The Power of Mentorship and Trust in Building a Championship Culture

The more you give, the more you're gonna get. But you gotta give for the right reasons. You can't do it to be selfish. You gotta give cause it's right. At my core, I'm a pleaser. I want to do a good job. I want to make my boss happy. I'm past the point in my life now where I'm trying to climb the ladder. I'm just trying to stay on the bus now at my age

As I got into coaching, it was like, how can we make our players most comfortable so we can make them uncomfortable, we can push them a little bit that they trust us and what are the things that we can provide for them that'll get them to a place where we can access their potential?

If players that are motivated by have, like I want to have a nice car, I want to have a bigger whatever, they're going to end up failing. If you're motivated to be, to be the best, to be the best point guard, to be the best husband, all the halves will come along with it.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host, Ed Molitor, and today I am joined by my good friend Scott Howard, who is completing his 11th year with the Denver Nuggets. Now, I first met Scott, what seems to both of us like a lifetime ago. At the time I was at Texas A&M University. Scott was a University of Nebraska. Was at the University of Nebraska. Our paths have crossed in the past. Reconnected about a year ago. So glad that we did. He is one of the great guys in the business, right? A very sincere, very, very genuine. A lot of that has to do with his Iowa Falls roots and his mentors and the people that he really latched on to and learned so much from. One whom became his best friend. And we'll talk a lot about the late great coach, George Raveling, who, as you know, if you've listened to his podcast for years, I talk about him a lot. One of my all time favorites, as well as Pat Riley, Leonard Hamilton, and so much more. This is an incredible conversation. Okay. Yes. Scott's been in the NBA for a while now. Okay. Prior to the Nuggets with the Hornets, he was with the Bucks, the Raptors, the Washington Wizards. Seventeen years in the college game. But what he really talks a lot about is what he pulled from his mentors, how he has evolved as a leader, as a person in what the game of basketball and the relationships inside the game of basketball have meant to him. There is so much here. There is so much to connect with your world, how you do things. You know, this is one of those unique podcast conversations that is absolutely for everybody. It's for everybody at whatever stage you are at in your leadership journey, even if you're an emerging leader. Right. If you want to reverse engineer success and what you want your legacy to be, this absolutely is a podcast episode for you to listen to. So I'm going to get out of the way. I hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation with Scott Howard half as much as I did recording it.

Yeah, it's great to see you and I'm proud of you in your journey.

Hey, I appreciate that. But, you know, it's funny, and we talked quite a while before we started recording. As you get older, I don't want to call us old, but as we get older, you realize there's certain people in the business and just certain people in life that don't change, Right. Like, they're still. No matter how much success they realize, no matter how much struggle they may go through, whether it's professionally or personally, you know, whatever the case may be, they stay true to who they are and what they stand for and their values. And honestly, Scott, when I ran into you this past summer, it was like picking up, you know, where we left off 20 something years ago. So I truly appreciate you being here.

Well, you know what? You and I grew up a little bit alike. My dad was a coach when I was a kid before he got out of the out and went into the business world. But I think one of the things that's been great about my life, and I'm sure yours, is we had great roots. You know, parents were. We had great guidance as we grew up. I appreciate you saying that I haven't changed, because I hope I haven't, you know.

Well, I think it's safe to say Iowa Falls will not let you change either. Right. Like our. Our past absolutely shape us. So, I mean, we've got to give you a huge shout out. One of the most amazing places I have ever had the opportunity to visit and develop. So many close friends from Iowa Falls Iowa. What is it about that place that just produces great people and wildly successful people?

The great question, I think it's in the water, in the Iowa river. Because the town is simply amazing. 5,000 people, Ed, and the number of successful people and the amount of wealth that have come out of that town, it's incredible. And I attribute it to two things. Great people, of course, but they've been great people. And a lot of, you know, a lot of people have never left there. We had when I was young, and they still have a great school system. And the other thing that the community had, in my view, that's been really important. They always had great community leaders. There was always somebody going back, you know, Mr. Ellsworth, a long time ago. And then you went up and there were these giant people, Tony, Gentle and Rocky. We were these community leaders that would just go in and they would go into businesses and say, Ed, we need you to get involved with this. Scott, we need you to get involved with this. And you couldn't say no to these people. And then on down the line. My dad was one of them at one time. And so the community is so supportive. If they need a new fire station, they get it built. If they need a new high school, they get it built. They're progressive. And a lot of times that, you know, those little small towns in the Midwest, you drive through them and they're just rotted away. And people just aren't going to let that happen in that town. And it's incredible. And I got great friends that I, you know, I go back there a lot, and I'm amazed every time I'm there how many people have done so well.

That's what's really cool, is everybody comes back. Like, everybody goes back no matter where they are at, right? No matter how much success they experience, everyone seems to gravitate back to Iowa Falls. It's not, you know, a lot of people in small towns, when they get out, they're out, right? They go away. Not the case at Iowa Falls.

No. I think we're all proud to be from Iowa Falls. I think there's an immense part of pride and there's, you know, my best friends are still back there, and we all take care of each other. It was a great story just last week, our high school track coach. I graduated in 1979 from high school and my class, they won two consecutive state championships in track. And so a group of us got together and donated money for a scholarship to kids from our high school to go to college in the name of our track coach, who's now in his 90s. And they went back to honor him. I didn't go, but all my buddies did. There's just an immense sense of pride in the way we grew up there. And it's incredible. I mean, I've lived in Miami for almost 30 some years, but Iowa Falls is home.

