May 7, 2009
Back in another lifetime, before Stan Van Gundy landed his cushy NBA gig in Orlando, he was a know-it-all 20-something-year-old coach cutting his teeth at UMass-Lowell and Castleton (Vt.) State.
The paychecks were the best part.
Castleton State gave him his first shot as a head coach in 1983. He was 24 and making $8,500 a year.
"Big time," Van Gundy said.
But only $1,500 actually came from coaching.
"My main job was to line soccer fields before the game, supervise students, and put out equipment before P.E.," said the Magic coach.
In his first season on the job at Castleton, he won 26 games, the most in school history, and by the time he was done, the Spartans had won 68 games and two Mayflower titles.
From there, Van Gundy took his act to Lowell, coaching the River Hawks from 1988-92, albeit with just one winning season.
He's been in the NBA for 14 years now, catching on with the Miami Heat in 1995 under Pat Riley, becoming the team's head coach in 2003, leaving under slightly controversial circumstances in 2006, and then resurfacing with the Magic in 2007.
This is his fourth trip to the NBA playoffs, but he still looks back on his days in Vermont and Lowell the way a big-league baseball player reminisces on the minors.
"Taking nothing away from this, this is a great experience," he said, "but quite honestly, you can't match the fun that you had at those lower levels.
"Those kids are playing purely because they love to play. There's not a lot of pressure. There's not a lot scrutiny and things. You're playing in front of gyms that aren't that full and all of that stuff, but it's just a lot of fun.
"I have a lot of memories of all the guys that I coached."
He remembers names like David Barry and Brian Parath from UMass-Lowell, mostly because they called him for tickets after he made it big.
"Those guys did for a while, but they haven't bugged me for tickets in a while," said Van Gundy. "Most of them now, if they want to come to a game, they have enough money that they can get to the game. They're not destitute, by any means. They all got educated."
What he also remembers, though, is the way they played.
"You get a very tough brand of kid there that will play very, very hard," he said. "I loved the guys I coached there. It was a good four years."
He benefited from the experience as much as his players did.
"One of the opportunities I had was to be a head coach very, very young at the college level, and I think it helped," he said. "You get to make a lot of mistakes out of the limelight. "I marvel at a lot of these guys who get their first job in the NBA, where their first mistake is magnified.
"I didn't have to worry about that much. At Castleton State, we had no writers. I got to call in the game, so I always coached well. I got to talk about the 'great adjustments' and everything else."
He remembers one slip-up at the end of a game, when he called a timeout he didn't have.
"I've seen that," he said. "And Pat Riley did it when I was in Miami, too. But I'd much rather do it at Castleton State than in the NBA."
Seeing where he is now, and remembering where he was 20 years ago, he can't help but be amazed.
"When you start out, you have this feeling that you've got all the answers," he said. "Now I get to age 50 and I realize I don't even know the questions half the time.
"I think both of those jobs were instrumental in helping me come along."
