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Willoughby played professionally for a number of years, making his NBA debut in 1999-2000 with the Chicago Bulls, reuniting with Tim Floyd, who left Iowa State after the 1997-98 season to coach the Bulls. He averaged 7.6 points in his lone season in the NBA.
In 2003-04, Davis attempted 8.7 3s per game — the most of anyone in NBA history until that point and a record that would stand until Steph Curry’s peak more than a decade later. The 582 3s Davis shot that season are still a New Orleans franchise record. Until that point, the most 3s Davis had ever attempted was 5.8 per game. His uptick in 2003-04 was the result of two things. That season, the Hornets shifted to a perimeter-oriented attack under first-year coach Tim Floyd. They also had minimal offensive firepower after Jamal Mashburn, the team’s leading scorer the previous season, had knee surgery, which limited him to 19 games. “It was strictly about what we had and trying to play to our strengths,” Floyd said. “And that’s what I felt like what our strength was at that time: Baron and his talents. When he was physically fit and in shape and healthy, he was arguably the greatest talent that I coached.”
Kent McDill: “Tim Floyd was very much involved in the nightlife in Chicago. There was a place in Chicago called The Lodge and it was very popular. If you were the sort to be out at night, you would run into Tim there all the time. One time early in the season, Tim got kicked out of a home game for yelling at the refs and someonetold me that before the game was over, Tim was at The Lodge. I thought, ‘That’s interesting.’ Well, beat writers meet with the coach before every game. Maybe a month later, during our pregame meeting, he was sitting in his office, his feet were up and he said something that , ‘He’s going to get thrown out tonight.’ After the meeting, I turned to another beat writer and predicted it. And he got thrown out that night! I don’t usually predict things like that, I just had a weird sense. It turned out he had party plans and he was, again, seen having a very good time at The Lodge that evening. Then, it happened a third time. Each time he was ejected, it was at home. The third time he got kicked out, we all just looked at each other like, ‘They must be having a drink special or something.’”
Sam Smith: “Tim Floyd was badly overmatched. He’d clearly set a goal to get an NBA head coaching job and had obviously worked Jerry Krause for years with that in mind, inviting him to practices, calling him. Krause didn’t have a lot of friends in basketball due to his nature and he tended to, understandably, gravitate to those who embraced him. Tim was like the Robert Redford character in the old movie ‘The Candidate’ where they scheme to get the job and the last scene is Redford asking, ‘What do we do now?’ Tim sought the glamor, fame and money of an NBA coach, but he really hated the NBA. It seemed obvious he’d never watched NBA games and even when he became coach, he was still talking about college games all the time. Krause’s theory was right in preparing for teenagers with the direct-to-pros era, so you want to get a college coach. He just got the wrong one.”
Kent McDill: “Tim Floyd was very much involved in the nightlife in Chicago. There was a place in Chicago called The Lodge and it was very popular. If you were the sort to be out at night, you would run into Tim there all the time. One time early in the season, Tim got kicked out of a home game for yelling at the refs and someone told me that before the game was over, Tim was at The Lodge. I thought, ‘That’s interesting.’ Well, beat writers meet with the coach before every game. Maybe a month later, during our pregame meeting, he was sitting in his office, his feet were up and he said something that [made me think], ‘He’s going to get thrown out tonight.’ After the meeting, I turned to another beat writer and predicted it. And he got thrown out that night! I don’t usually predict things like that, I just had a weird sense. It turned out he had party plans and he was, again, seen having a very good time at The Lodge that evening. Then, it happened a third time. Each time he was ejected, it was at home. The third time he got kicked out, we all just looked at each other like, ‘They must be having a drink special or something.’” John Jackson: “I’ve been to The Lodge with Tim a few times. (laughs)”
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Corey Benjamin: “I don’t think Tim had full control over our team. Phil had full control of his team. It was kind of like Tim was being dictated and told what to do. I don’t think Tim had full control of that team. He’s a great person, but I don’t think Tim was able to be Tim.” Kent McDill: “It was so weird because Tim Floyd was Jerry Krause’s guy, and it was really hard to understand who was in charge of things… Jerry was around more [that season] and he had a smile on his face the whole time.”
Tim Floyd on Jerry Krause: He hired the first strength coach in the NBA. That was something that was unheard of. He built to say the first workout facility: the Berto center. He believed that that was necessary. Hired the first team psychologist because they had a player that needed that help. And that proved to be kind of revolutionary that time and I think that that probably helped him.
Whether it was Rick Pitino and John Calipari, Tim Floyd and Leonard Hamilton, or Fred Hoiberg and current Cavaliers coach John Beilein, life in the pros hasn’t exactly been kind to college coaches. That inspired us to poll 25 NBA executives, including multiple general managers, for their list of the five college coaches that they’d currently want to hire in the Association. Here are the results, including anonymous quotes from NBA executives. 1) Jay Wright, Villanova – 64 points (6 first-place votes) “I’m not sure he leaves for anything except for the Sixers job, but obviously he’s proven he can really coach and develop young guys. Look at what he has done over the years with guys like Josh Hart, Ryan Arcidiacono, Jalen Brunson. He gets guys ready and that’s important.”
The beginning of this rebuild wasn’t pretty. Dunn broke his finger, Portis broke Nikola Mirotic’s face during a fight in practice, and the Bulls were so dreadful that they almost made fans nostalgic for those initial seasons under Tim Floyd after the Jordan dynasty ended. Then, miraculously, the Bulls caught fire after Mirotic returned, and true haters panned the relative success because the team couldn’t even tank properly. “It’s not our decision to go out there and tank. This is our livelihood. You step between those lines, you’re not going to give in to anybody, regardless of who it is or what people are going to tell you,” LaVine told Yahoo Sports. “We go out there to win.”
Sam: I do have to defend the Bulls on this one as it has become sort of a smear campaign, that big lie thing that if you say a lie often enough people will believe it. The parting with Vinnie went badly and John Paxson did regret the events and apologized. As a result, he hasn’t had much interaction with Thibodeau. But the Bulls often have been more generous to their coaches than I would have been. Doug Collins and Jackson still remain close with Bulls management, Paxson and Collins still emailing almost weekly. Collins received championship jewelry from the team to thank him for his contributions even though he was fired two years before the first title. And despite Jerry Krause’s open courtship of Tim Floyd, