Not every interview sees the light of day right away.
Sometimes, as was the case with this discussion with Toronto Raptors assistant coach Phil Handy that took place at the start of their magical season and will finally be shared today, you have a great talk with someone and decide to save it for another time. And then, eight months later, the backdrop has changed in the kind of way that gives the conversation new life.
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Without further ado, meet the man who has more experience facing the Warriors in The Finals than anyone. And yes, in case you wondered, that includes LeBron James.
Before Handy joined Nick Nurse’s staff last summer, the man who grew up in Oakland Calif. and whose Raptors will now take on his hometown Golden State Warriors spent the previous five seasons as a Cleveland Cavaliers assistant. Translation: For the fifth consecutive Finals, it’s these dynastic Warriors on one side and Handy on the other.
It’s a claim no one else can make — let alone someone who just so happens to hail from The Town.
He was there under David Blatt when Golden State won it all in six games against the Cavs in 2015, and again a year later when — during Ty Lue’s debut season as head coach — Handy’s post-Game 2 speech to the team was credited with providing a spark as Cleveland pulled off that historic comeback from a 3-1 deficit. He was there in 2017 and 2018, too, when Kevin Durant joined the fray and the Warriors won eight of nine games in all (a five-game series followed by a sweep). And he’ll be there on Thursday, when Game 1 tips off in Toronto in this series that will serve as a final goodbye to the Warriors’ storied Oakland era (they move to the Chase Center in San Francisco next season).
But the Golden State tie-ins don’t end there for Handy. If not for Warriors associate head coach Mike Brown, who added Handy to his Lakers staff in 2011 and brought him to Cleveland when he became head coach for a second time there in 2013, he might never have made the jump to the NBA.
Long before Handy became one of the league’s most respected player development coaches, he was a retired player who started a basketball training business in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Walnut Creek. His playing career had been an enjoyable journey on its own, from going undrafted as a combo guard out of the University of Hawaii to an international run that took him from Israel to France, Italy, Germany, England (that’s where he first met Nurse while playing under him for the Manchester Giants of the British Basketball League) and Australia.
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It was 2003, and Handy had decided to become a coach. The private path was going quite well back then, as Handy worked with clients ranging from high schoolers to international prospects and NBA types (he has cited Tony Delk, Eddie House, Shawn Marion and Penny Hardaway in the past). But word tends to spread when you’re good at your chosen craft, and so it was here as well.
His work with Australians Patty Mills and Matthew Dellavedova during their time at nearby Saint Mary’s College (Moraga, Calif.) made a believer out of their longtime college coach, the Gaels’ Randy Bennett, who just so happened to be old friends with Brown. Never mind that Brown and Handy had no prior relationship — the trust between Brown and Bennett superseded all of that. And the rest, as Handy explains below, is history.
Handy, whose close relationships with LeBron and Kyrie Irving have been well-chronicled, has long since become a superstar savant of sorts. This distinction was on full display last August, of course, when he set the Internet ablaze by posting a workout pic that would soon become the unofficial promotional poster for NBA Free Agency, 2019.
No one knew what to make of it at the time, but there was something incredible about seeing the two biggest stars in the forthcoming free agency class, Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard, sharing a workout floor with the newest Lakers star who so badly needed a player of their caliber to come his way in the following summer in James. It didn’t take long for the fascinating image to spread, what with Handy boasting more than 80,000 followers on his “94 Feet of Game” Instagram page.
What’s more, a later picture that included Lakers legend Kobe Bryant sparked the curiosity even more.
To the basketball-loving masses, it was a window into the world of the hoops elite and a possible preview of future pairings. To Handy, who had agreed to join the Raptors just one month before, it was just another quality run and a chance to start building his relationship with his newest superstar co-worker in Leonard.
Nine months later, Handy is Finals-bound again with that familiar foe on the other side. And the picture that matters most to him, make no mistake, is the one of him holding the Eastern Conference trophy – again.
(The interview, which took place on Sept. 21, has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity).
So on Aug. 21, you put that picture up of a lot of the guys doing their thing. How rare is that kind of a run, and how many times over the course of a summer might you get that type of talent in the lab together?
Well, you know what Sam, I think for me, man, I’m just a purist at heart when it comes to basketball. I love the game, and obviously as an NBA coach there’s certain things during the season where we have our rivals. Obviously, I’ve been in Cleveland with LeBron and Kyrie and those guys for the last few years, and obviously Golden State is a rival of ours during the regular season. So I’m always trying to challenge – and I don’t even know if I want to use the word challenge, Sam – but I’m always trying to just help people open their minds to what we do in this industry in terms of coaches and players. During the season, we’re competitors, we’re rivals, and we’re trying to beat each other. But in the offseason man, I mean the NBA is a small family – it really is. And it’s a fraternity, and I think we’re all blessed to be a part of it, whether we’re coaches or players or trainers or anybody. And so, I’ve been trying to help people understand man, when it’s the offseason, guys want to get better, coaches want to work together and we’re all trying to continue to get better at our crafts.
