of Malone and Mitchell but like to the league it’s Kobe and Devin Booker and Right but there’s 13’s a good number i don’t know why uh and this week is Friday the 13th tomorrow so watch out Ben i know you’re a superstitious guy but uh big time big time i don’t know like like I don’t know who they should pick at five but I’ll leave that in the hands of the capable ones but yeah there is an expectation you’re going to get something great at five and there’s an expectation you’ll get better than Taylor Hendris at nine and Cody Williams at 10 but the Jazz do have kind of a rough history with some of their high picks right with Canner and Exom and you know they don’t always hit on those and it’s hard you and I both know that the draft is super hard it’s just it’s hard to get it right it’s hard to get those picks perfect sometimes you do sometimes you don’t but that expectation is there for sure and I hope they get somebody great what I think is you just won’t see what happened last year again i just I just don’t think we’ll see you know the Jazz playing in essence for a high pick i I I think they’re just going to roll with it and do all they can to be the best they can and make deals and make moves and start to win and embrace the youth they have and yeah let them play but you know play the best guys all the time and that’s that’s my thinking i’m not I’m not the one deciding but the draft’s always fun dog gone it wish they had the first pick or the second pick but it’s okay makes it makes it all interesting mike we appreciate you jumping on we’ll catch up with you again next week okay Ben see you thank you
Utah Jazz Analyst Mike Smith joined Ben to talk about the NBA Finals with the Indiana Pacers going up 2-1.