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. You've been there almost 30 years. Now. Here's my question. Iowa Falls and the influence it had on you, how much of an impact did that have on your journey, professional journey, in terms of who you wanted to work for? Right. Who you surround yourself with, how you went about your business and who you got connected to.

It goes back to my parents. As I told you, I had great teachers in high school. I had a very good high school basketball coach. Bob White was a good coach. We went to state tournament my junior year. We were ranked number one in the state. My senior year. We were good. Got great guidance from him and then. But my dad had been a coach when I was a kid and so many got out and went into the car business. But I still wanted to coach. I wanted to be like my dad from when I was younger. And so my dad was great about supporting me and giving me advice like, if you want to coach in college, here's the path you need to take. My high school coach supported it as well. So I went to Iowa State as a walk on. I could have gone to a couple of junior colleges. I wasn't a very good player because I was so slow. But I had a couple of junior college scholarships. I had a couple of Division 2 partial scholarships. But I really wanted to coach. So I thought the best thing to do was to go be a walk on. So I did it Iowa State because I wanted to be around Division 1 basketball because I thought that that was the way I was going to learn. If I was going to get into that Division 1 basketball as a coach, I needed to learn Division 1 basketball as I was coming up. And it worked. I mean, went to Iowa State, I walked on for two years. And then Johnny Orr came in to be the head coach and he started recruiting really good talent. I wasn't going to be good enough to make the team and I knew it. I hope I was a good teammate. Tell you a funny story, coach, or would used to say, all right, everybody get a man. And to go full court, one on one. And 14 guys in unison would say, I got Scott. They were going to blow by me. And I couldn't go by them. So they wanted me as their partner in full court, one on one. But then I became a graduate assistant at University of Iowa. And then that set me on my coaching path.

And what a path it is. And I think it's a great place to jump in when we start talking about Iowa. But first of all, did you ever think back then that all of a sudden, what seems like to you and I, 1000 years later you'd be working for an organization that won an NBA championship?

No.

What was that like? When you reflect back on every stop along the journey, right. There's something Coach Reveling said, like, your next job's not the destination. It' just another stop along the journey. Something along those lines. But what was it like? Was it surreal or was it expected or how'd that be?

It was surreal. Anybody that's ever been a part of something like that would probably tell you the same thing. Like, you almost can't believe it. I wish we could do it again because, like, there's things that I wish I would have done or I, you know, like, why didn't I get somebody to sign that night? But it was so surreal. You didn't. I. You didn't know what you were doing. But it was quite a thrill. And for me, at that point, I would have been in basketball, what, 39 years. I mean, we had won conference championships at places that I was at. We'd gone deep into the NCAA tournament, never gotten to a final four as a coach, got to the elite eight, was around great. You know, I coached 17 NBA players. And when I was coaching College bowl, it just took to be at the pinnacle. It's. You can't describe it. And it was such a thrill. But the thing that I look back on, like, I got back to the hotel and my wife and I were sitting having a glass of wine and it like 3:00 in the morning, you know, because we. This victory celebration was amazing in and of itself. In the locker room we went. There were I think over 500 bottles of champagne. You know, they weren't all drunk, they were throwing all over. But it's incredible. But I sat there with my wife and I was just kind of reflecting with her and I said, I can't believe that I'm going to experience this. But then I told her, you know, I was out of a job five different times in the journey. I'd been fired three different places before I got there. I was a volunteer assistant when I was coaching in college for two years. I made no money. If it hadn't have been for my parents supporting me, I couldn't have done it. I think for me, the reflection as I look back was the price I paid to get to that. Because there's very few people that have experienced something like that that haven't gone through a major, major, major hiccup along the way. For me, multiple hiccups, multiple fired, you know, divorce, having no money along the way Inever quit.

Did all those events pour into the resilience that you had in your career? Right. Like your ability to kind of reframe it? Like, okay, this is the reality of the current situation. What's next? Like, how did you handle those? Like, how did you keep persisting through it? Because there's so many other things that you'd be wildly successful at. But what was it that kept you down that path to basketball?

Well, number one, I love it. I love the game. I was determined to be a head coach in Division one. And then I. That in a weird way, that went away. I got in the NBA and I got in the NBA, not because I wanted to. I got in by accident. When Leonard Hamilton I was working for, who is a phenomenal boss at University of Miami, one of the two best bosses I ever worked with. And when he took the job to coach the Washington Wizards in 2000, and he told me he wanted to go, he wanted me to go with him, and he wanted me to go as a scout, and I kind of didn't want to do it. But it was June. If I didn't go with him, the new coach wasn't going to keep me. And in June, there wasn't. I wasn't going to get a job. I had no money because I kind of had to. And then I. After one year, I loved it. And I didn't really have a desire to go back into coaching. But the thing that happened. Did I get frustrated along the way? Yes. Did I ever think, man, what am I doing? I like, I'm out of a job again. Yes, I did. But I think I had this in my mind. Like, I am not going to let somebody else define who I am. I'm not going to let that guy fired me. It was personal. But I'm not going to let that get me down. I'm going to. I'm going to prove that he made a mistake. So I think I was very determined along the way to make my own path. And I had great mentors, like between my parents, George Raveling and Leonard Hamilton. Those guys in particular, they were so influential to me. And they never. Those guys, Leonard and George in particular, were. They were so supportive of me and, and encouraged me along the way. And when I, you know, George was the first boss I ever worked for. And my first time and I was out of a job, he told me to come back to work for him. And then I went along the way a few years, and then I. I get hooked up with Leonard, and then I make a move. I go back, I go to a school, I get fired there. Leonard calls me and says, why don't you come back with me? And then I go to another opportunity and I get fired. And one of my former bosses in the NBA, Rod Higgins, who was a terrific boss, called me and said, hey, why don't you come back to work for me? Three times when I got let go, it was always a former boss that hired me back. So it was encouraging to me, Ed, because I had the ability to say, if I was so bad, why is a former boss bringing me back?

