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He’s been part of our lives for decades and his passion for Houston sports runs deep.    Originally logging stats at the age of 15 at the Astrodome during Oilers and Astros games, Kevin Eschenfelder’s love for the “home team” has never wavered.   

On the majority of nights, he’s the welcoming voice that greets and navigates Pre & Post Game shows around contests on Space City Home Network.      The native Houstonian joins us today exclusively at The Crawfish Boxes to talk Astros as we get ready for the home stretch.    

Q: Would it surprise if only 83 or 84 victories won the A.L. West outright this year?

A: Honestly, I do think that would surprise me.   I get where everyone is in the standings right now, but I have a feeling that somebody is going to take off.    Between the Astros and Mariners and Rangers, somebody is going to get hot down the stretch and whoever does, is going to win this division.    I don’t think everyone is going to stay as they are right now.     One of those teams is going to have a really good September, we’ll just wait to see who it is.

Q:  Speaking of September, who is going to be that third bat to generate offense consistently for the Astros behind Yordan & Pena?   

A: Isaac Parades is so good.    I don’t think anybody realized how good he was when they traded for him.    He’s such a good hitter.     In order to lengthen that lineup, there are four choices.    You have to get Christian Walker and Jose Altuve going and then the X-factors are Taylor Trammell and Cam Smith.     Walker had the 11-game hitting streak, we all know what Altuve can do with multi-hit games when the lights are the brightest. Those are the guys to watch.

Q: How special will this weekend be with Alan Ashby and the late Phil Garner going into the Astros Hall of Fame?    

A: It’s wonderful that we had two guys who contributed in so many different ways, not just to the Astros organization but to our city.     Ash did it as a very good player and switch-hitting catcher and then was a broadcaster and coach.    He did a little bit of everything and has always been visible in the community.   

With Phil Garner, everyone loved him.    When he came over from the Pirates in the 80’s, he locked down that second base position and helped those teams learn how to win.     Then of course in 2005 as Manager, he was so special.    Phil was also one of the great storytellers.    I was always so thankful to be in his presence, and I knew many of his stories like the back of my hand, but I enjoyed hearing them and having them told to the fans.

Q: When was the last time you were with Phil?

A: We did a symposium together at Fan Fest and he told his stories which everyone loved.    I’m so happy that Carol and the kids on Saturday will be there to receive that honor and recognition. He was special.

Q: I’m a radio guy at heart and like so many, I marvel at your versatility.    How different is the preparation when you’re calling a game from the booth, as opposed what you do in the Space City studios?

A: There’s not a lot of comparison.     The Pre and Post Game is 22 minutes of content, and you know what you need to know for those particular programs.    However, when you’re doing a live game, you never know what you’ll need to know (laughs).    You have to know a little bit of everything, so I’d say that’s the biggest difference.     I just put my nose into it, start studying, find a few storylines on players and then identify the right place to use it.   That’s the real challenge.    The preparation is much greater.

For the first time in a long time, according to Donna Ditota of Syracuse.com, the Orarge are slated to play a non-conference game in the month of February. Syracuse will take on Rutgers at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on February 6, 2027.

The last time Syracuse played a team that was not in either the Big East or ACC during the month of February came on February 23, 2003, according to our very own Sam Federman, when the Orange defeated Michigan State, 76-75.

Rutgers is now officially two years removed from losing Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey to the NBA. The Scarlet Knights struggled last season, finishing 14-20 overall while winning a mere six conference games.

This will officially be the third game finalized for next season that will take place inside an NBA arena. Syracuse previously announced that it will face Indiana at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, home of the Indiana Pacers, on November 9, 2026, before taking on Providence at TD Garden, home of the Boston Celtics, on December 21, 2026.

The matchup with Rutgers will also mark Syracuse’s return to New York City after a one-year absence. The Orange last played in the city two years ago, when they fell to Maryland in the Gotham Classic at Barclays Center. Given Syracuse’s long history of playing high-level games in New York City, the return will be sure to generate some excitement

There have also been rumors that the Orange could make another trip to NYC next season to take on St. John’s at Madison Square Garden. However, that matchup has not been confirmed as of yet.

One thing, however, is becoming more and more clear. Coach McNamara wants to bring Syracuse basketball back to relevance and re-engage the fan base that supported him during his time with the program, including when he helped lead the school to a National Championship.

He wants Syracuse playing in NBA arenas. He wants the Orange competing against Power Four programs in New York City. And, perhaps most importantly, he wants this team to turn the page on last season and completely flip the script.

But for now, another big game on the slate for the Orange. What are your takeaways on Syracuse taking on Rutgers in Brooklyn next season? Will you be attending?

Welcome to Inside the Suns, your weekly deep-down analysis of the current Phoenix Suns team. Each week, the Fantable — a round table of Bright Siders — give their takes on the Suns’ latest issues and news.

Fantable Questions of the Week

Q1: Mat Ishbia’s hiring of Brian Gregory as GM was initially considered questionable and attributed mostly to Gregory’s MSU ties. What are your thoughts on Gregory’s performance so far?

zenzino: I didn’t know much about Brian Gregory, but I had a good feeling about him, mostly because of the reports that he was a big part of drafting Dunn and Igodaro. I never paid much attention to the MSU ties. Mine was always a wait-and-see attitude. Mat’s a smart guy; he knew there would be Michigan talk, so he needed to make doubly sure BG was the right hire. BG got hired because of the year he spent with the Suns before that, not ‘mostly due to Gregory’s MSU ties’. I’m sure the fact that Ishbia knew him previously got his foot in the door, but performance opens that door.

