SCOTT MORRISON – UTAH JAZZ ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 826

Website – https://scottmorrisonbasketball.com/

Email – coachscottmorrison@gmail.com

Twitter – @scott_morrison

Scott Morrison is an assistant coach for the NBA’s Utah Jazz.  He was previously the head coach of the Salt Lake City Stars of the NBA G League during the 2022-23 season.

Morrison spent the 2021-22 season as the head coach of the Perth Wildcats of Australia’s National Basketball League.  He had served the four previous seasons as a Boston Celtics assistant under Brad Stevens.  Morrison earned his opportunity with the Celtics after coaching with the Maine Red Claws in the NBA D-League from 2013-2017.

In 2001, after his first year of graduate studies at Dalhousie University, Morrison was appointed an assistant coach of Dalhousie’s women’s basketball team.  In 2002, as a 24-year-old, he was elevated to head coach of the team.

In 2003, Morrison was appointed head coach of Lakehead University’s men’s basketball team. Under his leadership, Lakehead went from the worst team in the nation in 2006 to a perennial top five program from 2008 to 2013.

For the 2013–14 season, Morrison took a one-year sabbatical leading to his opportunity with the Red Claws.

Morrison was born and raised in Morell, Prince Edward Island and attended Morell Regional High School.  Growing up, his father George was the head coach of the UPEI Panthers men’s basketball program.

From 1995 to 2000, Morrison attended the University of Prince Edward Island and played for the Panthers graduating as the school’s all-time leader in assists and 3-point field goals made and ranking fifth on the all-time scoring list.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Scott Morrison, Assistant Coach for the NBA’s Utah Jazz.

What We Discuss with Scott Morrison

• Growing up in Prince Edward Island where his Dad coached the men’s basketball team at Prince Edward Island University.
• Playing for his Dad in college
• Working camp in the U.S. to build up his network and get to know coaches
• Getting his first job as a women’s assistant at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia
• Becoming the interim head coach in his second year when the head coach took a sabatical
• Getting the men’s head coaching job at Lakehead University that came with a lot of challenges
• You do need some talent, but the foundation and the character and the quality of the person is far outweighing the talent at the end of the day, especially at the college level.
• How a sabbatical in his last year at Lakehead allowed him to get a volunteer position with the Maine Red Claws of the NBA D-League
• “You have to be willing to do something that you might think is beneath you in order to get to where you want to get to.”
• “Take a tunnel instead of a bridge sometimes.”
• “Every single person in the G League is there with bigger goals in mind.”
• “Finding ways to convince the guys that playing as a team, playing a role, playing the right way, being professional, all those things that may not be on ESPN are actually the key to getting where you want.”
• “Each guy is going to react to something different.”
• “I’ve tried to find some way to make myself useful.”
• “If the Organization doesn’t trust you they’re not going to hire you and they can’t trust you if they don’t know you.”
• How his hard work and relationship building led to an opportunity with the Celtics
• His first coaching assignment working with Gordon Hayward
• Dividing roles on an NBA bench
• His biggest regret when he interviewed for the Celtics Head Coaching Job
• What makes a good interview presentation
• His year coaching the Perth Wildcats and the challenges of COVID
• Coming back to the US to coach the Salt Lake City Stars in the G-League
• Getting the call up to the Jazz from Head Coach Will Hardy
• “I take pride in the fact that I didn’t have the easiest route.”
• “If you stop trying to win or stop trying to prove that you belong or forget why you’re doing it, I think the work will suffer and the drive will decrease.”

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THANKS, SCOTT MORRISON

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Click here to thank Scott Morrison on Twitter

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TRANSCRIPT FOR SCOTT MORRISON – UTAH JAZZ ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 826

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Scott Morrison, assistant coach for the NBA’s Utah Jazz. Scott, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:13] Scott Morrison: Yeah, thanks man. Happy to be here. Appreciate you having me on.

[00:00:16] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do throughout your coaching career. You’ve had a wide range of different places that you’ve been at different levels. So excited to talk to you about all those. Let’s start by going back in to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

I know your dad was a college coach in Canada, so just talk a little about some of those, those first experiences you had.

[00:00:40] Scott Morrison: Sure. So I grew up in a place that’s probably the least likely, it’s getting down there, maybe in the world. I was going to say North America to produce like, I guess a pro basketball coach.

Grew up in a little village called Morell in Prince Edward Island, which is basically the smallest place in the smallest province in Canada. I remember working I used to work for the village in the summers during, during college doing like maintenance on the, on the sports fields and mowing lawns and things like that.

And my buddy and I were wondering what the population was one day. So we decided just to go around and count it and we came up with just under 300. So but I had one kind of, I guess, card up my sleeve when it comes to basketball. As you mentioned, my dad was a college coach. So he would drive the 30 minutes into the quote unquote city of Charlottetown.

And run his college program University of Prince Edward Island from from there. So basically, as early as I can remember, I was going to practices and going on the team van, which later became the team bus and kind of had a dream to eventually play for my dad. I played all through high school and things like that, obviously, and was kind of doubled as a team manager or video guy or water boy, depending on how old I was at the time and eventually kind of made full circle and played for my dad when I graduated high school for five years, where we were allowed five years of eligibility in Canada, even before covid.  So I used them all up and then moved on.

[00:01:59] Mike Klinzing: How did you get better as a player? Growing up in such a small town, do you always play with guys that your dad was coaching or just how did that work for you?

[00:02:06] Scott Morrison: So earlier on, I was lucky to have just by a lottery. It probably never happened again in the 30 years since then, but we, I had four or five friends that were the exact same age that growing up there and we all love sports.

We play baseball together all through school basketball and my dad was a, at least by pay was a part time college coach. He also was a high school teacher. So. We could all walk to the high school and I had the keys to the gym. So once we hit junior high or a little bit earlier, we would go in there three, four times a week, play two on two or three on three, depending on how many guys we could get.

And then as I got older, that became kind of my sanctuary to go in there and shoot and work on my individual skills with either with my dad or by myself. And then my last couple of years of high school, I started to get good enough to play in the offseason with, with my dad’s teams, they had pretty good teams.

It’s probably equivalent to a high D2 level. So it’s pretty easy to get better when you’re playing against bigger and stronger guys all the time like that.

[00:03:04] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Did you always know you wanted to coach because of your dad?

[00:03:09] Scott Morrison: Well, I wanted to play in the NBA and then realized I had a few things working against me there, namely my athleticism size and skill level.

So turned to want to be a college coach in Canada and kind of had set a goal to there’s some coaching education things you can do here is a master’s program in Canada. There’s a like a qualifications course that we do. So I started doing that pretty early on during college. And also, I would every summer I would spend some time working camps in the U.S. Like, Schools like UConn and Maryland and Holy Cross, wherever I could get into. Trying to make some contacts for coaching down the road, but also at the time, get a chance to play pick up against some pretty good players when camp was over sort of thing. So had some thoughts of it, but wasn’t sure where the path was going to take me until I graduated.