Yeah. So it speaks volumes about you, right? Speaks volumes about you and them as well.

I always appreciated those guys throwing me a lifeline. But it was encouraging to me that, hey, if I was as bad as that guy says I am, why would George Raveling or Leonard Hamilton or Rod Higgins bring me back? And that kept me going.

Speaking of Coach Raveling, congratulations on the successful release of Unraveling George. I loved it. I wish it was about five to seven hours longer because there's so much to tell. Obviously, you and I have talking at length about Coach Raveling and what he meant to you and your world. How did that relationship evolve from boss to mentor to your closest and dearest and most trusted friend?

Yeah, it's a great question. So when I went to work for him, you know, I'm 22 years old, I'm a graduate assistant. He's upcoming assistant coach of the 84 Olympic team is, you know, and I had an office downstairs in a corner in the Carver Hawkeye Arena. And there was another assistant, a guy named Bob Watson, who, Who became. He was my roommate, became a great friend of mine. And Bob had worked with George in. At Washington State and came with George. So Bob and I shared an office and we're roommates. And so Bob was the one who, whenever George would come down and ask Bob if he wanted to go to. George was single, and Bob was single and I was single. So George would come down and say, bob, you want to go to dinner? And he'd say, yeah, can we bring Scott? Well, of Course. And so then I tag along all the time, and then Bob leaves, and then I become the guy that goes to dinner with George every night. So because we're both single and all the other guys were going home after work and going home to families. And so I think that's kind of how it works. Started and then it never stopped. Because if anybody knew George Raveling, if you had a friend with him, you had. You were a friend for life.

Yeah. And what were those conversations? Life early in your career?

Oh, there were so many. The one thing that was great about George and I think it's what kind of in one way caused him to leave Iowa to go to sc, everybody. It was this controversial thing, why George left. And there was this, you know, innuendo that George left because it was racial, that there weren't enough black people in Iowa City or they didn't respect George because he was black. None of that was true. And in fact, George was adored by the fan base. And George loved coaching at Iowa. It was too much of a fishbowl. And if George went out to dinner, if George was in the grocery store, everybody wanted a piece of George. Everybody. And he didn't really enjoy that life. He was so well rounded. If we went to dinner, he. 98% of the time, he didn't want to talk about basketball. He wanted to talk about the latest book he read. And he wanted to, you know, hey, you need to watch this. You need to see this guy speak. He's like. He was the most well rounded head coach that I ever met in my life. His life outside of basketball. He, you know, the stories about him as a reader were legendary. Newspapers and books. He was a voracious reader and he shared. We would just go to dinner and he'd sit. He'd bring me two books and start pointing out things that were in the books, or he'd bring the newspaper and show me these articles. And that was what our dinners were. He was the greatest educator I ever knew. Not in a classroom setting. It was more in a common sense and practical setting.

Well, it was interesting. In the documentary you talked about on his door at Iowa, he actually had the word educator on there. What was that like? Like, what was that like with the players? When you guys had players from everywhere coming in Iowa City? Right. It was an absolute melting pot. Yeah, what's that?

We had great players.

Oh, you guys were loaded.

We had one recruiting class. Every single guy in the recruiting class played in the NBA. Five guys.

Was that Marble Horton, B.J.

marble Horton, B.J. armstrong, Kevin Gamble and Les Jepsen. It was one of the few recruiting classes ever in the history of college basketball. Every single guy played in the NBA. Yeah. Yeah.

That's unbelievable.

Yeah, we were good.

You spent that time in very, like, very influential time of your career at that stage of the game. Over the years, how did your conversation switch to. Of things where, like, he would guide you? Because here's the thing that amazed me about Coach Ravlin, amongst other things, is he touched so many people's lives, right. And they did not do him justice in the movie Air. And the influence he had and the impact he had, I should say, I'm Michael, right. But he had so much impact on so many people, but different types of people from different walks of life, from different backgrounds. It wasn't like he just leaned into the way he was raised in D.C. and the poverty that he experienced. That wasn't the crux of every conversation he had. There was so much more to him. And obviously that shaped him and helped define him. But what was that like as you played out, as things played out in your career and your conversations, like, started being like, is this a good job to take? Is this a good person to work for? Is this a group? And then I'll. Of a sudden, you know, you're out of coaching, you're in the NBA. He's, you know, working for Nike as an executive. How did that all evolve then? What did that become?

There's a lot to unpack there. You went back to the educator on the door, you know, and at heart, that's what he was. Because he. He was unbelievable at wanting to pass on lessons. Very rarely. And it got even more so later in his life. Very rarely would he ever show up at dinner with anybody without a book to give to somebody for them to read. When I was coaching for him, every single day, every day. Not one day in four years that I worked for him, did he not at practice, pass out a series of articles for the players to read that had nothing to do with basketball? They were all him attempting to give them life lessons. If I have a sadness about college basketball today, it's the older school. Coaches viewed themselves as preparing people for life after basketball. I don't know that that's going on as much. I think, you know, there are groups of guys that do try to do it, but now it's so transactional because it's all about the money. And everybody just gets up and leaves every year. Players don't stay anywhere. Four years in my era, and With George and then with Leonard, that took. They viewed themselves as influential people in those players lives. They wanted that kid to succeed when he was done playing basketball. And George was the best at that. Leonard was incredible at that. As I watched that evolve, I realized that he was doing that for me, too. It wasn't just our players. He was doing it for his assistant coaches. And so I realized then George is my parents, and then George is my bellwether. Man, I'm not going to do anything without leaning on George for advice. I never made one professional move in my life without asking George first.