I’ve said it in the past, BG’s ability to unfuck the Suns in record time is nothing short of miraculous. Not only was he a huge part of the culture and mindset shift in the FO, but he also was big in bringing in Ott as head coach.

Even if you ignore how well the KD trade worked out when the Suns’ hands were basically tied by KD only wanting to go to Houston and the super-exciting draft we had last year. Just look at this offseason alone. We thought we were essentially sitting this draft out with a late 2nd-rounder, and BG gets the Suns a first-round pick (someone who was projected as a mid-first-rounder and the guy they wanted) for next to nothing.

I was against the Suns waiving and stretching Beal’s contract. I thought they should just eat it for two years and be done. I was wrong. Because of the college-type family atmosphere and culture this team established, BG was able to extend 4 key players on team-friendly contracts that come close to covering the $20M in dead cap hit. That is hella impressive.

I’m all-in on BG. He should have been executive of the year last season, and he damn-sure should be this season.

Ashton: While I was writing this up, CBS Sports dropped an article of the Fifteen Worst Contracts and ranked them. Eagle-eyed Suns fans jumped on this, but essentially the Suns have two worst contracts ranked. Jalen Green (13) and Booker (6). Granted, there is no official metric for these rankings and is really only an opinion piece, but that is not good. Add in Beal’s dead money on the Suns balance sheet, then one really has to ask themselves if the Suns are doing a good job in the FO?

Yes, there will always be hits and misses, and that comes with the business. I think BG has drafted well and was able to extend existing talent at cheaper costs.

But as far as a Key Performance Indicator? I think it is trending down for Brian Gregory. The front office deserves to be questioned.

Rod: I was skeptical at first, but Gregory has already far surpassed my initial expectations. Like many, I cringed a bit when he kept repeating “aligned” over and over when he first took over the job, but now I can see what he was trying to get across back then.

He’s played a big role in forming not only a solid team under trying circumstances, but he’s put together a group of players that truly like playing together and want to be here. Getting three players back on very friendly deals as well as signing another to a very favorable extension is largely a result of this. Don’t for a second believe that they all would have signed those deals if they didn’t really want to stay in Phoenix.

He’s drafted well and manipulated the few picks he’s had to move up in the draft to get players he wanted. I wish we’d had him as GM earlier before the Suns had traded away control of all their own first-rounders to acquire Durant and Beal. I think we would likely be in a much better place right now if he’d been the one whispering in Ishbia’s ear instead of James Jones back then.

Q2: It has been said that the Suns are in a “half-hearted rebuild” since moving on from the failed “Big 3” (Booker, Beal & Durant) experiment, mostly because of their refusal to also trade Devin Booker. What are your thoughts on trading Book and its possible effect on the Suns’ rebuild?

zenzino: This one makes my head hurt. I’m sooooo tired of the ‘trade Book for picks’ trope. After the Nash era, it took the Suns 12+ years just to make it back to the playoffs. And they had lottery picks. The Jazz started a full rebuild when they had their own picks as well as a haul from the Timberwolves. Finally, 5-years later, they might not be tanking this season. It took the Thunder 7 years for their full rebuild. Same for the Spurs. Full rebuilds take time… and luck. And that’s if you have your own lottery picks.

Let’s look at the two big trades this summer:

Jaylen Brown – Celtics get Paul George, 2028 1st & 2nd, 2030 2nd, 2031 1st. Basically an expiring contract for a player who barely plays, a 1st round in two years and another in 4 years. All going to be late rounds because of Jaylen Brown, Tyrese Maxey, and VJ Edgecomb. An utterly useless haul if a team was rebuilding now. If the Suns got this kind of return, they’d be on the 10-12 year plan for getting back to the playoffs (and be more of a laughing stock than the Celtics currently are).

Giannis – The Bucks did a little better. Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakučionis, 2026 13th pick (Nate Ament), 2030 1st swap (useless), 2031 1st, 2033 1st, 2033 2nd. They got some young talent, but none of them come close to filling Booker’s shoes. They had their own #5 pick this draft so that helped. Still, except the 13th pick, all the others are 5-7 years down the road. Not much help to the Bucks now.

So, if two Finals MVPs are mostly garnering picks far into the future, trading Book wouldn’t help the Suns much in the next 4-6 years.

Also, the Suns would only trade Book to someplace he wants to go. Which would limit their return. I think he’s earned that. Whether you agree or not says more about you than anything else.

As much as it was refreshing to watch the never-quit, gritty Suns team play last season, the losing record in the second half made it less fun. I don’t want to watch them play hard and lose for at least the next 5-7 seasons.

So, no. I don’t agree that this is a ‘half-hearted rebuild’. It is a smart rebuild given the lack of draft picks and the dead cap hit. The Suns are going to put out a competitive team that’s fun to watch for the next 4 years and in 2030 we might see some bigger changes.

It’s not a coincidence that Brooks was eligible for a 4-year extension and the Suns opted for a 3-year. If Bridges is extended, I expect the same. I don’t think the Suns will sign any veterans past 2030.

And, for all the Book trade proponents out there, please stop. Not. Gonna. Happen. Ishbia and BG have made it crystal clear that they are ride or die with Devin Booker. Deal with it. Let it go. The only way Book gets traded is if he wants out. And I don’t see that happening.

Ashton: And that is the big question. Do you want to do a full-on rebuild or a soft rebuild with little assets? This question ties nicely with Q1 on Booker’s contract and if BG can handle a full-on rebuild.