What was your favorite camp you worked? That’s a tough one, actually, to be honest. I loved, I went back to UConn two or three years. It was right when they won with Khalid El Amin and those guys. I was also around Maryland when they won with Steve Blake and, and that crew. So I had a great time at both those camps.

Met some people that I still am friends with. Coach Patsos took good care of us at Maryland. And fast forward a few years when he was coaching Loyola, I brought my college team from Canada down to play him. So that kind of became full circle as well in a certain way. And we’ve stayed in touch over the years.

So I’d say UConn and Maryland are my favorites, but I probably did maybe 10 or 15 different schools in that period.

[00:04:41] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, building up that contact list is huge, especially when you’re a young guy to be able to have those contacts that you can fall back on as you move forward and keep going in your career.

Your first experience was on the women’s side though, right?

[00:04:53] Scott Morrison: Yeah, so one of those courses that I was referring to that I took in the summer one time when I was playing college was a, a level, whatever we have like 3 or 4 levels. of coaching. And once you hit the top level, you can kind of instruct the lower level.

So I took a course from a legendary women’s coach named Carolyn Savoy. She was kind of a disciple of Pat Summit to a certain degree. They were friends and she taught the course. And then fast forward three or four years, I was doing my master’s at Dalhousie where she taught, which is in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Said to myself, it’s time to get back into coaching. I did one year away from organized ball and just went to school and played men’s league. And then I said, okay, I missed it. So I was going to, I was actually on the way to meet with the men’s coach at that school about being one of his assistants the following year.

He had about four or five assistants already all volunteer. And. I stopped for a workout on the way to meet him and ran into Coach Savoy, the women’s coach, and she asked me what I was doing next year. I told her I was looking to do, and she offered me an assistant spot on her staff, and she only had one other assistant, so I took it.

Because I was familiar with her and she had kind of come to me. So I thought well of that. And then thinking that I would probably get to do a lot more because of the situation with, with her staff was pretty, was pretty slim. So I went for coaching women.

[00:06:12] Mike Klinzing: Was that any. different? Was there any surprises, anything that you thought, Oh, I didn’t expect it to go that way?

Or just what was that like for you going on the women’s side?

[00:06:21] Scott Morrison: Well, it was, I actually really enjoyed it because being a young coach, I was the same age as some of the girls on the team. And I had played in the same conference as most of them as a player before I shifted over. But at least that team, I think in general, I think girls are a little bit more willing to be coached at the college level.

At least they were back then. Didn’t think they knew it all. You know, we’re happy to get someone that will go into the gym with them and work out. Whereas sometimes the guys maybe took it for granted. And this is obviously 2002. It’s a little bit of time ago, but that’s how it was back then. So I earned their trust that way.

And they made it easier for me by being You know, good, good teammates and good players that want to learn. I was learning a lot from coach and she, near the end of that season, she decided to take a sabbatical which is not normal in NCAA, but in Canada, it’s fairly normal to take a year off with pay and go do some, some professional development because the salaries aren’t that high and that’s an incentive you can get in your contract.

Told me she wanted me to be the interim head coach the following year. So it was my first year out of, out of grad school. And took over the team. I remember the first thing I said to the girls was I’m not a girls coach, but I’m a basketball coach and that’s how we’re going to handle things. And I think that also kind of earned their respect a little bit because they didn’t want to be treated different than the guys either.

So that’s how I handled it.

[00:07:38] Mike Klinzing: What were you good at right away? From a coaching standpoint, was there something that 1 particular aspect that you feel like, man, I really had this right from the get go. And then maybe there’s some other things that obviously had to learn along the way.

[00:07:50] Scott Morrison: Well, I was good at yelling at people referees and players alike, which turned out wasn’t the best course of action as time progressed.

But that was what I was good at at the start. I think I always was a hard worker and I learned from my dad that recruiting was about relationships. From an early age, I could, I was, my bedroom was above his office, his office was in the basement, but I could hear all his recruiting calls over the years, like sitting in bed, listening to him, talk to these kids and I don’t think he was any kind of John Wooden in terms of X’s and O’s.

He was very self taught and worked hard, but he was a great recruiter and was able to get kind of recruit above his, his level. And I think that’s how I kind of got a little. You know, carve a little niche or niche depending on what country you’re in to be valuable to coach Savoy because I would really grind it out and hand write all my letters and, and drive to see the girls play that I could see in local area and knew that I had to kind of earn their trust before they would be willing to believe me that we would take care of them and make them better players and all the other things.

[00:08:51] Mike Klinzing: So that experience there, coach Savoy comes back and then you get an opportunity at Lakehead on the men’s side. How does that come to be?

[00:08:59] Scott Morrison: Yeah, so I just got lucky. I just kept getting lucky to be honest. The year I was an interim coach with the girls, the men’s team actually hired a new coach by name, John Campbell, who has comes from pretty strong lineage in Canadian university circles.

John and I became good friends and job opened up at Lakehead University where. His old AD at his previous job was best friends with the AD at Lakehead, and I’d actually applied for the Lakehead women’s job in like February and didn’t even get a call back the men’s job opened up in late spring and John my friend said why don’t you apply for that?

I said well, I applied for the women’s job and never even got a call I’m probably going to get this one He said well this time put my name down as a reference and I’ll make a call for you I didn’t know you had applied for the women so I did and sure enough I got a call for an interview four of us interviewed I believe, and the other three all turned down the job before they offered it to me.

But I didn’t care. I took it. It was pretty low paying, and Lakehead is in a town called Thunder Bay in Northern Ontario, which is known for curling and, and having a lot of NHL players. It’s basically an ice box all winter. And they had some success historically, but not Recently, when I was there and basically within 2 years, we were the worst program in the country and 1 of the 1 of the worst locations to recruit.

But turned out to be a pretty good place to learn and figure things out.

[00:10:21] Mike Klinzing: What was the key to turning it around there? You went in there and looked at what you had to work with and. Again, the history of the program where you wanted to take it, what were 1 the things that you felt like, hey, this is what we have to get done.

And then eventually got done to be able to have the success that you did.

[00:10:36] Scott Morrison: Well, I think the recruiting piece was massive because there was no local really talent to speak of the nearest city to us would have been Winnipeg or Minneapolis, both about 6, 7 hour drives. And really just lakes and forest in between those.

Those points. So I had to recruit, had to call on some of those contacts that I had met working camps and so forth. We were allowed to have three international players each season which I did every year I was there. And then I started trying to take some big swings with talent outweighing character had some brief early success, and then fell flat.

