Off court with coach Tim Cone
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| He was nine years old when his family moved to the Philippines. He first lived in Baler, Quezon, where he attended public school and taught all his friends how to play baseball. |
After 23 years and 13 championship titles with with Alaska, he shocked
everyone with his big move and became head coach of the B-meg Llamados under
the San Miguel Group. In just his second conference with his new team, he bagged
his 14th PBA championship title. At 54, he is one win away from tying coach
Baby Dalupan who holds the record for most PBA championships won. A
statistician of sorts who compiles numbers and stats for the PBA and press, and
often referred to as a “PBAologist” in the sports industry, Fidel Mangonon III
says he holds the record for the most championships in a conference with
imports, most number of wins overall, and most years as a head coach. Here are
10 things you should know about coach Tim Cone.
1. Coach Tim was nine
years old when his family moved to the Philippines. He first lived in
Baler, Quezon, where he attended public school, and he taught all his friends
how to play baseball.
His father was a reforestation expert in the lumber
business, whose partner had asked him to bring his company from Oregon (where they’re originally from) to the Philippines.
Coach Tim’s two eldest sisters stayed in Oregon,
while he and his elder sister moved here. “We sang Lupang Hinirang every
morning, had gardening, had a rice paddy at the back,” he shares about his
fifth grade in the Baler public school. Since he was big fan of baseball, he
brought all his gear with him and says, “I ended up teaching everyone there how
to play baseball!” After a year, his mom, sister and he moved to Manila and the two were
enrolled in the International School Manila, where he eventually finished high
school. His father continued to move from province to province, and during
summer breaks, he would tag along. “I have lived in Baler, Surigao del Sur,
Samar, Palawan, around three to four months at
a time.” Coach Tim didn’t find it hard to uproot himself from life in Oregon to move halfway
around the world, saying: “My mother made it into a big adventure, she was
really good that way, always approaching everything in a positive manner.” He
went on to attend college in the US,
spending two years at Menlo College in California
where he played basketball, before moving to George Washington
University where he
eventually finished.
Many times during the interview Coach Tim says, “I came
home.” When I asked if “home” means the Philippines, he says yes. “I’ve
always considered this my home.”
2. The first time
Coach Tim touched a basketball was when he came to the Philippines.
“In the States it was always baseball, but basketball was
the big thing here,” he shares of the days his father was the “star player” in
different barangay ligas. He says he had never thought of a career in
basketball because “when you’re growing up as a young man, you don’t dream of
being a coach.” Unlike now, he says, when you have the likes of Phil Jackson
and Gregg Popovich, coaches that young people want to emulate.
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He was working with his father’s partner in a business
venture selling meat, when he came across a friend from I.S., Fred Uytengsu.
“He knew I was a basketball player from before and he said, ‘Hey, why don’t you
come to a game? My father’s making me take over his team, we bought Alaska,’” coach Tim
recalls. That was in 1986. They ended up watching games together, with coach
Tim explaining the game to him, until a couple of years after, Fred recommended
coach Tim to be an analyst for PBA’s TV coverage. “I was really bad at it,” he
says about his yearlong stint. Around that time, Alaska had gone through six coaches within
three years, until Fred asked coach Tim if he wanted to be the team’s
consultant. From there, he became assistant coach, then head coach in 1989.
3. He really wanted
to become a writer.
“When I was really young I wanted to be an astronaut, as I
got older I wanted to be a writer,” he reveals. In college, he completed a
double major in American literature (because he wanted to) and economics
(because his parents wanted him to). After college, he worked as a trainee in a
bank in San Francisco,
but after over a year, he decided to come home. He lived with his father for a
year at a ranch in Southern Quezon and “tried
to write.” He was in his early 20s and working on a novel, tentatively titled
His Alone Now, about a man in a broken marriage who somehow gets involved with
the NPA. (“I never finished it so I’m kind of embarrassed about it.”) It was
when he started coaching that he stopped writing. He still has his novel and
short stories hidden somewhere but says with a shy smile, “I never show them.”
4. He met his wife
Cristina at a time he was actually first set up on a date with one of her best
friends.
“I was living in Manila
and I’d come up (to Quezon) for a weekend once every three weeks, but after I
met Cristina, I didn’t want to live in the province anymore,” coach Tim
reveals. They met on a double date, where he brought his friend Mark and
Cristina brought her friend Malou, but he ended up being paired with Malou that
night. After going away again for three months, he shares: “I came back and I
was really interested in Cristina, I didn’t have her number and so I called
Malou to get her number,” he laughs out loud and turns red. To this day, they
are all friends, and they still laugh about that story. They’ve been married
for 21 years and have three children, Nikki, 20, Kevin, 16, and Trevor, 6. As a
family, they love going to the beach and they enjoy going wakeboarding
together. “My kids are always joking me, ‘Dad, I’m not one of your players,’”
he laughs.
5. He and legendary
NBA coach Phil Jackson share the same mentor: the innovator of the triangle
offense, Tex
Winter.