The first obvious question is what do the Suns get in return for Booker? Very few teams want to take on a max contract or unable unless they really think it will push them over the edge into the Finals. The formula is usually “we will trade you a bad contract for your bad contract for salary matching purposes”. The second formula is “we will take Booker’s contract off your hands for a few bits and pieces that another third-party team will help us with, mainly because we get picks”. No, keep in mind that it is probably not picks going to the Suns but to another team that wants to hoard them.

Quite honestly, I do not think the Suns would get anything of appropriate value for Booker. Add that Suns fans would probably be enraged that they are now buying tickets to the Suns vs. Kings game to witness the race to the bottom in the West, you know, where the Suns can’t tank.

I have to remind myself sometimes that the Suns did make the playoffs last season. I find that much more palatable this season than watching the inverse. I have no desire to watch a team without Booker, and neither should you. I was not a fan of the Steve Nash trade to the Lakers, though it worked out well for the Suns, because I found it disrespectful for a player that gave legions of Suns fans so many good memories. I would say the same about trading Book, a true Valley Son.

Rod: First off, trading Book would only bottom out the Suns, make the draft picks they’ve already traded away more valuable, and likely turn Phoenix into a franchise that many – if not most – NBA players would dread being traded to or sign with rather than one whose players re-sign at a discount to stay.

Yes, the Suns would get some draft picks back for Book, but any of them would likely turn out to be lottery picks, and using only late first-rounders to do a full rebuild would be more of a strategy based on hope/luck than anything else.

Right now, the Suns have managed to put together a tough, competitive roster that was a very entertaining team to watch last season. Entertaining was not a word that could be honestly used to describe the Suns in the two seasons previous to the last one…and they weren’t very good either despite all of the top-end talent they had.

Is this team a championship contender? No. They are an extreme long shot for that and aren’t likely to much more than that for a while, but I don’t see any way that trading Book would accelerate their ascension to that level any faster than the course they’re currently on.

Q3: What do you believe is the key (or keys) for the 2026-27 Suns to surpass their 45 win total from last season?

zenzino: Health. Numero uno. Had Brooks and MW not gotten injured, the Suns had a legit shot at the 5th or 6th seed.

I think it would be foolish not to assume that MW is going to miss 15-20 games. Maybe with Man Man improving, it will lighten his load. Hopefully, the Suns choose which games he misses rather than injuries deciding. Then he’d be available at the end of the season.

Between Green, MW, Brooks, and GA (Book can always be counted on to miss 10-15, nbd), there were a lot of missed games. However, I am counting on Jalen Green to play almost (if not all) 82, and Brooks’ injury was an accident that is highly unlikely to happen again.

Defense is two on my list. I don’t see them letting up. It’s a core part of Ott’s philosophy. After a year together, I expect them to be even better. Especially with the development of Sheer and Man Man.

Third, is Green and Bridges working out how they fit within this offense. How to use Book’s gravity and also how to take pressure off of Book. While I expect the defense to be good from the start, I think the offense might take a little time to gel.

The teams behind the Suns (except the Kings) got better and the teams ahead of them didn’t fall off to the point where they would be easy pickings.

Aside from the top 4 teams, there is definitely parity among the rest. Even if the Suns were able to improve by a few games and get the 5th or 6th seed, I’d consider that a success.

Ashton: Do not trade Book!

For one, I am in the camp that the Suns will not surpass their season record from last season. But, if they did, it starts with the obvious: injuries. Stay healthy and beat the teams that you are supposed to beat. For that, the bench minutes have to climb significantly for starting players’ rest. If it doesn’t, then the starters are going to try and be heroes with more minutes in close games and increased risk of injury.

That is really my big two. No injuries and player development. Sure, we can walk down the road of increased 3pt and FT shooting percentages or even better to elite defense to keep games close. But that would be my two areas of focus. Oh, maybe three, just keep the game entertaining!

Rod: There are a lot of things worth mentioning here, but I’m going to start off by pointing to Jordan Ott. I didn’t criticize him much last season for essentially playing small-ball most of the time because I saw it as him sticking with the players he trusted the most rather than him just wanting to play small. After Maluach and Fleming spent time getting their feet wet in the G League and showing good progress and the additions of Bridges and Peat, he needs to start playing bigger, more physical lineups this year. They need to work at getting to the basket more and not rely so much on threes because – as we all saw last season – those threes just aren’t going to fall every night, and the Suns’ offense needs to be more multi-dimensional.

Without an overpowering offense (which the Suns won’t have), defense is going to be extremely important this year. Everyone has to play D and play hard all game long. With the depth they have, they should be able to utilize that to limit minutes in such a way to keep players fairly fresh during games, and they shouldn’t be afraid to play more than 9-10 player rotations at times to do so.

Injuries will also be a key, but those are largely due to bad luck and something that can’t really be controlled. But, keeping everyone’s minutes down through utilizing the team’s depth could also help avoid some of those.

And one key, specifically aimed at Book but a good thing for all, is to play efficiently. The Suns need to be efficient on offense and play using the old sniper’s motto, “One Shot, one kill.” It was great to see the Suns rank 5th in offensive rebounding last season, but this year I would rather them just simply not have as many offensive rebounds to go after. Get down the court, put the ball in the hole, and get back on defense. I want the Suns to be one of the leaders in defensive rebounds this year.

As always, many thanks to our Fantable members for all their extra effort this week!