And I had a lot of problems off the court with guys and realize that. I was going about it the wrong way. I had to build a better foundation with character and potential, maybe pass on some of the shinier people that I could be looking at. And what happened was we went to the complete bottom of the country.

We were one and 31 the year I decided to rebuild and clean house. Had 12 freshmen out of 15 on the roster. Probably very close to losing my job, but they wouldn’t have wanted to pay me the extra year. And just decided to really try to create some jobs to keep guys in town for the summer and got better, got better, start to add a little bit better quality of player.

And then by those guys, fifth year the one and 31 team, we won our first conference championship in 30 years. So I guess what I learned was that you do need some talent, but the foundation and the character and the quality of the person is far outweighing the talent at the end of the day, especially at the college level.

[00:12:15] Mike Klinzing: So what did that recruiting process look like for you since you’re so far away from the talent bases that you have to recruit from? And obviously, I’m sure you don’t have a giant budget to be flying all over the place. So what are you doing recruiting wise? How are you getting guys? Even to consider you and then how are you putting together your list of talent?

Is that just through the contacts that you had that you’re reaching out to people? Or how’d you go about building, building that base of recruiting?

[00:12:43] Scott Morrison: Well, that was the start. I’m trying to just tap any contacts I had obviously had to go travel a little bit as much as I could and try to build my network of high school coaches.

And we didn’t have much AAU at the time, at least in Canada, but club coaches. And try to identify kids like in grade nine and 10, because where we were located, it was really hard to convince kids from the city, from Toronto, from Montreal, from Baltimore and DC, where I recruited a lot to come to our area.

And it was like a three year process just to convince them that this was a viable opportunity for them. And hopefully by the time they have to actually decide in that third year that we’re putting a decent product on the court and they can see that our guys have improved. The other thing we leaned on was kind of second chance guys, not necessarily because of character, but because of maybe bad luck injuries, things like that in Canada, there’s no clock with eligibility.

So you have five years to play. You could literally play when you’re 50, as long as you hadn’t played pro or anything like that before. So we would look for. You know, D1 level guys who maybe couldn’t get into school in the U. S. or maybe were in school and tore their knee up and now they’re a couple years out, but they’re getting back and they want to get back into school, things like that.

So it was being resourceful, being persistent and not aiming too high with your base recruiting, but taking a few swings every now and then. And maybe if you hit one of them, that makes all the difference in your program.

[00:14:13] Mike Klinzing: You got some high character guys in there and then you can, you can afford to bring in one guy that maybe you can take under everybody else’s wing.

But when you start getting more than that, as you found out, obviously, that that didn’t work quite the way you anticipated.

[00:14:27] Scott Morrison: For sure.

[00:14:28] Mike Klinzing: So you eventually take your own sabbatical and that leads you to an opportunity with The Boston Celtics organization with the Maine Red Claws, which then leads you kind of down a path, which I don’t know if you saw that path coming or if that was a path that you were trying to head down or just to how that all came together.

So tell me a little bit about the sabbatical and how you end up with the Red Claws.

[00:14:52] Scott Morrison: Yeah, so, I mean, if I hadn’t worked for coach Savoy and she hadn’t taken her sabbatical, I probably wouldn’t have thought of it. But my last contract at Lakehead that I ended up having, I had kind of. Maxed out salary wise.

Like I said earlier, it was on the highest paying gig compared to the top NCAA schools for sure. So I negotiated a sabbatical for professional development reasons. I graduated seven guys. We lost in the national championship game. I said, this is a good time to take it. So I had tried to contact all 30 NBA teams and asked them if I could volunteer on their coaching staff.

I don’t believe one… If one did respond, it was like a quick no or like a form letter. So I was kind of discouraged by that. I was pretty naive and to think that I could do that. And what I know now, obviously I probably wouldn’t have taken that approach, but at the time I was, I was shooting for that. I remember telling one of my fellow team Canada coaches, I was doing U19s at the time this, and he said, why don’t you try the G league?

And I happened to have two. At the time, current G League coaches on Facebook and I don’t have Facebook anymore, but when I did, it was obviously some people on there. You probably never laid eyes on personally, but for whatever reason, had their contact. So I reached out to both. One was coaching in California.

I went out there. He invited me out. I told him I was trying to do just volunteer. He said, okay, you can You know, basically drive the bus and do the laundry and basically be an intern, but nothing on the court. And I said, okay, well, my goal was to learn the pro game or as much as I could about it in that year.

I wasn’t worried about what I was going to be doing really too much or what was coming after that. I’m going to recruit all season and go back to Lakehead after the sabbatical. The other contact was Maine which is about a six hour drive from where I grew up. So, I went out there Mike Taylor was the coach.

He’s now, has since coached pro overseas and been the Polish national team coach. He had a pretty good resume. Yeah, we had Mike on, great guy. Oh, nice. Yeah. Mike’s one of the best dudes out there. He’s coaching in Canada right now. I still keep in touch with him. So Mike said the exact same thing as the other coach, except he added at the end, I could work guys out after practice.

So that and being closer to home, I said, I’ll take it. So I got my own apartment and spent the year doing laundry carrying bags around, driving the bus to and from the hotel and the airport for the guys that didn’t travel. When the team went on the road, I would sometimes get to go watch Celtics practice or maybe play a game.

And there was another intern at the time who had just finished playing. So named Jim Moran, Jim. Most recently was an assistant with the Pistons before that trailblazer. So Jim and I were 35 year old interns They called us the guys from the Muppets that are in the balcony of the old guys We were doing there and learned a lot learned a lot from Mike learned a lot from the players and Jim and everybody else who was working there?

I left I left a little bit early because the recruiting was starting to heat up and I had to get home to do some visits and things like that. So I left found out a couple months later that Mike had moved on and they’re looking for a coach and the GM of the team and I had kind of Developed a bit of a relationship, at least one of mutual respect.

And he was able to help me get an interview for the job. And just like at Lakehead, two other people turned the job down and they went to me third. So I jumped at it and, and kind of figured I could always get back into Canada because we had some success the last few seasons and this opportunity wasn’t going to happen again.  So I jumped at it.

[00:18:23] Mike Klinzing: How much contact in that first year and then kind of through that interview process, how much of a connection is there with. front office and coaching staff at that point. Are they involved in any of that process or is that something that comes later?

[00:18:36] Scott Morrison: So the GM of the Red Claws was the director of scouting for the Celtics at the time.

He was really the only contact I had, and I only had contact with him because I would work out Chris Babb, a player by the name of Chris Babb. After practice, Chris has had a good career overseas. He ended up getting a 10 day, I believe that that year with the Celtics, but Dave Loon, who was the GM at the time.

Would tell me, okay, Chris needs to do X, Y, and Z to have a chance at a call up and here’s players in the NBA that do X, Y, and Z. Well, show him film of these guys. So I did that and I learned a lot from Dave over the next few years, but that was kind of the first thing, I guess I earned his trust a little bit and.

