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Krieger: Mavericks coach can thank Bickerstaff

Published June 13, 2006 at midnight

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MIAMI - The remarkable odyssey that has 41-year-old Avery Johnson two games from an NBA championship in his first full season as coach of the Dallas Mavericks was almost over before it began.

The coaching career does not happen without the dogged 16-year playing career by an undrafted free agent who played at three different colleges. And the playing career doesn't happen without a call 18 years ago from Bernie Bickerstaff, now coach and general manager of the Charlotte Bobcats, then coach of the Seattle Sonics.

"Bernie pretty much got this whole NBA deal started for me," Johnson said last week. "Had I not gotten invited to their camp, I was at Tulane University, I was going to get my master's in sports psychology. Fortunately, I had to make a detour from those plans."

Johnson was not on a lot of NBA radar screens after playing college ball at New Mexico Junior College, Cameron University in Oklahoma and Southern University in Baton Rouge, near his hometown of New Orleans. He was small - 5-foot-11 - and not much of a scorer. He hooked on with the Palm Beach Stingrays of the United States Basketball League, but it was barely a living and Johnson was preparing for another future when Bickerstaff called in August 1988.

"I remember I liked the way he handled the basketball and his basketball IQ," Bickerstaff said. "And he was one of the leading assist guys in college, coming out of Southern."

In fact, Johnson's assist numbers at Southern still stand as NCAA Division I records for assists per game in a season (13.3) and assists per game in a career (12.0).

"They had problems with (Nuggets point guard) Michael Adams in the 1988 playoffs and they were looking for a small guard," Johnson recalled. The Nuggets had knocked the Sonics out of the playoffs in the first round that spring.

"I learned a lot from Bernie that year. He had a young team. I really watched how he dealt with young players like myself and Derrick McKey and (Olden) Polynice and Sedale (Threatt) and Nate McMillan. John Lucas was the old guy on the team back then.

"I learned a lot from Bernie about getting ready to play every night in the NBA. I watched him. He was a young coach, maybe about my age at that time."

Bickerstaff left Seattle in the summer of 1990 to become general manager of the Nuggets. One of his first moves was to trade a future second-round draft choice to his old team for Johnson. But the Nuggets' new coach, Paul Westhead, was more interested in speed than playmaking.

"Probably something I'll live with the rest of my life is we had to release him," Bickerstaff recalled. "Paul just was not going to play him. So we had to release him on Christmas Eve."

In those days, the deadline for player contracts to become guaranteed for the entire season fell during the holidays.

"After that, they changed that rule to January," Bickerstaff said. "Everybody got into it at the competition committee meetings, saying, 'At least let the holidays pass.' That was probably the most distasteful thing I've ever had to do in my life because of the relationship I had with Avery."

Tellingly, the move had no effect on their relationship. Bickerstaff still marvels at how Johnson took the news.

"It's just the mental toughness this guy has," he said. "He handles everything very professionally."

Although he would be waived repeatedly in the years that followed, Johnson would be signed repeatedly as well. The high point of his playing career came in 1999, when he earned the starting point guard job in San Antonio and hit the shot that clinched the Spurs' first championship.

When Bickerstaff was named coach and GM of the expansion Bobcats in October 2003, he set about building a staff. Johnson was at Golden State, beginning what would be his last season as a player.

"He was the guy I tried to get to come in here as my assistant the first year," Bickerstaff said. "In fact, I went to visit him in Houston or San Antonio, I can't remember which. I went down and talked to him and he told me he thought he had a shot of going to Dallas. I said, 'Hey, you can't find a better place to go. That's a talented team.' "

Johnson joined Don Nelson's Mavericks staff the following year. Before the season was over, Nelson stepped down and Johnson took over. Now, less than two years later, his team goes into Game 3 of the NBA Finals leading Miami two games to none.

"He's been a tremendous resource over the years," Johnson said of Bickerstaff, "and we're still really close. He came quite a bit during our Memphis series and he left me a couple of messages. So we try to keep in contact as much as possible."

McMillan, a second-round draft choice of Bickerstaff in Seattle, also became a head coach at a young age. The Charlotte GM has forged his reputation as a judge of athletic talent, but his eye for basketball intelligence turned out to be pretty good, too.