Suns Trivia/History

On August 13, 2020, the Suns defeated the Dallas Mavericks 128-102 to finish their perfect 8-0 run in the Orlando Bubble. No other team did this. This was the first time NBA regular season games were played during August and will likely be the last, as the 2019-20 season was delayed for several months during mid-season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless such an event happens again, the Suns will go down in NBA history as the only team to ever go undefeated during the month of August.

On August 14, 2008, the Suns signed Lou Amundson as a free agent. While Amundson rarely made a big impact on the scoreboard, his enthusiasm and high-energy style of play quickly made him a fan favorite off the bench. In the 2009/10 season, he was part of the near-legendary “Bench Mob” made up of Lou, Goran Dragic, Jared Dudley, Channing Frye and Leandro Barbosa, who weren’t just good enough to hold a lead but at times could blow games open. Then coach Alvin Gentry utilized the bench mob like a hockey coach, structuring the minutes so that the entire second unit would be on the floor together to start the second and fourth quarters in every game. Lou is also remembered as the prankster who once filled Shaquille O’Neal’s ride up to the brim with popcorn.

On August 16, 1987, former Sun Nick Vanos and his fiancée, Carolyn Cohen, tragically died when their plane crashed after takeoff from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan en route to Phoenix. Vanos and Cohen were among the 154 passengers and crew that died in the crash. Vanos was 24 and had just finished his second season in the NBA after being selected by Phoenix in the second round of the draft with the 32nd pick. Vanos played college ball at Santa Clara University, the same college where Steve Nash would play almost ten years later.

On August 18, 2005, the Suns signed Pat Burke as a free agent. Burke is still the only Irish-born player to make an NBA roster. He rarely made an impact on the court but became a fan favorite during his two years with Phoenix… and not just because of his play.

Pat Burke’s Hair Restoration Tonic

On August 19, 2005, seven weeks after the trade had been agreed upon, the Phoenix Suns completed a sign-and-trade with Joe Johnson, sending him to the Atlanta Hawks. Phoenix acquired Boris Diaw and two lottery-protected first-round picks in 2006 and 2008.

The 2006 draft pick acquired from Atlanta in this trade was originally owned by the Lakers, traded to Boston, and then traded to Atlanta. The Suns then traded this pick – which eventually was used to select Rajon Rondo — back to Boston for a 2007 1st round draft pick (which originally belonged to Cleveland) and cash considerations. That 2007 draft pick was used to select Rudy Fernandez, whose draft rights were then traded along with former Suns GM James Jones to Portland for… cash considerations. The 2008 1st round pick (15th) was eventually used by Phoenix to select Robin Lopez.

Important Future Dates

Sept. 28 – Media Day
Sept. 29 – Training Camp opens
Oct. 5 – Suns @ Pistons (preseason) 4:00 PM
Oct. 7 – Suns @ Bulls (preseason) 5:00 PM
Oct. 10 – Suns vs. Spurs (preseason) 7:00 PM
Oct. 14 – Suns @ Spurs (preseason) 5:00 PM
Oct. 16 – Suns vs. Jazz (preseason) 7:00 PM
Oct. 20 – 2026-27 NBA Season Begins
Dec. 15 – Most players signed to new contracts can be traded
Jan. 5 – 10-day contracts may now be signed
Jan. 10 – All NBA contracts are guaranteed for the remainder of the season
Jan. 15 – All players signed to new contracts can be traded
Feb. 11 – Trade Deadline
Feb. 19-21 – NBA All-Star weekend 2027

The four players the Bucks acquired from the Miami Heat in the Giannis trade—Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware, and Kasparas Jakucionis—may already be a step ahead in knowing Taylor Jenkins’ offence when training camp hits.

Allow me to explain.

Noah’s mark

Before the 2024-25 season, a relatively unknown assistant named Noah LaRoche was hired by Jenkins as the Memphis Grizzlies’ Head of Player Development. The Grizzlies had finished dead last in offensive efficiency the season prior (granted, there were also a heap of injuries to key players that impacted that). Injuries aside, though, Memphis clearly wanted to try something new. LaRoche—even though he was not some high-ranking assistant at the time—was entrusted with installing an offence that would deliver that change.

And boy, did he think outside the box.

You see, the offence that LaRoche installed wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill playbook that he nicked from another system. No, this offence not only stood out from the rest of the NBA but also from the greater basketball world because, well, it wasn’t even really an “offence” in the traditional sense; it was more of a system that championed speed, spacing, driving, and basketball IQ. There were no play-calls. To use a classic Budenholzer-ism, it was basically “structured randomness” that also happened to deprioritise screens—both on and off-ball.

To see what I mean, watch this video:

Fascinating, right? So why the zag? It’s a combination of things. Firstly, there’s the most basic idea of just catching teams off guard by doing something different than what they’ve seen for years and years. But mostly, this is a personnel-based thing: if majority of a team’s key players have below-average shooting ability but above-average IQ, driving ability, craft, and ball skills, then an offence that prioritises the latter will probably be better suited to that team.

The 2024 Grizzlies fitted this mould. Sure, they had Desmond Bane, who is a great shooter, but overall, this was not some team of snipers. What they had in spades was players with these aforementioned traits, such as Ja Morant, Brandon Clarke, Jaren Jackson Jr., Jake LaRavia, Jaylen Wells, and Marcus Smart. Well, it worked a treat. Memphis finished the next season with the sixth-best offence in the NBA.