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Me personally, I don’t really care what teams guys play for. I’m in the gym, and I’m going to be working guys out. I’m working with some of our players, and guys want to work out, my gym is always open. My doors are always open to just help players get better, and obviously when Kawhi (was traded to) Toronto (in mid-July), you know he was a guy that I was going to have to try to create a relationship (with) and start working with him and just do whatever I can to help him improve his game just like I’ve done with anybody else. Me and LeBron’s relationship has remained intact. It’s been really good. We’ve worked out quite a bit over the summer, this summer, again just keeping him and helping him stay sharp and KD (Durant) is somebody who I’ve had a lot of respect for, and I think he’s had a lot of respect for me as a coach. And obviously everybody knows the relationship between KD and LeBron – they’ve always been close. It was very organic the way that workout came about – (Cavaliers big man) Cedi Osman is a young guy who I’ve worked out last year in Cleveland, and LeBron has a great relationship with him and respect, and it was just organic. It wasn’t anything that was really planned like that. Kawhi was coming to LA, wanted to work out a few days, ‘Bron was still in LA, he was still working out, and KD happened to be in LA and he wanted to work out, and Cedi came to LA to spend a few days with LeBron. And it just so happened that, timing-wise, that all four of those guys were able to get in the gym together, and just have a good afternoon of working out and really just pushing each other individually.
You know the way that fans react to stuff, so when (the picture gets published), you also know that the fans will look at that and start connecting free agency dots and the fantasy component comes into play where they start wondering ‘What does this mean? What does that mean?’ Did any of that cross your mind at all?
Nah, because those guys man, especially for me just being a purist of the game, Kawhi is a phenomenal talent, ‘Bron is a phenomenal talent, KD is a phenomenal talent, Cedi is an up and coming player in this league, and it’s just basketball. That’s all it is. It’s just four guys who decided to get in the gym that day and just ‘Hey man, let’s have a good workout. Let’s try to push each other,’ and it’s really just at the highest level of the game that you can be at. You’ve got the three best small forwards in the game right now, with a young guy who is trying to ultimately reach their level (in Osman). It was just basketball. So you know, that’s natural. You get fans and other media people with the speculation. You’ve got to have something to talk about (but) that wasn’t the purpose of the picture to stir the pot. It’s really, like I said, for me the purpose of the picture was just to show that you get guys on different teams, coaches on different teams, and we can all work together to help the players get better and help the game get better as a community. That was the message behind these guys getting together – nothing else.
In seven years at the NBA level, you’ve not only crossed paths with the big-time guys but really connected with them. That’s really unique. As you go into this Toronto challenge, after the Lakers chapter and the Cleveland and now this, what’s your perspective?
I’m gonna say it like this — luck. I think Sam, a lot of it has to do with luck, being in the right place at the right time. Look, don’t misunderstand, I work my ass off. I’m a real student of the game, I study the game. I’ve always been — player development and skill development is something I’ve done and that’s how I got into the NBA, so that part for me is a serious passion and a love. That’s like my first love. I feel like I was put on this earth to help players get better with their basketball game, and that helps and spreads into other areas of their life. But I’ve been lucky too. The first opportunity I had to become a coach with the Lakers was based on relationships, and the work that I was doing in my own business, so it just so happened that Kobe was there and I had a chance to build a relationship with him.
Mike Brown wanted me to come and be part of his staff in Cleveland, and there’s another young talented player there who continued to develop his game, so Kyrie happens to be there, and I go and develop a relationship with him. Then LeBron comes, which — again — wasn’t by plan or design. I didn’t have a blueprint for that. But there’s another great player who comes in, and I have to figure out how to develop a relationship with him. And obviously going to Toronto, when that whole deal happened, I thought (former Raptors guard) DeMar (DeRozan) is a great player and I was really looking forward to working with him and trying to build a relationship with him. But it just so happens, the business that we’re in, Kawhi gets traded there and I build a relationship with him.
(But) any player who I’ve ever worked with, I think the relationships have come from the standpoint of building relationships with them on the floor, helping those guys improve their skills. And when they see that and they feel that, I think those guys are more willing and more comfortable to (say) ‘Whatever you need coach,’ because they understand, ‘Hey, we’re here to help them continue to improve and continue their careers,’ and that’s a big piece. That’s a big piece of it right there.
As you know, that first break is – a lot of times – the biggest one. And so when Mike calls on you to join the Lakers (in 2011) were you building your business out of LA at that point and when had you stopped playing?
My final year of playing professional basketball was 2003, where I finished up in Australia. I was playing for the West Indy Razorbacks. But I had kind of started dibble dabbling with training some kids in Australia, back in the states in ’99.
When I retired, my wife and I lived out in Walnut Creek for many years. When I retired, I started a training business, started in ’99, but really became full-blown in 2003 when I retired. I just, I dug into that business and I did that business for 13 years. It was a grind. I had a bunch of NBA guys. I had college guys. I had high school kids. I had Europeans. I had national teams. And I really just grew an organic business based on the work that I was doing and the program and the foundation I was putting in for training.
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And Randy Bennett, who was the head coach at Saint Mary’s College (since 2001), was a big believer in the work that was doing. I worked with Delly when he was there, worked with Patty Mills. I spent time with Randy.
(Enter Brown, who had grown close to Bennett in the late 1980s while playing under his father, Tom, at Mesa (Ariz.) Community College. Brown would later play at the University of San Diego, in large part, because Randy was one of the team’s assistant coaches)
A lot of people don’t know that Randy was also responsible for sending (Atlanta Hawks coach) Lloyd Pierce to Mike Brown in Cleveland (as an assistant in 2007). Lloyd is a Bay Area guy. Randy is a connector. He believed in guys that worked, so he told Mike about me, and Mike and I had some dialogue. Again, it’s about people you know, being at the right place at the right time, and that’s how that whole process started for me. Randy Bennett just believed that I should be coaching and working in the NBA, and Mike respected his opinion … He kind of made that opportunity happen.
(Top Photo: Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