“Tex Winter is the architect of the triangle offense, the
one used by the Chicago Bulls that won the championships, the one used by the
Lakers to win the Championships,” he shares. “He was the one that taught the
triangle to Phil Jackson’s players, and taught it to Phil Jackson.” In the book
Pacific Rims, author Rafe Bartholomew wrote about how coach Tim learned the
triangle offense on TV, by recording games and going over it, forwarding,
rewinding it, figuring it all out. So when Tex
came to the Philippines
to give a seminar in 2000, he was told about coach Tim and so they were
introduced. “He came to our practices, and he said we’re running the triangle
at a higher level than the Lakers are at this point, he made a big deal about
it. Right then and there we struck up a relationship.” From then on, they were
in touch every few weeks, and in fact, coach Tim also got the chance to watch
and observe Laker practices and games upon Tex’s invitation.
Coach Tim started learning the triangle offense in 1991, and
brought it to Alaska
in ‘93. “We had our worst year ever and Fred took me out to lunch to fire me.
Being a coach, I coached him out of firing me.” In ‘94 they had one of their
best years, another best year in ‘95, and in ‘96 they won the grand slam.
6. On what made him
decide to leave Alaska:
“I just felt that I needed to do something different. I wanted to see what it
would be like from ground up to start again.”
“I need to say straight out that I was always treated
extremely well with Alaska.
It had nothing to do with leaving Alaska, or I
had a problem with Alaska,
or I wasn’t being paid well,” he clarifies. He calls Alaska team owner Fred Uytengsu his mentor,
and shares that he was taken very good care of during his 23 years. He says
that it was an opportunity that was out there and that he wasn’t sure, if he
waited two or three years to grab it, if he would still be “attractive” to
other teams. The primary motivation for him and his family was really “to go
out and do something different.” He admits also having been interviewed by the
Smart organization, adding that in coaching a team for 23 years, feelers and
offers really come and go. “A lot of people think that I left because I got a
fabulous contract offer from San Miguel. I have the same contract as I did,
same benefits, with very little change just adopted by the San Miguel
Corporation.” He says that they presented a clear path for him, which appealed
to coach Tim, and which made him decide to take the position as head coach for
B-meg in late 2011.
7. The perfect player
for coach Tim would be a combination of Johnny Abarrientos, Jojo Lastimosa,
Bong Hawkins, and Sean Chambers.
“There’s nobody like Johnny. He was such a unique player. He
had a unique understanding of the game and incredible skills, like a Michael
Jordan. If he had been 6’2” or 6’3” he would’ve been a star in the NBA,” he
says of the “Flying A.” Adding “Jolas” to his list, he praises “the toughness
and leadership of Jojo, his ability to get off shots when he needed to.” He
adds the brawn and strength of “the Hawk” Bong Hawkins and the ability of
import Sean Chambers to build relationships and push players to be better. “You
combine those four players and you’ve probably got the best player in the
world.”
8. On handling a
surge of emotions on and off court: “You can’t afford to have dog houses.”
“One thing you learn in coaching: there is no such thing as
a dog house. Dog house means when you’re mad at someone, you put them in a dog
house, then just forget about them.” He says as a coach, you cannot hold
grudges. He says it may be a cliché, but during games, you have to stay in the
moment. “I can get mad at a player and, literally, turn around, and after 30
seconds, completely forget about it.” But sometimes, the player doesn’t forget,
and that’s something a coach has to deal with later on. He says he and Jojo
Lastimosa had that kind of great relationship. “We’d get mad and scream at each
other, and three minutes later Jojo’s making a great play and I’d be applauding
him.”
9. Coach Tim Cone in
numbers:
63: Number of stitches he got on his forehead during a car
accident he was in back in high school. He was in the passenger seat, and upon
impact, his head hit the windshield.
7: Years he and wife Cristina dated before they got married.
She’s five years younger than him, and was a college senior when they met.
50-plus: Number of ties in his closet.
11: Jersey number he wore
in college.
13: Number of championship rings he got from Alaska. “I think I lost
one already,” he shares. “Phil Jackson, in the playoffs, would wear a ring from
a championships to remind players of the big picture. One year I did that, not
only did I lose the ring, but we lost in the playoffs.”
10. On “letting go”
of the idea of the glory days in the ’90s when he won the grand slam: “It’s a
difference between being goal oriented and growth oriented.”
“I talk about it a lot with the team now. When you have
goals, and you reach them, sometimes it makes you feel like you’re done with
it. So where do you go from there? But if you’re growth conscious, then there
is no limit,” he explains. With this mindset, he shares that every time you
reach a goal, you continue to grow beyond it. It becomes a step into another
step into another step. “Winning that grand slam, winning that championship,
those are all goals were met. Fine, gone, done. Now, we’re here.”
* * *
I talked to a couple of players under coach Tim to ask how he was as a
coach. “He’s a teacher more than he is a coach,” they all said. Coach Tim’s
former players Johnny Abarrientos and Jeffrey Cariaso both work with him now as
assistant coaches, and for your former superstar players to come work with you
beyond their retirement as players is a testament to how much they believe in
you. “The most fulfilling part about coaching is not the wining, its watching
the individual players grow, not only as players but as people,” coach Tim
shares. While other coaches are “X and O” coaches, coach Tim values chemistry.
“Chemistry separates average teams from good teams, and good teams from great
teams.” And in a basketball-crazy country like ours, coach Tim’s continuous
goal of making these young men better is not only touching, but during games,
exciting and heart-stopping.
