Dan Gaters wrote:
> Terraholm:
>
>> 'Sheed may be an assistant coach after next year.
>
> Serious?
Yes. He already takes on training the young bigs. Watch and he is on the
floor with them when the rest of the starters are on the bench. And players
back to Jermaine give him credit for tutoring them as a main part of their
sucess.
He also tutors other teams players he likes, Dwight Howard currently.
even the media has picked it up...
http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3336339
It was during a game against the Jazz earlier this season in which a vision
of the power forward, injured and wearing a blazer on the bench, first got
GM Joe Dumars to wonder: How would Wallace be as a coach? Dumars has since
gone so far as to suggest to the big man that he stay with the team and grab
a whistle after he retires.
Coach Sheed. Give it a minute before you think your world has been turned
upside down.
"He is bright and insightful," says Dumars. "He'll lead the league in techs,
but he also knows where everyone is supposed to be at all times." Says coach
Flip Saunders: "He has all the makings of a great coach. He sees things
before they happen." Bill Guthridge, who was an assistant at North Carolina
when Wallace came through, sees it too. "He absorbed everything. He'd be
listening even if what was said wasn't directed at him. He had great
savvy-almost a point guard savvy." Even an opposing coach, Stan Van Gundy,
agrees. "He's extremely smart, ahead of every play. He doesn't miss helps or
rotations. He knows when it's time to shoot and time to pass. I've never
understood why he isn't a perennial All-Star."
Wallace is not a perennial All-Star because he's a perennial pain in the
eyes of NBA suits and refs. But just watch the man play. His outlet
passes-arms extended overhead-are straight out of an instruction manual. His
picks are perfect, feet planted wide and parallel every time. And
considering one of his responsibilities is to guard the league's best bigs,
he rarely gets into foul trouble (personal foul trouble, anyway). He has
always absorbed nuance quickly. "We were working on a press-breaker,"
recalls Bill Ellerbee, Sheed's coach at Philadelphia's Simon Gratz High. "I
told him to let the guards use him as a light post. I never had to tell him
again
More recently, Wallace, 33, mentored two of the quietest people he's ever
met-former teammate Ben Wallace and current teammate Amir Johnson-in the
extroverted art of court communication. "He teaches me," says Johnson. "You
gotta see the floor, gotta be the guy who talks." Nobody (including
Saunders) is louder on the bench than Wallace, whether he's calling picks or
telling forward Jason Maxiell to stand "straight up" or assuring Rip
Hamilton that his move to the basket will work "all day."
Years ago, on his campus visit to North Carolina, Wallace didn't ask for
directions to the best diner or the top sorority. He wanted to meet Chuck
Stone, the Tuskegee Airman who helped found and was the first president of
the National Association of Black Journalists, and who wrote hundreds of
columns challenging the status quo and taught at Chapel Hill. Wallace's mind
has always roamed far beyond the game.
So to answer Dumars' question: How would Wallace be as a coach? Probably
pretty good, and possibly even better than he is as a player. Wallace is
hyperaware to everything that goes on around him. It's a talent that would
pay big dividends for a coach, but it can sometimes work against a player
whose primary mission is the execution of a limited bundle of tasks night
after night. Saunders, for one, says Wallace is "too smart for his own
good."
> What's the record on the number of Ts collected by an assistant coach
> in a season?
Sense a new rule coming?
--
Laurel T
'Sheed was arguing a call... announcer Mike Barrett
asked 'who got a T earlier?' and was told Mo Cheeks:
"It's OK then, 'Sheed has one to give"...
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