Basketball groupthink

It’s fascinating to take a step back and think more conceptually about basketball every once in a while. Why bring four bodies into an action if you can get to the rim one-on-one? Is a pick-and-roll really the only way to draw two to the ball and generate an open shot, or could you achieve the same thing from a drive and kick? As basketball consumers, we sometimes get so used to viewing and understanding basketball through a certain lens that we forget to think outside the box.

From a mental standpoint, this is a system that caters to heady, instinctual players who can recognise patterns and cues. Someone driving baseline means another must cut from the 45; someone cutting one pass away means the ballhandler might have an opportunity to drive right behind them; someone attacking to the middle means the big must empty and get to the opposite short corner. When you really boil it down, it’s a system with a few basic principles:

• Play fast
• Always keep the court spread
• Don’t hold onto the ball; make quick decisions and commit to them
• Don’t fall asleep off the ball; you will get caught out
• Cut with the view that you may not get the ball, but it could create an opportunity for a teammate
• Aim for layups and three pointers on most possessions

Cool, but what’s this got to do with Miami?

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how the Miami Heat came to implement this offence. Obviously, Taylor Jenkins was dismissed by the Grizzlies with nine games remaining in the 2024-25 season (even though the team made the playoffs!)—Noah LaRoche was a casualty alongside him. This also happened coincide with the Heat getting utterly destroyed by the Cavaliers in the 2024-25 playoffs, losing in a sweep by a combined margin of 122 points.

“I hope that players became better from it, but damn, it was humbling,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the worst loss in his 17 seasons. “This series was humbling.”

“Really no excuses for it,” Tyler Herro said. “It’s embarrassing.”

Miami came out of that series knowing their offence had gone completely stale and that something had to change, so they hired—you guessed it—Noah LaRoche and had him implement that same read-and-react offence. Once again, it got results. BasketNews’ Vukasin Nedeljkovic did a great breakdown of how the their offence shifted last season:

Miami ran approximately 12 to 15 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions, accounting for only 5% of its total play types.

Historically, no team has relied less on the pick-and-roll as a primary action.

Even when factoring in both ball handlers and roll men, the action accounts for only seven percent of their offense–a stark contrast to a league where it remains the dominant half-court engine.

Instead, Miami’s offensive profile is built around entirely different sources of production.

Spot-up situations account for roughly 34% of their offense, transition nearly 25%, and isolation around 9%, while cuts, offensive rebounds, and putbacks fill in the margins.

Traditional structured elements like post-ups, off-screen actions, and the pick-and-roll serve only as complementary tools rather than foundational actions.

The Heat started the season 14-7. They went from 27th to first in pace, from 24th to first in field goal attempts, and from 21st to 12th in offensive rating. Now, their defence declined as a result—ninth to 14th—but on balance, you take those results any day of the week.

Ironically, Miami last season just happened to have players very similar to what the Grizzlies had in 2024. Bam Adebayo, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Davion Mitchell, Pelle Larsson, Dru Smith, Andrew Wiggins… these guys all fit that style of play.

I should note that opponents did start to “figure the Heat out” in the second half of the season. They lost 10 of their final 15 games and then fell to the Hornets in the Play-In Tournament (though we should note that Miami sustained some injuries in that game too). It remains to be seen if this type of offence would consistently survive in a playoff setting, when the game becomes inherently slower—the Thunder swept the Grizzlies in the 2024 playoffs, but firstly, it’s the Thunder; secondly, Ja Morant got injured halfway through the series; and lastly, Games 3 and 4 were very close—but it’s an interesting way to attack the regular season.

Anyway, Milwaukee traded for four guys who played last season under the same system that Taylor Jenkins led in Memphis during his final year there. Moreover, the Bucks happen to have a fair few holdovers who can play this sort of basketball as well. Maybe we see a LaRoche-inspired offence in Milwaukee this season?

Speaking of the Heat recruits, vote on this week’s Reacts poll:

In the mid 1980s, farmers throughout the U.S. were being squeezed between high interest rates on operating loans and low prices for commodities; lacking a sufficient government safety net, over 300,000 farmers defaulted on loans during this decade and even more farmers found themselves struggling to break even.

Clarence Willcome was one such farmer. He owned a dairy farm near Birnhamwood, a small town between Wausau and Green Bay in northern Wisconsin. The 59-year-old father of thirteen was a two-time heart attack survivor with a pacemaker and a pile of debt.

In April 1986, he wrote a letter to a guy who grew up on a farm asking him for advice.

By the time Don Nelson got around to replying to the letter, his Bucks had been swept by the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. The team, widely acknowledged as one of the best in NBA history, was on its way to a championship. Nelson would spend his summer doing something that was, perhaps, more significant than winning a title.

After losing game four against the Celtics, Nelson told reporters, “I am not feeling very good right now, yet I’m not losing my home or going bankrupt and having to start over with my life.”

He pledged his share of the Milwaukee Bucks’ playoff bonus to Clarence Willcome, and convinced Herb Kohl, then the owner of the Bucks, as well as Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing, to kick in and help as well.

But this was just the beginning.

Having put on a few pounds since his playing days, Nelson went on a diet and invited donations for each pound he lost.

He also took off on a 250-mile jaunt through Wisconsin in August of that year, driving a tractor as part of a campaign to raise funds and awareness to assist farmers.

It was a colossal give-back from a guy who definitely knew hardship growing up.

Don Nelson was born on May 15, 1940, in Muskegon, Michigan. When he was two years old, his parents moved to Grant, Michigan, where his father tried his hand operating a maple syrup farm. Two years later, the family packed up and relocated again, this time to his grandparents’ farm outside Sherrard, Illinois.