I know when the time came to hire a new coach, they wanted someone with head coaching experience. Normally in the U. S., they don’t really value our Canadian college stuff, but I think because I had been there for a year, they saw that I was responsible, could handle, run a workout, do paperwork, things like that.

So I had at least an opportunity to speak to the Ainges Danny and Austin. I became friends with Ron Norrad. Ron played for Butler under Brad, and then Brad brought him to… Our staff there, he spent that year as an assistant in Maine. We became close mainly because I was asking Ron how they did things at Butler trying to learn to go back to Lakehead.

But he also would put a word in for me when that time came with Brad. So I had a little small foot in the door and then once You know, it started to open up a little bit. I remember going down to summer league in Orlando just to hang around in case they might want to talk to me. And sure enough, like the second last day, I remember Ron text me and said, get down here quick, Brad will have lunch with you.

And I, if you can get here. So I sprinted down the middle of July in Orlando, sweat just dripping off me as I sat down. The waitress came over and asked if I was okay. And I was also nervous, obviously, and Ron could sense this, and he just remember him telling Brad he’s, yeah, he’s Canadian coach. He’s not used to this weather down here.

So help you out more ways than one. Yeah. Kind of just broke the ice. And then within 24 hours I had met with Brad Danny and Austin, and a couple weeks later Brad called to offer me the job and was one of the best calls I’ve ever gotten.

[00:20:46] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, talk about sort of a change in career paths, right?

You’re going down 1 direction where you think you’re kind of going to be set there coaching to Canada. And now, boom, all of a sudden you get this sabbatical giving opportunity. It speaks to right being in the right place at the right time, but also making contacts and doing. The work that you have to do while you’re in place, no matter where you are.

I think that’s one of the lessons that Scott, that we’ve learned more than anything across the podcast is people that have a similar story to yours in that Hey, I got this job and maybe it was low paying or maybe it was no pay at all. And you go in there and you do the best work that you can and you catch somebody’s eye.

And before you know it, a door opens up that you kind of had no idea. And I know we’ve talked to several other G League guys over the course of the time that we’ve been doing the pod and I know they always talk a little bit about some of the challenges of, of coaching a G League team where you have.

You know, the players who are there, obviously they’re thankful to be there, but clearly they have a goal in mind of trying to get to the league and a lot of times executives and coaches were coaching in the league also have dreams and aspirations of moving up and yet you still have to build a team culture and put a product out there that you’re trying to win games and help guys develop.

So there’s a lot of different things that are going on when you’re coaching at that level. So talk a little about just your experience with it and what you enjoyed about it. Maybe what some of the challenges were.

[00:22:05] Scott Morrison: So I guess I’ve had, and I totally agree with you. I always tell, sometimes people ask me for advice, young, young coaches or whatever, and I always say, you got to be willing to do something that you might think is beneath you in order to, to get to where you want to get to.

Not that anything is beneath any of us, but you know, experience and resume sometimes, Hey, this, I can do better than this, but you have to do something to take a jump, take a tunnel instead of a bridge sometimes. So I’ve had two runs in the G league. The first one was with me. I did three more years as the head coach.

With the organization before getting called up. And then my second time was just this past season with, with Salt Lake for the one season. And I think the league has changed a lot. It’s a lot easier to coach in now and the logistics are a lot better. The conditions are a lot better. But the overall situation is the exact same and that’s that every single person in the G League is there with bigger goals in mind.

And the biggest key… And what I find probably the most challenging or enjoyable or both is figuring out how to get through to each person as to what they have to do to get to their goals, because 99% of the time, it’s not what they think it is. And the obvious example is players. There’s no NBA team looking in the G League for the next, I would say Kobe Bryant, right? They’re looking for the next Robert Covington or someone like that. And finding ways to, I guess, convince the guys that playing as a team, playing a role, playing the right way, being professional, all those things that may not be on ESPN are actually the key to getting where you want.

It’s not trying to score 30 every night. Because no one thinks that’s going to transfer to a 30 point per game score in the NBA. So that’s what I find the most enjoyable is trying to reach the guys from that perspective. And then the challenge is to get them to play as a team. If everyone plays as a team, everyone eats, so to speak.

And when that happens, then you have real success in the G league.

[00:24:01] Mike Klinzing: How much of that conversation takes place? With a player on the floor and a team setting on the floor and an individual player development session versus talking to him off the floor about, Hey, here’s where we see you. Here’s what an NBA team may be looking for.

Let’s double down on your strengths. Just how do you go about making sure that that player is hearing the message? Because I think it’s 1 of the things that. This is another conversation that we’ve had a lot with guys, and I think Mike Opio was the first guy that kind of brought it to my attention talking about how there’s only, again, how many guys in the league, 12 guys, 15 guys maybe that just kind of have carte blanche to, hey, here’s the ball and you’re going to kind of do what you want to do.

I mean, not every team in the league. Even has one of those guys. And so somebody coming out of the G League clearly isn’t going to be, Hey man, we’re just handing you the ball and go do your thing and score 30. So you got to find your role in your niche. So how do you communicate that to guys so that they understand it and really are able to make sure that they’re, they’re getting, they’re getting what they need so that they can have an opportunity maybe at the next level.

[00:25:06] Scott Morrison: Well, I’d say the best thing I’ve learned is that. Each guy is going to react to something different. So each guy is going to have something different or different approach to get through to them. And you don’t always know what that’s going to be. Sometimes you can get to know them really well and figure it out.

Other times you’re taking guesses. So I’ve always tried to take as many swings as I can and hope that each swing maybe hits 1 guy or 2 guys. So, for example, what I mean by that is, Maybe one day I’m putting on the board a list of the last 10 call ups or last 10, 10 days and sharing some of their stats. I remember one year that the 19 of the last 20 call ups at that time weren’t in the top 10 in the G League in scoring, for example.

This year, one thing we did was we, each week for about a month, we took A different guy who had to grind it through the G League and then made it to the NBA. So, example might be Kem Birch. What did Kem do well in the G League? Well, he blocked shots. He rolled. He set good screens. He crashed the glass.

He sprinted in transition. We’d show some clips of those things. Then we put on the, on the slide how much money he’s made since he got called up, which is usually It’s always different, but it’s obviously a lot more than what the guys in the G League are making. So just trying to find different ways to get through to somebody, not maybe necessarily knowing which guy is going to react to what, but if you spend a few minutes each week or each film session, just reminding them who had success and why, hopefully you can get through to them in some form.

So that’s what I, what I’ve tried to do this past season, especially. And if you get lucky, you have guys that. are pretty smart and understand this already and you’re just reminding them. And every now and then he might have to bring a guy in and say like, Hey, what wake up, this is what you’re here to do.

