Nate McMillan was surprised to get the call telling him that Lloyd Pierce had been fired, so much so that he initially wasn’t going to take the interim Hawks head coaching job when presented with the offer by general manager Travis Schlenk.
But, McMillan met with Pierce, who gave him his blessing, and McMillan ended up accepting Monday evening.
“(Pierce) just felt that he didn’t think this would happen, but he felt that I could step in and do a good job with the team, and he basically felt that I should take this opportunity with leading the team,” McMillan said Tuesday afternoon, with the Hawks set to face the Heat in Miami later in the evening.
In his first time addressing the media as interim head coach, McMillan defended Pierce, saying he was “a believer in coach Pierce” and mentioning Pierce had been “caught in a storm” as can sometime happen to coaches placed in difficult situations, which this year includes a season shortened by the coronavirus pandemic, little to no practice time and abundant injuries. Pierce went 63-120 in his two-and-a-half seasons as Hawks head coach.
In the Orlando bubble last year, just about two weeks after receiving a contract extension, McMillan himself was fired after the Pacers were swept by the Heat in the first round of the playoffs. So he’s experienced a similar feeling. It’s part of the business, McMillan added.
Hawks players and coaches feel a sense of urgency to position themselves for the playoffs, McMillan said — Pierce might be gone and have taken the hit for team’s 14-20 start, which wasn’t cutting it in management’s eyes, but the remaining group has to take accountability for the rocky start, as well.
“It’s absolutely a sense of urgency, and basically what I told our guys and I really believe this, if you’re looking to point the finger at someone or something, you need to point that finger at yourself,” McMillan said. “And that’s all of us. Coach Pierce takes the hit for this, but we all play a part in him not being here today. And we’ve got to do better. We’ve got to do better. We’re capable of doing better.
“We have to do better than we’ve been doing. If you’re looking for someone or something to point a finger at, point that finger at yourself, all of us, because we have to do better and win some games, and we have that opportunity. Coach Pierce doesn’t get that opportunity. And he takes the hit for it. But that’s on all of us, to improve, do things better, win ballgames.”
Pierce’s firing occurred while on a road trip, after he coached practice and spoke with media members Monday afternoon, the day before a back-to-back, the Hawks’ final two games before the week-long All-Star break. Odd timing, certainly.
With less than a day to prepare, X’s and O’s-wise, McMillan won’t be able to change much until the second half of the season arrives March 11. What he does hope, though, is that the Hawks can finish games better, an issue that plagued the team under Pierce this season, causing the pressure on him to mount.
“I really won’t have the opportunity to make really major adjustments until probably after the break, when we come back, so we’ll be doing the things that we’ve been conditioning ourselves to do all season long. We’ve just got to execute and play that way for 48 minutes,” McMillan said.
Moving forward, McMillan said he’ll make some slight changes, but he couldn’t specifically say what those changes will be yet, outside of finishing games and playing with energy. To be fair, it’s tough to ask him to list every adjustment he wants to make, and how severe those adjustments will be, after one day on the job.
“For me, I just have to be me and be myself,” McMillan said. “That’s the one thing that I told coach Pierce when I came down to work with him. That was my advice to him, be yourself, teach what you know, and I think he would be OK. That’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to be myself. I’ll teach what I know. There will be some slight changes in how we do somethings, but I’ll be myself, which is focusing on the details.
“Making sure that we try to get that energy out there every single night. That we’re playing winning basketball, that we’re playing the game the right way, we’re playing the game together and we understand what it takes to win games.”
The sleepless nights have already started for McMillan, he said, as he shifts from assistant to head coach, his time spent preparing increasing exponentially. When asked if the Hawks are a playoff team, McMillan responded that he things they’re capable of doing some good things and winning games if they show some growth, adding they also need to get healthy.
And, there’s that small matter of fourth-quarter collapses. The Hawks have indeed shown improvement from last season, when they were regularly blown out, but have folded in crunch time all too often. League-wide, they are tied for the worst point differential in the fourth quarter (-1.9).
“We’ve been in a lot of ballgames where we’ve lost the game in the fourth quarter or late in the fourth and we have to do the things to win those games,” McMillan said. “Those are some of the things we just showed them on tape. You’ve got to get rebounds, especially the last five minutes of the game, which happened in the (loss to Miami Sunday). When you get open opportunities, you’ve got to knock those shots down. You’ve got to turn up your defense… I thought we lost our poise. We took some, we settled for some shots, some deep shots, quick in the shot clock as opposed to making that team work and creating a better shot down the stretch.”
When asked if McMillan hopes to become the Hawks’ full-on head coach and have that interim tag removed one day, McMillan deflected, saying he’s taking it one game at a time.
He did mention, though, that Schlenk hadn’t discussed that possibility with him yet.
“(Tuesday’s) game is where my attention is at and how do we get tonight’s game,” McMillan said. “Then attention after tonight’s game will be turned to tomorrow night’s game, so far as the future and what I’m looking for, I really haven’t thought about that. There was no conversation about that with Travis and I.”
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