His first experience playing basketball came there. As happened on farm after farm in the Midwest in that era, Nelson learned to play on dirt, shooting at a makeshift hoop nailed to an outbuilding. In his case, it was a spokeless bicycle rim attached to a chicken coop.

Nelson started school in a one-room schoolhouse with seven other students, three of them being his sisters, and all taught by an 18-year-old girl fresh out of high school. It was a school that Nelson occasionally attended barefoot.

Don had a rocky relationship with his father, who constantly lectured him, but his mother doted on him; in her eyes, according to Sharon, “the sun rose and set on Don.” “He’s got his mother’s heart,” his oldest daughter would later remark, “very tender and affectionate.”

Just before Don started seventh grade, his grandparents lost their farm.

The family relocated to Rock Island, Illinois, and Nelson began playing competitive basketball, “I went out for my seventh-grade team and got hooked on basketball.”

The Nelsons lived in town, and Don used to stop at various locations on the walk to school in the morning and shoot hoops. His afternoons were spent at the YMCA doing the same.

He grew to a suitable height for the game, topping out at 6’-6” and playing center for the Rock Island Islanders.

Nelson jumped to the varsity squad as a sophomore, and was a starter by the time his junior year rolled around. He made First Team All-State as a senior. During Nelson’s two years as a starter, the Islanders racked up a 47-7 record, while Nelson put up incredibly gaudy numbers given that he was playing a 32-minute game without a shot clock. As a senior he averaged better than 21 points per game and set a school scoring record. There were opponents and occasions in his senior year where he was triple-teamed in an effort to slow him down.

Despite those numbers, Nelson was not a hot recruit. The only real interest in his services came from the University of Iowa, and his father thought that he would be better served working as a watch repairman, a thought that amused Don’s first wife, Sharon: “Can’t you see Big Don sitting there with those little glasses, fixing watches?”

Bucky O’Connor was the coach at the University of Iowa, and he’d been recruiting Don. Bucky had an eye for talent, and was fresh off coaching the Hawkeyes to a pair of Final Four appearances (1955, 1956). Nelson signed a letter of intent to play for the team. Then, O’Connor was killed tragically in a car accident in April of 1958.

Bucky’s replacement was Milton “Scharm” Schuerman, who had graduated from Rock Island in 1952, and who had just traded his basketball jersey for the clipboard of an assistant coach the previous fall. The death of O’Connor made him head coach of a Big Ten squad when he was just 24 years old.

As a sophomore (freshmen were ineligible to play college basketball in those days), Nelson averaged a double-double, toting up 15.8 points and an even ten rebounds per game. In his junior and senior years, he averaged 23.8 points per game. His rebounds per game jumped every year, going from ten as a sophomore to 10.6 as a junior and then 11.9 as a senior. He left the program as the school’s all-time scoring leader.

Once again, Nelson’s numbers didn’t attract that much interest from the next level of basketball. He had planned on becoming an assistant coach with Iowa, but the Chicago Zephyrs had expressed an interest in him, and as Nelson later recalled, “I figured I could always fall back on coaching if a playing career didn’t work out.”

He was picked in the third round of the 1962 draft by the Chicago Zephyrs. He spent a year in Chicago, where he averaged a respectable 17 minutes as a rookie, but the team didn’t see much of a future in either him or Chicago.

They decamped for Baltimore and became the Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) and Nelson was picked up by the Los Angeles Lakers.

Nelson spent a year and a half playing for Fred Schaus’ squad, but again, the team didn’t see a lot of value in what Nelson brought to the table either, and he found himself unemployed once more when 1965 rolled around.

Don was 25, hadn’t finished his degree requirements at the University of Iowa, and his future seemed to be particularly dim. The only work he’d done apart from basketball up to that point was manual labor.

By then, Nelson was a family man—he and wife Sharon had welcomed their first daughter, Julie, into the world in 1961, followed, in rapid succession, by a son, Donnie in 1962, and another daughter, Chris in 1963. A fourth child, Katie, joined the family in 1967.

In 1965, the Lakers had just lost to the Celtics in the Finals, and a player who was apparently not good enough to suit up for the losing team had caught the eye of the winning team’s coach.

While Red had a well-deserved reputation for being astute at both drafting and trading, his ability to recognize talent wherever he found it included picking up guys off waivers, and none of these castoffs turned out better than Nelson.

With Havlicek working his way towards a starting role, the team would soon be in need of a good sixth man, and Nelson was Red’s target to slot into the role that he had pioneered with Frank Ramsey and expanded with Hondo.

Red offered Don a one-year, $11,000 contract, which was $4,000 less than his rookie deal; Don swallowed his pride, took the deal, and spent the next eleven seasons wearing green and white. It wasn’t a bad career for a guy who retained a modest view of his on-court abilities: “I had to work all the time, do everything extra I could,” Nelson would recall, adding, “I was just average.”

The Celtics faced off against Nellie’s former team in the Finals three times in the next four years.

Boston prevailed all three times.

Down three games to two in the 1969 Finals, Nelson scored 41 points across two must-win games, nearly double his season average. His final two points came with a minute and a half to go in the fourth quarter of Game 7. The Celtics were clinging to a 103-102 lead when Nelson’s shot bounced up off the back of the rim passing high above the backboard before dropping cleanly through the net, narrowly beating the shot clock and stopping an 8-0 Los Angeles run. “I shot it so poorly that it hit the back of the rim and it went way up in the air, and it came down and went straight through the basket,” Nelson would later recall. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

In the early years of the 1970s, the Celtics had to rebuild their squad—among the major contributors to the 1960s dynasty, only Nelson and Havlicek carried the torch on into the 1970s.

