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Color announcer1/4/2024 And Nelly - I heard Chris Mullen say this when Nelly was inducted into the Hall of Fame, that Don Nelson could win a game by himself with his decision-making. They were able to make adjustments in-game that worked. I learned a bunch from Don Nelson, I learned a bunch from Bill Fitch - these guys who had been around the game for a long time and saw it in a three-dimensional, whole different kind of way. When I played for Nelly, he was an in-game adjustment genius. And to me, that is one of the things Rick Adelman does well - he is able to help players. They are struggling.’ Or, ‘ We’ve got to help them.’ When I hear NBA players complaining about coaches, a lot of times it is about there not being a lot of help for them during in-game situations when they are struggling. Cheryl is really into saying, ‘I gotta help them. When we announcers are sitting there during timeouts, we’re saying, ‘Well, obviously this guy needs to be in the game or do this on the court.’ But to be able to tell guys what to do during the timeout, you have to be thinking about that before the timeout. But in-game, at floor level, as the stuff is happening, it is a different game, I’m telling you. Or after watching video five games in a row of a team you are going to play, it is easy to say, within the parameters of possibility, what’s probably going to happen. Because there are a lot of guys who can sit there and watch video and tell you what happened after the fact. To me, making adjustments in coaching - recognizing what is going on and then adjusting to it during the game - I think is the hardest thing in coaching. And you know, I have always known that and known when you can see it, but to really run an inspection of what are they doing: How do they guard pick-and-rolls, how do they guard them on the wing, how do they guard different personnel? How do they guard drag from the middle of the floor? How do they defend back picks - do they switch? And just being able to see all that stuff is so helpful. Do they play behind? Do they double? All that stuff. On the other side of the ball, she wants to know how they guard pin-downs, how they guard staggers, how they guard post-ups. On the defensive side, she wants to know all the different actions, what they are trying to get out of each play, so I target all the actions for her. That was a very eye-opening experience for me. I learned so much more about the game from coaching it, breaking it down and thinking about, ‘How did I do that? When I caught the ball, what kind of footwork did I use? What was I thinking?’ Because that is the classic saying, right? To learn something, you’ve got to teach it. Working with those kids at Hopkins, I always tell players now, I wish I had coached when I was a player, even an AAU team or something. So they called me and said we have this color commentating job and would you be interested? I said, “Sure,” and I came down and did a demo and I started with Chad Hartman back in that lockout season that was my first year. And when the radio color commentator job opened up, Flip Saunders made the suggestion to the Timberwolves that, hey, I was back in town and that I’d be good for the job. So when I was coaching, I would see these guys, and reconnect with them. And Kevin McHale had a kid in seventh grade. Randy Wittman’s son was in seventh grade. Flip Saunders’ son Ryan was in seventh grade. On that team was the nephew of Bob Stein and after I was asked to do it, Bob Stein called me up and said he appreciated that I was able to help out. JP: To make a long story short, basically when I moved back from New York City after living there for a year, I was strong-armed into coaching a seventh-grade B team at Hopkins High School. Jim Petersen: This is my 15th year - I can’t believe it. MinnPost: How long have you been announcing hoops now? In today’s first part of what was an 80-minute phone interview, he explains how and why he developed that style. In a cheerleading realm where merely not insulting the intelligence of your viewers is considered noteworthy, Petersen is elevating our knowledge about what we watch. He identifies types of screens, explains why the back-cut did or didn’t work, and assumes you know weak and strong sides so he can use that time to unpack strategy, or, more than almost any of his peers, to call out his own team when they are playing poorly. Where some other announcers might venture into the realm of “screens,” “back cuts,” or the “weak side” of the court, Petersen takes it further. Second, for dogged fans of pro basketball who are both well-versed and yet still thirsty for knowledge about the strategies and inner workings of the game, it is clear that Petersen keeps getting better.
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