And now that he's gone, that voice is still there. How do you lean into that Right when you're making decisions or you're thinking through something?

That's a great question. I still want to call him every night. My mother passed away in October, and George had just died about two months before that. So it kind of rocked me a little bit because it was my two at that point. My dad had passed away 11 years ago, and so that now the three most influential people in my life were all gone. So it was hard. But I also know I have a pretty good idea now what he would say. He was incredible.

I see it in you now when we have conversations and how gracious you are with your time. How do you pay it forward? Right. The lessons your mom's instilled you in your relationship with George and how you saw him do things. I've got to believe over the years, that influenced how you helped younger guys in the business. Right. Or, you know, help guys that were struggling in the business.

Yeah. I used to go to lunch or dinner with George a lot, you know, and both at USC and at Iowa, and George was notorious. He picked up every check. And we were at lunch one day. It was when I. We were at Iowa, and it was just he and I. And they brought the check, and I reached for the check. I felt bad because he was always picking up the check every day, reach for the check. And I'm like, coach, let me get this today. Well, the funny part about it is I didn't have enough money to pay for it in my pocket. I was a graduate assistant. I was making no money. I didn't have enough cash in my. And I had no credit card. Like, if. If he would have said, okay, I don't know what I would have done. I'd have had to go back to the manager, say, I forgot my wallet. I'll bring it back later. But anyway, he goes, no, you're not allowed to Pay for lunch. And he took the check back for me. I said, coach, you pay for lunch every day, and after all you've done for me, I want to do something to repay you. And he said, scott, you can never. There's no way you can ever repay me. And that's not what this is about. And he said, but I want you to remember this. This was when I was 23 years old. He said, you don't need to repay me. I do. Really? Well, you do this for somebody else when you're able to do it and pay it forward, Right? And so I never forgot it. And that lesson. I've never forgot it. And then I'm going to tell you one other story that kind of summarizes George to a T. We were at usc, and there was a guy writing a book about a character in basketball, too.

T.J. cicerone. Absolutely.

Yeah. Tom Cirancion.

It was one of these things, right? When he warmed up the fingertips.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The jab step, you know, the Pittsburgh.

Was he. The Pitts, streets of Pittsburgh legend was at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Guy. And so there was a guy writing a book about Tudy. It was going to be a boy of all a dream or something. I think that was the title. And so they went and they asked George to put up the money to write the book. And it was a lot of money in 1989, as memory serves me right, it was like $10,000 or something, but it was. It was a lot of money, right? And George told his secretary to write. Write the check. And I said, george, what are you doing? Why would you do that? And he goes, well, you know, they asked me to do it, and. And I said, george, nobody's going to buy that book. You're never going to get your money back. And George said something to me that was. It made a profound impact on me. He said, scott, here's the thing. He said, do you give because you have, or do you have because you give? And he said, we'll never know the answer to that question. And he said, but for right now, I'll choose to give because I have and because it's important to somebody else. And that made an impact on me. And I think now as I look at it all these years later, the reason he had so much was because he was so giving. It's kind of biblical in a way, Ed, but to me, it really is the story of the more you give, the more you're going to get, but you got to give for the right reasons. You can't do it to be selfish. You got to give because it's right. And I had to learn that so much from George.

Yeah. I mean, you see so many people that give, and they want to reciprocate it. Right. But that's not the one that's at the heart of.

Yeah. Another thing. George told me one time I. He had done something for me, and I called him to say thank you, and I said, george, you just keep doing so much for me. How can I pay you? And he said, I don't keep score. Like, that's another moment in my life where I was just like, wow, this guy is just such a life teacher, you know? And. And so as a result of that, I never try to keep score in anything. If I give something, it's for the right reasons. I don't need anything back. That's all because of George.

One thing I always was curious about is I watched Unraveling George. I was very curious about. And they sort of. They talked about it. They went in a little bit of detail, but his accident when he was at usc, the car accident on his way to pick up the recruit. Someone who does so much in hearing the stories that you're telling, right. And does things the right way for the right reasons and wants to have an impact, you know, even more on his kids off the court than he does on the court. And then something like that happens at usc, and they just had a heck of a year, Right. Had a great crew. Did he ever get bitter? Did he ever, like, step back and was he ever angry? Because, I mean, he went through some stuff in his coaching career from the outside looking in, it didn't seem like he ever wavered from who he was and what he believed in.

No, he was never bitter. Not that I ever saw. And I think if anybody would have seen it, I would have seen. But did he have challenges along the way? He did. I think he. At the time, he had had. The AD that had hired him at USC had departed, and he had a great relationship with him. And I. I think he didn't have as good a relationship with the next boss. But at the same time, I never. One sense of bitterness. He was always the eternal optimist. I think it went back to George's roots of being poor, black, and during segregation. And he made his way through that in an incredible way. I mean, the story of how he ended up finding his way to go to a boarding school, you know, George's mother had had a nervous breakdown when he was young. So his grandmother raised him, and then his grandmother worked for a guy doing some house cleaning. And that guy took a liking to George. And he's the one that paid for George to go away to boarding school, which ended up landing him a scholarship in Villanova. It was somebody else who looked at. So I think George was always appreciative of that. And then as he ascends to the heights that he did in the basketball world, he realized, I beat the odds.