However, Auerbach’s shrewd drafting and trading brought the Celtics back into contention by 1973, when they lost a closely contested Eastern Conference Finals to the eventual champion Knicks. The following year, the Celtics would win it all. Coached by Tommy Heinsohn, the Celtics faced the Milwaukee Bucks in the Finals, and Nelson played a key role in defending Kareem, despite about an eight inch height differential between the two players. Heinsohn’s strategy of double- and triple-teaming Kareem in the decisive game didn’t do much to slow down the Bucks’ center, but it did lighten the load on Dave Cowens enough that he was able to outscore Kareem 28-26, as the Celtics secured their twelfth championship overall and their first of the post-Russell era.

Don played two more seasons with Boston, going out a champion with the 1976 squad that defeated the Phoenix Suns in six games.

After retiring, Nelson had a family meeting in Moline, Illinois at a Maid-Rite restaurant—a small Midwestern chain specializing in loose meat sandwiches and fried chicken. His son Donnie recalled that his father presented the family with three options. He could sell cars, become a referee, or take a job as Larry Costello’s assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks.

According to Donnie, the vote came down 5-0 in favor of the assistant coaching gig.

Although he had spent just a year playing for Auerbach, he called that year “a master class.”

“I learned everything that I knew about coaching from Red,” Don would say years later. “I basically adopted what he imparted.”

In addition to his year as a player under Red, Nelson cultivated a close friendship with the coach, taking advantage of every opportunity he had to soak up Auerbach’s knowledge of the game—and his ability to handle players.

Eighteen games into his first season as an assistant coach, Larry Costello was fired and he was promoted to the head coach assignment.

Don would coach the Bucks from 1976 to 1988, becoming the franchise’s winningest coach, securing eight consecutive playoff appearances, seven straight Central Division titles, and six consecutive 50 game winning seasons. Despite these regular season accomplishments, Nelson’s teams failed to achieve the highest level of success in the playoffs, although a fair bit of that can be attributed to the overall strength of the Eastern Conference. On four occasions the Bucks were eliminated by the eventual league champs. Only once was Nelson able to defeat his mentor’s team, and that was when the Celtics were in nearly open revolt against their own coach, Bill Fitch.

Nonetheless, Nelson cut a unique and memorable figure as a head coach.

At a time when the informal dress code for coaches was a bit more strict than it is these days, Nelson waged a small campaign of protest by wearing tennis shoes—sometimes held together with tape—and ties that looked like fish.

When the Bucks felt it was time to move on from Nelson, he quickly found a spot in California, coaching the Golden State Warriors.

Nelson brought a run-and-gun style of offense to the Bay Area, with his “Run TMC” squad of Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond, and Chris Mullin bringing a measure of success to a franchise that had been mired in the Western Conference doldrums for the past decade. Before Nellie arrived, the Warriors had finished above .500 exactly once in ten years; Don bested .500 in year one, and recorded a pair of 50-win seasons while dealing with an injury-prone team. More than that, though, he brought excitement back to the fans. “The fast-paced play was so fun to watch, and there were so many enter­tain­ing head­lines between games, that I don’t have memor­ies of a single defeat,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle columnist Peter Hartlaub in a tribute to the coach.

In 1991, the San Antonio Spurs lost to the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs. Just over halfway through the following season, the Spurs fired head coach Larry Brown, and at the end of the season, his coaching staff was also dismissed.

But, in the same way that Auerbach had seen something in Nelson that the Lakers overlooked, Don saw something in one of Brown’s assistants that Spurs GM Bob Bass had missed.

He leaped at the chance to bring Gregg Popovich onto his staff.

The two would become lifelong friends, even if Nelson did, on one memorable occasion, prank the seemingly unprankable Popovich.

Popovich had a great deal of admiration for Hank Egan, his coach at the Air Force Academy, and when Nelson discovered that Egan was an amateur painter, he contacted him and offered to buy one of his paintings.

On finding out that the painting was an intended gift for Pop, his former coach pointedly refused to accept any money for it and sent it to Nelson.

When Nellie got the painting and had it framed, he took it to a Bay Area art gallery and had them put it on display with an inflated price tag.

Nelson proceeded to take his staff to the gallery, and lured Pop over to the painting.

“He says, ‘That’s my Coach! That’s him!’” Don recalled, “So I said, ‘Is that really, Pop? I’d like to buy it for you.’ We take it up to the cashier and he says, ‘It’s $25,000.’ I said, ‘Wrap it up and give it to Pop.’”

“We get the picture wrapped up and we’re walking out. He starts crying. He’s literally bawling like a baby.”

Don takes everyone out to dinner afterwards and reveals the prank; Pop’s only response was, “God damn it, Nellie; you got me!”

Later on, when Nelson was spending a year out of coaching and the Spurs had landed the number one pick in the draft, Don found out that Popovich was considering an offer to trade the pick that would become Tim Duncan. His response to this rumor was an overt threat. “If Pop trades him, I’ll go down there and take a shotgun to his house!”

Nelson was later hired to coach the Mavs in 1997, spending eight years on the bench there, including three 50-win seasons and a single 60-win season. While there, he picked Dirk Nowitzki and acquired Steve Nash in the 1998 draft; both would go on to win MVP awards, and Dirk would be instrumental in securing a championship for Dallas in 2011.