You know, I had a guy one time who was a great corner three point shooter and a great defender. And he was complaining about being standing in the corner and shooting and having to guard the best player. And I’m like, you’re going to get called the fastest because you have an actual role that the teams can see easily and you’re doing it well.

So just be patient. And sure enough, he did get called up. At the end of that season. So and that would be a lesson that I would tell the next guy. You know what I mean? So he’s always, you’re just compiling little stories and little examples that you can’t, hopefully you’ll get through to everybody by the time crunch time happens.

[00:27:27] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, it’s just so interesting because again, all these guys, obviously have been the best player in their environment, wherever they’ve been for a long, long time, and then to come in and be like, okay, you’ve got to play this role and this is what you need to do to get double down on the skills that you have in order to be able to get to where you want to go.

I mean, it’s clearly the ability to communicate in that role as a head coach in the G league is critical to be able to make sure that those guys understand what you’re trying to do. And then again, we can talk about to be able to, to take that and build. A team culture where, Hey it’s, we gotta, we gotta share the ball.

We’re all going to benefit if we play the game the right way. Cause then teams in the league are going to see, Hey, we’re playing the right way. And this guy fits in and we can kind of see, like you said, skills that player has translates to what an NBA team might need at the back end of their bench, which is where all those guys are clearly trying to get to another example here of you just doing a really good job in the position where you’re in.

And then you get an opportunity to. To move up to the Celtics, tell me a little bit about how that, how that happened and what those conversations were like, and what led to you getting an opportunity on the Celtics.

[00:28:39] Scott Morrison: So, I guess luck is one way to describe my journey, I guess. And then the other one might be, I’ve tried to find some way to make myself, I guess, useful.

And sometimes you got to take a few shots at that before you hit on one, just like with trying to get through to the guys. We had three really good years in Maine. The goal of the G League is obviously not to win, but when game day comes you want to try and win and Part of the development is teaching guys turns into winning I suppose so it is a good reflection on how you do But I couldn’t get called up Network is a big one.

I think I saw some guys getting called up that you know, we had beaten up pretty good over the years and you know just because you won a few games in the G League if the Organization doesn’t trust you they’re not going to hire you and they can’t trust you if they don’t know you. So that was a disadvantage for myself.

The Celtics guys, I did my best to get to know them and then I started to track shot selection. I kind of came into the G League when the whole mid range versus threes debate was just starting to rage. And the year I took off, the year I was volunteering as an intern, I did a study of about 15, 20, 000 threes and how they were created.

It wasn’t that crazy of a study, but it was, I think it showed a little bit of initiative and I basically came to the conclusion that kick out threes were better than pull up threes. I didn’t need to watch 20,000 shots to figure that out, but sometimes when you have numbers besides something and you know, you can make something look a little bit more intelligent than it actually is.

But that was my first step, I think, to kind of catching their eye a little bit, and then. As I went through the three G League seasons, I would always spend some time tracking the Celtics three point shots during the season. If I saw something, I would report it to Coach Stevens and I would send him a report at the end of the year.

So fast forward a few years when I was on staff, that backfired because I became the shot selection guy, which every player’s favorite coach is the shot selection guy. So but I wore, wore proudly and did my best. And I always saw it as a way that I showed kind of Hey, I’m looking for ways outside the box to.

I’m not just going to go through the motions. I tried to always make sure I watched film and kind of took the assignment of the two way guy. It wasn’t two way guys then, but assignment guys. Anybody that Celtics had draft and stash, like we had Abdul Nader one year. So those were my guys, like, just like an assistant coach would have a player assigned to them.

I took the top guys and watched film with them every game, every practice, worked them out, worked them out pregame, just like the assistant coaches would do. Because in my mind, I was an assistant coach for them in terms of the Celtics while I was coaching the Red Claws as the head coach. So I think all those things maybe added up a little bit to help me, but it still took three years.

Just like that first call when, when, when Brad called me to offer the me the G League job, the, my second favorite memory is probably being in his office when he let me know he was going to bring me up to the big team and make me a Celtic officially. So that was quite a four year, I guess, journey, but it was, I had an awesome time, and I really never set out to be an NBA coach when I moved to Maine the first time. But once you get a little taste and see what it’s all about, it’s hard not to have that as a goal in the back of your mind.

[00:32:06] Mike Klinzing: So, I guess that begs the question, how much fun is it to be around the guys who are the best in the world at what they do?

[00:32:11] Scott Morrison: So, I recruited a kid at Lakehead named Zach White. Who was not a good basketball player. And I hope he hears it. He’s a very smart guy. He’s a genius basically in school, but I recruited him from where I grew up, that area, because he was the one kid that had a chance to play. I brought him as a Lakehead.

And anyway, he was no Jason Tatum, put it that way. But whenever people ask me like, what’s it like coaching the best guys in the world? I would always say I’m teaching them the exact same things I would have taught Zach White at Lakehead, they’re just driving away in a lot better car.

I tried to keep that in mind. I also had a good learning experience. My very first assignment on the Celtics staff was to go out to San Diego and work out Gordon Hayward. Gordon signed with the Celtics at the same time I was promoted and Brad basically assigned him to me among amongst a couple other guys as well.

But that was my first big assignment. And I had barely ever, I’d probably been to only eight NBA games before I. Got the job in Maine and still hadn’t really gotten to know any NBA players other than the guys that were assigned to the team. So I was a little bit intimidated and I was trying to figure out on the flight out there, like, how am I going to approach this first day?

Like I don’t want to come in too arrogant and I don’t want to come in like I don’t know what I’m doing. So I came up with the line that I would tell Gordon, like, Hey, you’re coming off an all star season. I’m just going to basically help you do what you’ve been doing. And Not getting your way, but I’m here if you need anything.

That was what I decided I would say. And I did say that my first day with him and he said, no, that’s not going to work. You’re here to make me better. And Brad wouldn’t have assigned you here, if you couldn’t do that. So that’s what I’m expecting you to do. And it was quite an eye opener because I realized one, I got to have more confidence.

I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t deserve it, obviously people have gotten to that position a lot easier than I had, I had to have some confidence in myself. I had to also make sure I came every day with reasons for doing what I was going to do because I knew Gordon would challenge and ask why we’re doing certain things.

But I also realized probably most importantly that the best players in the world, for the most part, want to be coached. And if you come correct with it, You can earn their respect and that will go a long way to earn the team’s respect when you have to address the team or run a drill or do a scout.

So I was glad he responded that first day the way he did. And, and I don’t think I’ve ever told him about that since, but it’s, it’s stuck with me certainly over the last six to eight years.

[00:34:41] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That’s something that I’ve heard other coaches talk about the fact that especially when you get to the highest level that guys don’t really care about where you came from. They don’t care about your background. They’re not looking at this or that. It comes down to exactly what Gordon Hayward told you that, Hey. If you can make me better, then that’s what I’m interested in. If you can make me better than that, then you have value.