Yeah.

I think once he realized he beat the odds, he was. He never was going to let himself be bitter.

Well, his hall of Fame speech was great. When he said what his grandmother had told him. Dear, how did it go? It's about the bridge. Never forget the bridge that brought you here. Never forget the bridge that got the bridges that got you across. That was so significant. Now for you, as you pay it forward, right. As you do so well, how did that change the meaning of that for you? Change. When you're a college coach, it's a little bit cut and dry like the players, right. The impact you can have on the players that you see on a daily basis. Okay. Whether it's in your office, whether it's on campus, whether it's in practice, whatever. And now you get into the NBA where you're scouting, whether you're direct or player personnel, whether you're headed whatever roles you had at the time, your relationships change a little bit now, right? It's not as much access to the players in your program, your organization in the NBA. How did that change for you? Like, what were the ways that you were intentional about doing that in your roles while you've been in the NBA?

I'll back up to my coaching career. And I coached 17 years in college. I wish I could do it all over again. I'd be so much of a better coach now than I was then because I didn't understand the value of relationships to the point that I do now. As I look back on my coaching career, I think it was all well intentioned. There was nothing sinister about it. I was probably too aggressive at times. If I could coach today, I'd be much softer on the players. I think I came up still accountable, like.

Right. You still hold them accountable. But.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think I came up in an era or I thought that the right thing to do was to be hard on the players. And I think it was. Certainly it doesn't fly today, but even then I probably. There's occasions I look back and say, God, I can't believe I said that, you know, or I fight a dollar

for every time I thought that.

But it was well intentioned. I was trying to make the players better rate, but I think I would today I would be much closer to the players than I was. And I have some players that I'm still close with, but I wish there were more because I really valued that and I was much better at it. I'll tell you. I was much better at it. Of my 17 years, the two best years of coaching I had were my last two years. The best relationships I had with our players, best team, well, second best team that I was ever a part of. And I would tell you that I think I was a better coach because I had gotten fired at the previous stop and I think it softened me a little bit in a good way. I value those relationships with those players so much today. And I just look back and I think, you know, the thing I miss about coaching more than anything else and I, I loved practice, I loved game preparation. My. One of my things. I, I was one of my biggest challenges. It was game preparation, like what is it going to take for us to beat whatever school developing the game plan. And I, I love scouting opponents and trying to figure out what it was going to take. And early in my career I did a terrible job because I thought that the whole thing was the players were supposed to listen to me speak the whole time. And by my last four years of coaching, I realized it didn't matter how much I talked, it mattered how much the players heard. And so I started my last four years of coaching. I don't know. That shows you how I'm not a very smart guy. Took me 13 years to figure out I needed to start asking more questions and not talking so much and make them tell me what the answers to the test are. And I got better at that. But then our last two years when we were really good, I missed that. But more than anything else, to me, the greatest thing in sport is a conference road win. When you go and win a game in the conference on the road, it's such a joy because it's just you against them and the better the opponent. I mean, when my last two years we beat, beat Connecticut at Connecticut in Gampel two consecutive years, the one of the years they won the national championship, we wouldn't have needed a plane to fly home. We could have just put our arms up in the air, taken off and gotten home. It was, it was so great, that thrill of getting on the bus with the players and high five and that's just the joy of a road win in the league. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like a win in the NCAA tournament and getting ready for the next game. That was fun. I really missed that. But I do wish that I was more impactful in the players lives than I was.

It's funny, you talk about road wins, right? Like when you listen to the silence, that was the best. Like you could hear any. You could hear every conversation in the arena and just. Just you guys. But it's hard when you look back and say it. You probably had more of an impact on kids than you thought, right? And.

Oh, I hope, I hope.

Yeah, it's funny because one of the. One of the bigger influences on me who actually knocked some sense into me, Jim Weitzel, and I'll never forget it. We're playing Southern Indiana. Bruce Pearl's there. They're number one or two in the country. We had just beaten Wesleyan at Wesleyan, and we had a transfer who. Division one transfer, very good player. I thought was a cancer in the locker room. I did. I was 23 years old to me or 24 years old to me. I thought I was still a player, right? And one of the kids that played for my dad, a point guard that we kind of stole, was the one in the locker next to him in the locker room at Southern Indiana, was kind of stuck listening to him. So I lost my mind on the kid, right? And I said, you're. You're acting like a bunch of dogs. So Jim pulls me out, and this is about the 5,000th piece of wisdom that he gave me that I still pass on to my kids. And he said, listen, man, they may be dogs, but there are dogs. We got to figure it out. And I just. I stopped, like, it just all of a sudden. But hearing you talk about the last two years of your career, and this is a question that I'll find so interesting. What did that do for you personally when you knew that you were more. Softer might not be the word. Right. But you were a little bit more laid back, you were a little bit more observant, a little bit more curious, and you weren't just doing all the talking. How did you feel personally in those last two years? Was it more fulfilling? Was it less stressful? Did you have more access to thinking clearly? What was that like?

