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No hoops coach leaves home without it

• Tom Rife: Livin' the Team
• June 24, 2021
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Having attended, watched, reported on, and even coached thousands of basketball games over the last six decades, it was only recently that I arrived at a thought-provoking conclusion. Until Sunday night, I’d always wondered: what – or who – is a basketball coach’s best friend?

Is it the 7-footer who dunks at will and handles the ball like a nimble point guard? Is it the sharpshooter with eyes in the back of his head who knocks down three-balls on command? Is it the cool hand who always swishes a clutch free throw with the game on the line?

All valid responses, of course. But none of them answer the question.

The next time you see a game, watch closely. Scrutinize every little thing. And here’s a hint: pay attention to what goes on during a timeout.

What is the first thing the coach grabs when the victory is in jeopardy? It’s not the guy who just committed a stupid foul or threw a pass into the fifth row of the bleachers. It’s not the ref who just called a blocking foul when it clearly should have been charging.

The answer invariably is quite simple. In the heat of the moment, the one thing a coach always wants is his (or her) clipboard or dry-erase board. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Gotta have it, ya know? Now!

The coach instinctively will begin to scribble messy X’s and O’s, to draw arrows and arches and other illegible etchings the players may or may not understand — directions they may or may not follow. After all, players are only human.

Coaches are not human.

Though they drill their teams for hours on end and incessantly repeat the game’s finer points and adjustments during practice, nothing — and I do mean nothing — seems to work better than a marker and a whiteboard when it comes to diagramming the game-changing strategy with all the marbles on the line.

A championship could be riding on the squiggles.

Such was the case when the Sixers and Hawks were in the crucial moments of Game 7 of their Eastern Conference semifinals showdown. Philly was on the brink of elimination against visiting underdog Atlanta. The situation was dire, to say the least.

And there was Doc Rivers in the midst of the huddle, desperately doodling away with his marker. In that very same moment, one of Rivers’s close-by assistants also was giving his whiteboard a frantic workout. The TV camera showed players trying to look at both boards at once as both coaches barked directions and an effort to get everyone on the same page for the waning minutes and seconds of the series.

If only Ben Simmons could have been coaxed into taking a shot. If only the Hawks’ unpretentious Kevin Huerter hadn’t played like a man possessed, sparking his team to the victory.

The situation was much the same in another epic Game 7, this one in Brooklyn. Despite the heroics of Nets superstar Kevin Durant, the Bucks were able to survive overtime and win their Eastern Conference semifinals, advancing to further challenging playoff action against Atlanta and their electrifying Trae Young.

Had only Durant’s toe not flirted with the 3-point line on that startling shot that would have won the game in regulation.

I know, I know. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I complained that the NBA season was too long. But when two road teams win Game 7 match-ups in consecutive games, it’s definitely worth watching.

One can only assume the dry-erase boards will be in high demand in the days ahead.

No coach would dare enter the arena without his best friend by his side.