Jerry Stackhouse had a long, illustrious NBA career. Eighteen years in the league speaks to his passion for the game, longevity, and desire to succeed at the highest level.
It’s those same traits that now have him succeeding as a coach, where he led the Raptors 905 to a G League championship in his first season.
I caught up with Stackhouse ahead of the 905’s matchup against the Maine Red Claws on Friday to talk about his younger days, Canadian basketball programs, David Fizdale’s firing in Memphis, and more.
Sportsnet: What did being the youngest of eight kids teach you?
Stackhouse: Sibling rivalries are great, I think, for athletes.
You’re constantly trying to beat the older one. For me, it wasn’t as much about playing against the other kids in the country, it was about beating my brothers. Once I felt that I could compete and actually beat them, I wasn’t worried about anybody else.
SN: ESPN’s Zach Lowe did some digging and found out you used to keep a fish tank with piranhas and feed them red devils in your younger days in Detroit. Any lessons you learned from that?
Stackhouse: When you’re young, you do young things [laughs].
That’s why I try not to lose sight of it with these guys when they make mistakes. Not that they’re making mistakes, they’re just trying to be. They’re young and they don’t know any better. It’s easy to forget that we were just 20 years old ourselves and didn’t have all the answers.
The wisdom and experience we’ve gained over time, you can’t get that by osmosis. You have to go through some things and deal with some things. I have to be cognizant of that to grow these guys not only as basketball players but as men.
SN: You also mentioned that there was a red devil that was tougher than the others and found a way to survive. Anyone on the Raptors 905 remind you of that?
Stackhouse: I think that’s who we are, that’s the identity we’re trying to build with all of our guys. I think that can be taught.
SN: There’s a general consensus that when kids come out of AAU programs in the States, their physical attributes stand out; when kids come out of Europe, their fundamentals stand out. Having been around Canadian kids more these last couple of years, is there a specific attribute that stands about them?
Stackhouse: I try not to stereotype like that because everybody’s different. Look at Richard Amardi [current power forward for the Raptors 905, raised in Scarborough]. He probably trends toward more of what you’d stereotype about an American player. It’s talent.
You can’t put kids in a box. I get what you’re saying, I just think there are kids in the States who, if they get that form of training, if they get taught early like kids in my program or some of the really good AAU programs that give some of that, they’ll have it. Some of them don’t. Same case in Canada, there are teams that do it right— some guys really teach fundamentals and some don’t.
It’s more about the teaching rather than the kids and what they have access to.
Canadian kids are probably a little bit more fundamental because the game is still kind of new to them. I think it was 1995 when they got the franchise here and then the Vince Carter effect, kids really started to get excited about basketball here in Canada. Now you’re starting to see some of the fruits of those early seeds of falling in love with Vinsanity. Then [Chris] Bosh, and the next, you have the Cory Josephs, Tristan Thompsons, Andrew Wiggins’s, they’re starting to realize their talent and they’re focusing on it.
SN: Thoughts on the Memphis Grizzlies letting go of David Fizdale?
Stackhouse: I’m really disappointed in that one. I think he’s a young coach that worked really hard to get a coaching opportunity. You’ve got to be supported by your front office. Not being there every day in that situation, it’s hard to comment on it. There’s two sides to every story.
On the surface, it seems kind of premature. Coach of that calibre, who I thought did a really good job with that team last year, changing the identity of who they were— now shooting threes and doing a whole lot of different things— and you have one game where, to us it was one game, but obviously it must have been more than that.
Disappointing that a guy like that didn’t at least get a chance to finish the job this year and then if they decide to go in a different direction after that then maybe. I don’t know what message that sends.
There’s got to be a hierarchy. The coaches, and then the players. What kind of message do you send? Coaches have to walk on egg shells because you take a player out for a quarter or you’re trying to do something that’s in your gut? All of a sudden, that costs you your job, that’s tough. Again, there’s two sides to every story and we don’t know what those scenarios have looked like for the last year-and-a-half.
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