Oh, yeah, I felt very much so that I was doing a better job than I had, I tell you. So I used to, as I said, I started asking a lot of questions. So when we would Go to shoot around the day of the game. If I had to scout, my thing was like two days before, I'll do most of the talking. The day before the game, I'm going to do no more than half the talk. And then at shoot around, I'm not going to do any talking. I'm going to let the players give the answers to the test so I know that they know what to do, right? So we would go. We'd be shooting around. I'd say, okay, get in. They're going to run this five up. Okay, what are they going to do and how are we going to guard it? And then I had the players tell me, right? So the very first shoot around, we had. And then we would go to pregame meal. And then I would do that even more. Well, at the pregame meal, if a kid didn't give the right answer to the question, I would. And I wouldn't cuss at him, but I would embarrass him in front of his teammates. I wouldn't embarrass him to the point where they hated me, but I would say, come on, man, Ed, you better get with it or you're going to get torched if you don't know the answer to that question. So our very first home game, one of our veteran players, we were walking to pregame meal. He had no idea that I was walking right behind him and he was walking with a freshman. First home game, then I had to scout. And he said to this freshman, James, let me tell you something. When Coach Howard has the scouting report, you better pay attention, because after the pregame meal, he's going to ask a bunch of questions. He's going to ask at least one to every player. And if he doesn't, if you don't know the answer to the question, he's going to embarrass the hell out of you. And I heard it. I was proud. It made me happy because I felt, you know what? I am getting through to those guys. And he wasn't saying in a way of like, man, coach is an ass. He was just saying he's demanding, and you're going to expose yourself if you don't have the right answer. And so at that point, I was like, okay, maybe I'm getting through to him a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, isn't it funny? And he didn't know. Did you let him know that you were behind him or did you just kind of.

Oh, no, no, no. I just let him have that moment. I didn't want to, you know, Because I didn't want him to feel that I was like eavesdropping on his conversation. Either I just happened to be behind him or heard him say it.

It's funny you bring up that story, you know, Kevin McKenna obviously.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin played for my dad in 76 and 77. So it was my dad's first year of Palatine. Kevin senior year. And they went to Arlington High School who was absolutely loaded. And Kevin I think was one of two or three seniors. They had a bunch of younger guys on the team and there was a sophomore and they were standing next to him. And I don't think Kevin knew my dad was standing behind him and had places packed like they used to do at high school basketball games here in Illinois. And they had lost to Arlington at home by a bunch. And a team that they had drilled was main handling Arlington at Arlington, something like that. Right. And Kevin being Kevin put his arm around him and it was one of those, it was one of those defining moments as a coach. You realize you're getting through to kids. And he said, see, we can kick their ass, we can do this. And I'll never forget that. But it's so, it's so interesting you bring up that story. How does that with what you do now in the NBA. And I saw the picture of you holding that trophy and I'm bringing it back full circle holding that trophy when you guys wanted the Nuggets. And I, and I read some of the, you know, great things that you said in the articles. But how do you know that you're contributing what you need to contribute in your role with the Nuggets? Like how do you do that and how does that communicate it to you? When I start to think about big organizations, how does that happen?

It's kind of funny because every once, you know, the biggest problem I have answering that question is it's free flowing. And like, because I don't live, I don't live in Denver, I live in Miami. So I'm not around the team every day, I'm not in the office every day. I think it would be easier for me to describe. Oh, this is how I know. Because every day my boss comes in and tells me he needs xyz. And in some ways I'm more of a consultant in some ways. Now they treat me great, don't get me wrong, but I'm just not involved on the day to day basis because I don't live there. Right. But the way I do feel that I have an impact, number one is they keep extending my contract, and every two weeks, they keep paying me. That's a positive sign, and that's really important, you know, but, you know, I get such positive feedback from my bosses. And me personally. I'm not needy in one way. Like, I don't need much, but what does drive me is validation. It was one of the greatest experiences working for George Raveling. When I worked for George, if you did a good job on a scouting report, he wrote a note to you and dropped it in your box. A great job last night. That's why we won. Like every. He gave constant validation. And that was early in my career, right. And so that helped me get going because I'm. I'm really, at my core, I'm a pleaser. I want to do a good job. I want to make my boss happy. I'm past the point in my life now where I'm trying to climb the ladder. I'm just trying to stay on the bus now at my age. Right. But what I'm really, really driven by is I'm driven by wanting to do something that. That matters. I'm past the point in my life of wanting to do something because it's exciting.

Right.

I don't care about. I don't need to go to that game because it doesn't matter. But if it matters, it's really important to me to make a difference. And so with my bosses, I have multiple bosses in Denver now. They give me great feedback. I don't do great getting my brains beat in. I get. I personally succeed more with praise than I do somebody saying something negative. And my. My guys are so good about that.

Are there still leaders out there in the league that do do that? They'll just pound on people?

Oh, yeah. Not as many as they used to be. But it's hard because to say I've had people that pounded on me, but I've had. I've had bosses in the NBA that were negative in their feedback. You know, Constant didn't give you much positive feedback. And, you know, that works for some guys. It doesn't work for me.

Before we wrap this up, and again, thank you for being so gracious with your time because I do have one really challenging question for you. Trust me, it's challenging. Okay, we're going to put the link to unraveling George in the show notes. Where can people find out more about Scott, Right. And follow you in Your Career? Is LinkedIn primary where you are?

Actually, that's the only place I am on social media. I have zero presence on social media.

No, TikTok.

I know it's really weird if people, you know, scold me from time to time because I don't, I don't even have Twitter on my. I have enough going on in my life and I want to live a little bit more of a simpler life. And so there's part of social media to me, because I don't do it, but there's part of social media that's great. And then there's part of social media that to me it's like, what are you doing? Who cares? The social influencer phenomena, it's mind boggling to me. Who cares what these people think? At 65 now, I've pretty much figured out what makes me tick and I don't need somebody else to tell me where I ought to go to dinner. I'll figure it out. And so I just don't have a presence, Ed. I don't think there's.