And if you can’t, then I’m probably going to look to somebody else on the coaching staff to be able to fill, fill that role. And I think anybody, I don’t care what job you have, like hearing you talk about just. Having a little bit being unsure, right? As you go into that and Hey, I’m working here in the NBA and I know that I’ve been in positions where I walk into a gym and I’m like, Ooh I’m just I’m working with high school players.

I’m working with eighth grade girls. I’m like, all right, am I prepared enough to be able to, to do the things I need to do to show them what it is that they need to do, whether it’s a practice session or training or whatever it might be. And now you’re talking about doing it with. NBA players. And I think ultimately it really does come down to, Hey, can you make them better?

And the way you do that, right, is through the prep work and all the time that you put in learning your craft and getting connected with people who you’ve been able to learn from. And I think as you do that, it’s just a matter of. Once you get in there, you step in and you do it a few times. Now you start to build that confidence that, Hey, I belong here and the knowledge and the time that I’m putting in, right?

If you don’t put the time in, you’re never going to be successful at anything. I don’t care if it’s coaching junior high basketball, or it’s coaching the NBA, you got to be willing to put in the time and learn your craft and stay on top of things, which obviously from the different stories that you’ve told over the course of time here, that that’s what you were doing.

And that’s what enabled you to step in and feel like you were going to be able to have success.

[00:36:29] Scott Morrison: Yeah, no question. I’d much rather work with a player that’s going to challenge me and question me because then when I come into the workout, I probably have some video. I probably have some numbers. I probably have video of someone else doing what I want them to do.

And that’s the best way to show them that you care most importantly that you know, you care about them getting better. That’s like you said, that’s what they want more than anything.

[00:36:50] Mike Klinzing: How did Brad Stevens divide up roles on the staff? What’s that look like in terms of figuring out who’s going with which player?

Who’s going to be doing what during practice? And how does that conversation. Take place and what was Brad’s philosophy in terms of dividing up responsibilities on staff?

[00:37:09] Scott Morrison: So, I think every place is different. I thought Brad did a good job of using the whole staff. We had a pretty deep staff in my opinion at the time of those 4 years that I was there.

Guys like Jerome Allen, who was a college head coach, an NBA player, a great, a great NBA assistant coach to this point Jay Larranaga, who has been one of the top assistants in the league during his time Micah Shrewsbury, who just took a little more paycheck than I was getting at Lakehead for Notre Dame so, and the list goes on and on, we, we added Joe Mazzulla, who also was one of my assistants in Maine for a year obviously Joe’s, Risen up the ranks really quick.

So we had a really balanced staff. It wasn’t so much about where you were sitting on the bench, front or back or whatever. It was more about what your role was and, and doing it to the best of your ability. So Brad would kind of, he would assign a couple guys to each, each coach for individual work and you were responsible for their video.

Working them out in the offseason, pre game, pre practice, things like that. And then you were kind of assigned a side of the ball. It didn’t have a coordinator, so to speak, but based on your scouting assignments, that’s what side of the ball you’re on. So, for example, Jerome and I were on the offensive side of the ball.

Scouting opponents, defenses and reviewing our offensive video. So we would send in our reports post game on video. And we divided the scouts up in half and presented on our, our particular game day. So that’s how we did it. Brad was very careful to like some teams, the staff is like, okay, we’re hiring.

So and so as the defensive. Coordinator and we all input on both sides of the ball and Brad was careful not to really identify that in the media because sure, it’s great if things are going well for scoring for the best offense in the league. It would be great for people to know what side of the ball I’m on.

But what happens when we score 80 points and now. We’re getting the blame, which is probably he was trying to protect us from that as well. So we had kind of unwritten duties, but everyone contributed equally and everyone had equal say in a manner where they were sitting, which I really liked. And I was in the back row for two years in the front bench for two years.

And in both cases, I thought it was great that we had everyone kind of adding value.

[00:39:28] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That’s something role shift from the back? Bench to the front bench. What’s that entail in terms of how you’re going about your day to day?

[00:39:37] Scott Morrison: Well, on that team, it didn’t matter. It was the same. But every team does it different.

I know just from watching Utah. So obviously I coached the Utah G league team last year and we’ll be with the big team this year. But from what I’ve seen is a little bit different. A lot of the back row guys in Utah are focused on player development. They have more players assigned to them. They aren’t necessarily in all the meetings per se.

If there’s a impromptu meeting, maybe it’s just the top three or four or five coaches and they’ll leave the meeting when it’s their player’s time to shoot, for example. So I’m not sure how coach Hardy is going to do it next year. I am expecting to have maybe one player assigned to me and then pull my weight with whatever other tasks that he sees worthy of me doing so other teams have a player development staff and the top two or three guys don’t do anything with players one on one, but they’re doing all the scouts and the player development guys don’t do scouts. So it just depends on the team, depends on the year. In Boston, we just did a little bit of everything.

Everyone did a little piece of everything. I think that was good for our development as coaches as well.

[00:40:43] Mike Klinzing: When Brad steps down. You get an opportunity to interview for the Celtics head job. What does that look like? What’s, what’s it like going into interview for an NBA head coaching job?

[00:40:56] Scott Morrison: My biggest regrets so far was that month period.

And I would argue Brad stepped up as opposed to down. I’m not sure what he gets every two weeks, but I’m guessing he’s doing okay. And he’s proven that he’s been great at it. So he’s, he’s just a really smart dude that can do a lot of things. And, and I think his demeanor has a lot to do with it. So when he told us that he was stepping up, I’ll call it I was a bit naive.

It was the second time in my career I’ve been a victim of being naive. I figured I could just get another job. You know, I was. On the front bench with the Celtics teams will be lining up to hire me. I’m not going to panic too much. I did want to be a head coach at the time. I was kind of starting to become obsessed with that.

And not in a good way. So Brad interviewed three or four of us from the staff. And I would consider all of us worthy, but I didn’t really believe I was going to get the job for whatever reason. So I didn’t go in. Taking it very seriously. He I remember him telling me that don’t worry about presentations and things like that.

Just remember, we’re going to talk about basketball. Well, I’ve been talking about basketball with this guy for 4 to 6 years. So what I should have did was prepared a presentation highlighted some of my strengths that I think I could bring to the position. Maybe some things that would change. And I just didn’t do that because yeah, It wasn’t asked of me.

I had an interview for the Wizards shortly after, and that was my first time putting together a presentation and I don’t think I did a very good job of it. Following that, I had an interview with the Perth Wildcats in Australia, and I think I crushed that presentation. So I feel like if I had maybe prepared for the Boston one a little bit more and pretended that I had a chance, even if I maybe didn’t.