A final stint with the Warriors didn’t go particularly well on the bench; for the first time Nelson’s team failed to crack 50 wins during his tenure, but he did prove influential on the Warriors’ future when he went to a 2009 NIT matchup between Davidson and St. Mary’s on Monday, March 23, in Moraga, California, in the hills east of San Francisco Bay. Davidson lost 68-80, but Nelson was struck by the play of their point guard, “I just thought he was a star,” he remarked of Steph Curry. “I never dreamed we were going to be able to get him.”

On draft night, he made himself heard, urging rookie GM Larry Riley to take a risk and select Curry with the 7^th overall pick in the draft.

During his final year as a head coach, in 2010, Nelson secured the NBA record for most wins, hitting 1,333 and bumping Lenny Wilkens out of the top spot in the 78^th game of the season, a contest at Minnesota. Don went on to retire with 1,335 wins—a record that would eventually be broken by his friend and protégé, Gregg Popovich, in March of 2022.

As a coach in an era dominated by centers, Nelson frequently built winning teams by going small and exploiting mismatches by running the court, something he learned from Auerbach, “Red used to play the smalls against the bigs in practice to get everyone fired up. When we played full court games, the bigs never won. They were ineffective because they couldn’t handle the basketball, and that gave the smalls an advantage.”

“All I did was use a small lineup with a team that didn’t have very good big men, and I was very successful with it.”

Nellie downplayed his own contributions to the game, “Over time I added a few of my own wrinkles.”

One of those wrinkles, and one which has been incredibly influential, is the ‘point forward.’

By inverting the typical ballhandling duties, Nelson’s teams created the mismatches he loved by pulling defenders into parts of the court and assignments that they were decidedly uncomfortable with. Today, when Jayson Tatum brings the ball up court after a basket, he’s filling a role that Don Nelson practically invented.

Naturally, in a 31-year coaching career, there were a couple what-ifs. After the Celtics lost to the Bucks in the 1983 playoffs, with the team in need of a new coach, Red approached Nellie and offered him the top spot in Boston. Don turned down his friend, “I felt a loyalty to the Milwaukee Bucks because they had been so good to me,” Nelson said. In reflection, he added, “maybe I should have been more willing to make that break and pursue the Celtics job.”

Eleven years later, Gregg Popovich was hired as the Spurs’ general manager. He wasn’t particularly pleased with the team’s current head coach, Bob Hill, so he reached out to Don and offered him the coaching assignment. Nelson was more than willing to accept the job, as he was having difficulties coaching Chris Webber, and he was well aware that in the NBA coaches are often far more expendable than talented players are. However, the Warriors refused to negotiate a deal with Nelson and the Spurs that would’ve gotten him the San Antonio gig.

There were perks as well.

Nelson’s son Donnie grew to be 6’-4” and was a pretty good basketball player himself. After attending Wheaton College, near the family home in Milwaukee, Donnie was hired by the San Francisco Warriors as an assistant coach. The following year, the Warriors hired his dad as their head coach, and the two would work together throughout Nellie’s tenures at Golden State and later in Dallas. Their years together on the bench helped make up for time lost during Don’s playing career when he was frequently gone on road trips, and when the demands of coaching left him little time for his family. These years also helped repair a relationship that was damaged when Don left the family and divorced his first wife, Sharon in 1982. “It gave me an opportunity to get to know him at a different level and really gain a ton of respect for him away from the household,” Donnie told the Dallas Morning News, reflecting on his father’s “passion, integrity, and honesty.”

After retiring from the game, Don moved to Maui, “I know how far I’ve come from being a hog farmer. I’ve come a long, long way from being some country kid. I got in the fast lane, and I’ve stayed there a long time,” he once said.

And yet, as it turned out, in some ways, Nelson didn’t come that far after all.

As a child, Nelson had a pet pig, Butchie, that the family butchered while he was at school one day—a lesson, no doubt, in the sometimes harsh nature of life on a farm.

But Nelson retained an affection for pigs that carried over into adulthood. While he was on his first stint at Golden State he ran afoul of Alameda city regulations when it was found that he was keeping a potbellied pig as a pet.

He also returned to farming as a retiree—although he ended up raising a crop that might not have been approved of by his parents or grandparents.

Nelson’s second career, after basketball, was growing medicinal marijuana in Hawaii.

Actually, Don’s hobby farm of 22 acres grows flowers and coffee as well as pot, but pot is undoubtedly what grabs the headlines—especially since Nellie admitted to smoking the stuff. He also hybridized two strains of cannabis, producing a variant dubbed “Nellie Kush.” He even went so far as to build a guesthouse on his property out of ‘hempcrete,’ a concrete which uses embedded hemp fibers for reinforcement.

Nellie claimed that he didn’t smoke pot as a coach or player, but at least one account out there suggests that he was not unwilling to engage in a celebratory puff or two.

Nelson had his number retired by the Celtics in 1978, and was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 2012. He was named the NBA’s Coach of the Year three times (1982/83, 1984/85, and 1991/92). In fact, no one has won the award more than Nellie, although Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich have also won the award three times.

“I spent 50 years in the NBA,” Don once remarked, “Can you imagine doing something that you love the most in the entire world and doing it for your entire life?”

Nelson moved from Maui back to Dallas earlier this year. He passed away on August 9, 2026.

Reflecting on his career as a coach, Nellie once told Michael D. McClellan, “I have no complaints with the way things worked out,” adding, “If you write my epitaph, I would be very happy if you just said that Don Nelson was a good guy and a pretty good coach.”