But you know what's funny about that is, you know, it's fueling so much of the nil deals, right? But it's what scares the heck out of me. With my kids 13 and 11. I mean, it's such a, it's such a big part of their life, you know, and me being a little bit older dad, why are they going to listen to me when I tell them how to navigate social media? You know, they're going to look at me. Even though we have it, you know, for our organization and personally for the podcast, it just kind of. When you reverse engineer your career in life in general, it's like, what are the priorities and what are the simple things? Simple is better, simple is more. Which leads me to my last question. If you were to identify the best book, the most impactful book that Coach Ravling ever gave you that you still have a copy of somewhere, you may not have a copy, you may have passed it on. What would that book be?

The Winner Within. Pat Riley.

Yeah, tell me about that book and what that. I mean, just. And that was, you know, it's funny you remember things about books, but there's so much in that book.

And then his book Showtime was great. Pat Riley was one of my mentors. But the Winner within was a book about him going and coaching the New York Knicks and the steps it took to build a championship level team. And it was like he had these. Every chapter was a new thing and he had like, you know, you had the. I believe I don't have every chapter memorized, but it was like the innocent climb Where a team got good, you know, they coming from the ashes and they got good kind of innocently, nobody expected much. And then they get really good. And then there was one of the chapters was called the Disease of Me where all of a sudden, player, somebody would take credit for the team getting good when it was, when they were making the rise. And so you had to get rid of the disease in me and get it back to the core covenant, which the core covenant was we're all in this together. This isn't about anybody, this isn't about me, this is about us. And then you get really good and you're strong and then at some point the core covenant breaks and then you gotta start all over again. That was basically the premise of the book. But it was great stories, great challenges, and he had. It was a really impactful book for me in my personal life as well as in my coaching career. Showtime was another one he had. Pat Riley had a chapter about, I believe the title of it was to be Motivated by, to have, not to be. And he would say that if players that are motivated by have, like, I want to have a nice car, I want to have a bigger whatever, they're going to end up failing. If you're motivated to be the best, to be the best point guard, to be the best husband, all the haves will come along with it. It was a great chapter.

Yeah, that's right. What was it like to have Pat Riley as a mentor? Like, what was the influence on you?

I wanted to look like him

and

if you look at my hair, it didn't work. But I think he was just the way that Pat Riley had to manage. Big ego players, I think could be telling to any business leader, you know, because, I mean, here he's here he coaching Magic and Kareem and Worthy and Perkins and all those guys. And then he goes to the Knicks and he's got to see he's got Patrick Ewing and then he comes down here and now all of a sudden he's got Alonzo Mooring and Dwyane Wade. I mean, like he's got these monster personalities and he was able in his leadership way to always get those guys to surrender for the greater good. And they, they were all championship teams multiple times over, I guess, with the exception of the Knicks. But I thought he was probably the greatest mental coach of any coach that I studied of getting players to surrender.

You know, it's funny you say that because one of the things that I remember about Showtime, I remember I was at Creighton When I read it, okay. And one of the things that stuck out with me was when he was so concerned with. They were losing road games. Like, what is it on the road? Right? So he started buying really nice towels for the guys so they would. It was. It'd be like using the same towels they use at home. Like, he wanted the road to be like, home. And that was kind of really early on. I was still playing, but as I got into coaching, it was like, how can we make our players most comfortable so we can make them uncomfortable, we can push them a little bit so that they trust us, and what are the things that we can provide for them that'll get them to a place where we can access their potential? That was one. Like, everyone always saw the slick back here, the hair, the Armani suits. He was so ahead of his time with that. And I was always curious to watch him when he went to New York and then to Miami. I mean, he's been in it a thousand years and still just keeps thinking of new things.

He told me the story. I was with him one time in Charlotte, and he and I were together, and I took him into our locker room. I was helping him. He wanted to watch his game. And so I took him down into our locker room when I was working in Charlotte, and I got his game up on the big screen for him. Couldn't tell you how the story comes up, but he tells a story about when he was this. He had gotten out of coaching by now, and he was running the front office. But this was when he told a story about when he was coaching. One of the players had made a comment anonymously in the paper that their practices were too hard, because he was notorious for having hard practices. The player had made an anonymous comment, and so he came in, he read it in the paper, and so he ordered 15 school desks for, like, elementary students and had them delivered to the arena. And they came in for practice one morning, and on the court, he had these school desks, and he said, okay, now, what I've learned here is that you guys think I'm too hard on you. So because I'm too hard on you, we're not going to practice today, but you're being paid, so you are going to work. So you're going to now listen to the scouting report in your desk. But he had him in these elementary school desks.

Was he with the Lakers when he did this? Or the Knicks, or what was it? With the Heat? Oh, okay. So he was with the Heat at this time.

He Said my goal was to end up telling them they're acting like a bunch of little children. You're an adult. We're paying you millions of dollars, and you're complaining that you're having to work too hard. That's bs. So you're acting like a little kid. So he said, I started treating them like they're a little kid. I put them in school desks. And he said, I had a lesson. And he said, then about half hour went by. He pulls out these little mats. And he said, okay, it's time for you to lay down and take a nap. And so then they got up and they came back and sat in a chair. And then he showed another scattering. Then he came by with a brown bag with like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple. And he told him, now here it's you guys. It's time for lunchtime. So now all. There's some. Here comes his elementary school lunch, right? And one of the players goes, coach, we got it. We got it. And he said, I never heard a word again about how hard our practices were. And I thought it was brilliant.