I would have been better prepared for the next one and so forth. So I do regret that time. But I was very grateful that coach even gave me a chance to, to talk to him about it. But then as I, as I would learn again, probably for the third time in my career, in the weeks that followed, that network was pretty important and mine was limited and it was going to start to cost me again.

What’s a great presentation look like? I don’t know. I think it’s more how it feels like the look is, is obviously important. And I just finished being part of the interview process for our, our G league, the guy who’s replacing me, which was coach Wojo. And I got to see 15 presentations. So most of them were better than my best one was, but I think the organization of it, the aesthetics is important, but then it’s like, how well do you know this thing?

Like. Same old thing with your players. You don’t want them to memorize. You want them to understand. And when you’re interviewing someone that really understands what their strengths and their philosophy are, then they come across that much more confident and you tend to believe that they know what they’re doing.

If the presentation is sloppy, you’re going to kind of get a bad impression to begin with. But if you can have a tight presentation and present it in a way that’s not going to drag on or leave holes, then to me, that gets you that second interview, which then you start to be able to show what you know, from an X’s and O’s point of view.

[00:43:56] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, right, you have to break through the wall first and, and get make an impression. And then from there, you can dive more into the details and really demonstrate kind of what your vision is for. That team and that job. And it sounds like you were able to do that with Perth and you go over to Australia.

What’s that like when you take that job and what was that year like for you in terms of both just the experience and then kind of what you learned coaching as a head coach at that level?

[00:44:23] Scott Morrison: Well, we, I could do a whole chapter of podcasts on that, on that year. Well, first thing I learned was. I need a better network.

I remember my wife sitting me down before we took the job and saying, all right, when we take, if you take this job, you’re going to make a list of everyone that in the NBA and check off when you text them, email them, call them, whatever, every month that did last for maybe two months. I still have to work on it.

So that was the first thing I learned. The next thing I learned was, I guess, be careful what you wish for. The, I was really excited to take the job. I don’t regret taking the job, but it was in a lot of respects a year close to hell for my family. So it was middle of COVID. Australia was kind of opening later.

So I took the job around Labor Day and training camp was just starting then. I coached over Zoom for six to eight weeks. So basically, with the time change, I would wake up with the film from the previous practice, I would cut it, plan the next practice, have the whole day, and then meet with my staff when they woke up which was in the evening in my time in Canada, because we’re waiting to get over to Australia, we’re not allowed in the country yet, they would And then we would do a team zoom where I would break down film from the previous day.

Then they would go and practice. And then we would repeat that five days a week for six weeks. Finally. So finally we get the word that we can go to Australia. So in the meantime, my wife had our second kid the week I took the job. So we were basically waiting to get her, her passport. We’re Canadian.

We were living in the U S she needed a passport before we could travel. That’s a whole nother story. Long story short, we get it. So we can go over to Australia, end of October. Our pre season games are starting in two weeks. Like a lot of overseas teams, there’s a long pre season, but I missed it all or I was doing it on Zoom.

We, excuse me, we land in Perth. It was a massive plane going from Singapore to Perth. There was six people on the plane. It was just really eerie. We get there, they, they’re really paranoid about COVID, police escort to right to a hotel and we’re in a hotel room for two weeks, still coaching on zoom, all that stuff.

We’re not allowed to open a window in our hotel room because they think we might cough and the COVID germs would fall down to the street. It’s just outrageous. So we finally get out of there and we go to what’s called the blitz. It’s the preseason tournament. It’s a two week tournament. I leave my wife and two kids are there.

We had arranged a nanny, so she has a little bit of help, but she’s on her own for two weeks. The first two weeks that we’re out, we come home. All right. Things are getting back to normal. Okay. Well, it’s December. Our first four games are at home. We find out during that time that the country is going to open January 1st.

Great. But our state where Perth was is not going to open. So teams aren’t allowed to travel in and out of Perth during that time. So we play our four games. The league makes us go to Tasmania and set up our camp there. Families can’t go. So. I dragged my family over there for this opportunity. Meanwhile, I still have a year left on my contract.

I just wanted to keep coaching. I have a year left on my Celtics contract. So I left them in Perth by themselves with a, my wife had a two year old and a newborn and we go to Tasmania for six weeks, play half of our road schedule. Then we. Can’t stay at that place anymore. We go to Melbourne for Melbourne for six more weeks and finish at our road schedule.

Finally, the state opens and we’re going home. Now we’re going home with the best road record in the club’s history, which is great. The club also has a very, they had, excuse me, a very proud record, asterisks, but a record of 30 something straight playoff appearances in this league, right? So we’re in great shape, but it’s just taking a toll.

It’s just taking a toll on us. We had one point in time where we had 12 guys with COVID at once. We get home, our, our best, our second best import destroys his ankle. He’s done. And we lose our last three games all in the final possession of the game. Either, either them making or us missing and missed the playoffs by a half game.

So I think we finished 16 and 12 and it was a complete failure of a season because we missed the playoffs and ended this. So called streak. So in a way it was the, I thought my, one of my favorite years because it was of the challenges and all I had to learn. And I love the players when we actually got to stay in Perth, it was an amazing city, probably the nicest I’ve ever been to in the world.

Despite all that, it was still kind of viewed as a failure in my eyes too, because I want to keep the record going. So I guess it was a bittersweet year, but I wouldn’t take it back because of all. I was forced to learn and deal with not only as a person getting humbled a little bit. But also as a coach, having to figure a lot of things out with different resources and different conditions that you wouldn’t normally get a long explanation of that here.

[00:49:31] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Did your wife know what she was getting into when she married you?

[00:49:36] Scott Morrison: She didn’t know she was getting into that. I’m sure she, she wanted me to go because she knew how. Much I wanted to keep coaching even though we could have just sat there and took a check, right? But I really wanted to try it and I did want to check a box of coaching a high level FIBA team And I we met people there that are going to be friends for life, man I’d see them that much but they’re going to be friends for life And it was the first time in our lives that we probably didn’t take things for granted We would wake up in the morning.

You could see the ocean You know, it was basically living in paradise and we would say to ourselves, we were going to enjoy this because we’re never going to live somewhere this nice again. So we often say now, like, we’re glad we did it. We’re glad we’re back, but we’re also glad we didn’t take it for granted.  We consciously appreciated what we had when we were there.

[00:50:30] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. So you come back, you’re a season as a head coach in the G league again for. The Salt Lake City stars with Utah, and now you have an opportunity to move back up to the jazz coach with Will Hardy, who clearly is one of the rising young stars.

Somebody who has already built a reputation in such a short time as being a guy that. He’s going to be one of the outstanding coaches in the league for a long, long time. So tell me how you get that call up. You already mentioned that two of your best moments were moments where you were called up. So I’m assuming this one probably ranks up there as well. And just talk about your relationship with coach Hardy and then kind of what your role is moving forward and kind of where you are at this point

[00:51:14] Scott Morrison:. Sure. So we decided to leave Australia mainly for our kids reasons and we actually came back to the to North America with no job I was doing exactly what I’m doing right now as we’re speaking, which is coaching with the U 23 team in Toronto.