You know, it was probably about two minutes in, they realized what he was doing, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How does he keep it going? I just read some stuff. I don't know what I was. Where I was reading whether it was ESPN or when the NBA or the Athletic. Today, he still has the edge, right? I'm not stepping down, retiring. I'm not walking around. I. I'm as pissed as everybody else is about where we're at. Like, how does he still have that? He's accomplished so much.

If you ever were around him, you can't believe how sharp he is at his age. I mean, he is. He is razor sharp. And he's got a. He's got a great organization. I mean, the people he has surrounded himself with are incredible. I mean, his coach is as good a coach as there is in the world. Eric Spoelstrom. But it all comes from Pat. It all comes from a singular. You know, if you look at all the great pro sports franchises and college, too, I mean, there's a clear leader. One of the problems in that I've seen in my time in pro sports especially is the best day you can ever have in a lot of pro sports teams is the day that the general manager introduces the head coach at the press conference. That's the one day where it looks like they're all aligned. And then from then on, it goes downhill most of the time because the general manager is mad because the team is losing. And so he's saying, I put together a great roster and the coach can't coach. And the coach says, I'm coaching my brains out. Look at this roster. How can I win with those guys? And then there becomes a disconnect, and then there's a firing. They just cycle through that. And in the great organizations, there is not that. There is 100% alignment. And that's what they have in. You know, they have that in Oklahoma City. They have that. They have that in Miami, they have that in San Antonio. There's a clear direction.

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny you wrapping up with that, because that's one of the things that I wrote down I was really curious about is how do you do that? How do you do that in the NBA? There's so many. There's a lot of ego. There's players, there's coaches, there's executives being pulled in different directions for different reasons. How do you get aligned on the mission and purpose and be able to stay true to that on a daily basis? Like, that's got to be incredibly challenging to do.

Yeah. I think if it started with one thing, it starts with trust. And it's just we won the championship in Denver three years ago, and the. But the previous general manager, it was not. It's Tim Conley who's in Minnesota now, who was. Who's a genius. I mean, he's literally. I'm telling you, I think he's got a photographic memory. He's brilliant. And Tim had left. And then we win the. We win the championship the year before or the year after. And. But the organization that Tim built, he hired Mike Malone. And Tim and. And Mike had a very good relationship, and Mo trusted Tim. And so when things would go a little wonky, which they always do in pro sports, it's going to. You play 82 games in basketball, I play 162 games in. In baseball, you're going to have losing streaks, you're going to have bad losses, you're going to have blown coverages at the end of the game that you're, you know, you want to beat yourself up, but you can't lose the trust of what the direction is. And the minute you start playing the blame game, it's over, man. When the coach starts blaming the general manager or the man. General manager starts blaming the coach for a loss or a losing streak or whatever, it's just not going to work. And that doesn't happen when you trust each other. And when you don't trust each other, the blame game starts, and then it's. You're gonna lose a lot more.

And that's usually a sign that things are starting to unravel. Right. When they start blaming each other. White fingers.

Yeah, I think that's. It goes back to Pat Riley's book, the Disease of Me and the. And the core covenant breaking. And when the core covenant breaks, the trust is all gone.

Yeah. You've done such a great job of allowing people, mentors into your life to pour into you. Right. And there's a lot of. There's a lot of. And it's not just coach. You see it in the business world where there's so much pressure on people. They feel like they need to come up with the answers. Like, the vulnerability piece, you know, that's so critical, is not there at all. How were you able to do that? Like, how are you able to just be a sponge around the Pat Rileys, the Leonard Hamiltons, the George Ravelings and other. Other people in your world?

Well, I think the worst part was I realized. I realized at a very early age I'm not very smart. I'm not book smart. And so I. If I'm going to make it, I better listen to somebody else because I. I don't have my own knowledge. And so I, I was going to borrow other people's brilliance to try to get ahead. And I heard Chris Del Conte is the athletic director at Texas one time, and he said, I look at R and D, so most people think R and D is research and design. I think it's rip off and duplicate. And so I think I, at a pretty early age, I started trying to rip off and duplicate what other people that I viewed as successful were doing, because I didn't think that I probably had the capability of pulling it off myself. And so I think that's what influenced me, is the successful people that were around me. And I was so lucky to work for George and work for Leonard and work for Michael Jordan and Rod Higgins. People that were successful in their own right that teach me how to do it, you know. And then the other thing I learned too, Ed, was that. And I didn't really discover this until later in my life, but your mentors don't have to always be older than you. Your mentors can be younger than you. I saw that happen with my. With my dad. The guy that got my dick. My dad, into the car business was a. Was younger than him. And he became my dad's mentor. Even though he was about 40 years younger than my dad or 30 years younger than my dad. And now I look and like Tim Conley, who's a lot younger than me, as a mentor to me, I just let successful people influence the way I think.

That's awesome. So much amazing stuff, Scott. Thank you so much for taking the time. You are more than gracious with your time.

Well, I enjoy sharing the one thing. As I said, George had such an impact on my life, and he talked about that, you know, you got to help people and you got to pass it along. So I'm happy to do it, and I'm happy to reconnect with you.You're a good friend, and I'm just, as I told you at the outset, I'll close with it, but I'm just. I'm so proud of you.

Thanks, Scott. That means the world coming from you.

All right, buddy

All right. Thank you for listening to the Athletics of Business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathleticsofbusiness.com now get out there, think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.