The Canadian U23 team and had a random call from an unknown number and it turned out it was Coach Hardy asking me if I was interested in going back to the G League and I quickly said yes because I had nothing and I wanted to try and get back in with a different organization and we had also my wife and I identified Salt Lake as maybe a good place for our kids for various reasons.

So it was awesome. Stroke of luck. Like the rest of my jobs have been pretty well based on luck. I also learned something else that day, which was never to judge a person if you don’t know them. And the reason I say that is because we’ll, he didn’t know it at the time, but we’ll basically replace me in Boston.

I remember sitting in my house back in Canada refreshing hoop type and Twitter, not knowing if I was going to be kept on the staff and saw that coach email had hired Will Hardy. At a San Antonio and that’s basically my spot, like he’s offensive minded role not a former player front bench.

All right, I’m probably out. So I didn’t really think too highly of Will to be honest at the time. I didn’t know him. I’ve told him this since we’ve joked about it, but for him to get that to call me and basically save my career. I’ll be forever grateful to him for giving me a chance because he didn’t know me and he just took the word of maybe Danny Ainge and Joe Mazzulla and even Brad, who he brought with him on our staff here to Utah from Boston.

So all those people are pretty high in my books for either vouching for me or giving me a chance or both. And from there I said, I just ran with it. I was very humble and grateful to have the position, even though I had been in the NBA for a few years. I knew that lesson from my intern days and tried to look for ways I could add value to Will’s staff.

One of the ways was just running a great program with Salt Lake, with the help of the front office and the and the other assistants and so forth, which I thought we did a pretty good job of. And the other was looking for ways to maybe suggest or help. The jazz staff. So I tried to identify one or two things I could help with.

Or maybe put a few clips together. Hey, have you thought about doing it this way? And I think he appreciated that. And just like you said, I remember the moment exactly. I was going to a jazz game just to I used to go to the games just to watch in the video room and just be around the staff as much as I could hear what they were doing.

Maybe pick up on something that we could do in Salt Lake. And Will called me into his office and, and called Jay Z and Justin Zanuck, the GM in and said, Hey, I’m not sure what role it’s going to be. And this is early January. So but we’re going to have you on the big staff next year. And it was probably the closest I’ve come to tears at work in a long time.

Just because of everything that my wife and I had been through the previous year and a half. To get that, that word that I was going to be getting the call back up. And I promised myself I would remain grateful, which I have I owe those guys a lot, but also just like living in Perth, not taking anything for granted this time around and whether it’s one more year, hopefully 20 more years, I’m going to appreciate all the moments.

What’s the role? What are you doing day to day? So he’s going to coach is going to have me back on the front bench and probably very similar to what I was doing in Boston, which is focusing on the offense. People think I can’t coach defense probably because my teams are usually last in defense.

Probably the reason why I like to think I could, but for whatever reason, I can’t get it done. Offensive usually fair a little bit better. So. I’ll just stick with what I do well and unlike Boston, I’m not going to be too worried about. Moving a seat over because I’ve seen a little bit of that in Perth and some of the not fun things that come with it.

I remember Jay Triano told me my first year in Boston that being an NBA assistant is the best job in basketball. And after going through the highs and lows of that, I have to say he’s probably right. So whatever coach Hardy asked me, I’m going to do the best of my ability and hope I can stay on the bus.

[00:55:37] Mike Klinzing: All right, let’s wrap it up with one final two part question. So part one. When you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then part two, which I think you’ve sort of answered along the way, but I’ll kind of let you summarize it. What brings you the most joy about what you get to do day in and day out?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[00:56:00] Scott Morrison: So I think the most important challenge, I’m not sure it’s going to be the biggest, but the most important will be to try and build some trust and. Better relationships with the players that we have on the roster this season, obviously being my first year, a lot of the guys will be familiar with me from being around training camp and, and after the G League ended, or maybe going to our games in the G League and just seeing me out there, they’ll know who I am, but they’ll not have any really knowledge of what I can do or can I help them or what I’m willing to do to try and help them.

So that would be my, my biggest bit of advice. What I love most about coaching. It’s changed. It used to be winning versus losing the highs of winning versus the lows of losing going from the obviously the low to the high was what I was chasing most weeks. Most weekends are in college, but in the NBA most days, I guess. Then it became getting a chance to work at the highest level. You know, putting that challenge and goal toward yourself to make it to the highest level, regardless of where I’ve come from or how I’ve come up. Because I liked, I take pride in the fact that I didn’t have the easiest route, like I wasn’t a former player or I wasn’t somebody’s nephew or whatever.

So I take pride in that, but also realize that things can be short lived, so keep grinding at it. And then it’s changed from that to supporting my family and making sure that my kids have a good future and something to help them have a great life with. So I guess now it’s all three of those things combined is why, where I find the joy or the satisfaction in coaching.

I don’t think you can really lose sight of any of the three because if you stop trying to win or stop trying to prove that you belong or forget why you’re doing it, I think the work will suffer and the drive will decrease. So you need both those things to keep going at the highest level.

[00:57:59] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s really well said that there’s always different things that can bring you joy and each piece of it kind of is one part of the puzzle. And when you put all those together, that’s when you know you’ve really found the right place. And again, I’ve heard you say throughout the podcast, just the amount of gratitude that you have to, to be where you were.

And that’s not to say that hard work and luck, which you’ve also mentioned on the way, haven’t played a part in it, but just to be grateful for where you are and be able to have those opportunities that. There’s lots of guys in coaching that I’m sure you don’t take for granted that you’ve got an opportunity to, to do what you’re doing day in and day out is a special one before we get out.

Scott, I want to give you a chance to share how people can reach out to you. Get in touch with you. You want to share social media or share. An email, whatever you feel comfortable with. And if not you know, we’ll just jump back in and wrap things up when we’re done with that.

[00:58:51] Scott Morrison: Yeah, sure. I mean, if someone did want to hit me up, I guess probably Twitter would be the easiest one.

I think it’s @Scott_Morrison. I got a lot of followers when I went to Perth because I had the same name as the prime minister. And it always helps, right? Yeah. A lot of hate, a lot of hate tweets as well, but a few extra followers. So sure. They’ve dropped off over the years, but or over the year, excuse me, but.

That’s probably the best way to get ahold of me. If someone wanted to hit me up and always happy to talk basketball for sure, especially the X’s and O’s. Cause you never know where you might learn something from them. And I’m talking about myself, not whoever hits me up. Yeah,

[00:59:27] Mike Klinzing: Yeah absolutely. Scott, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump out with us.

Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.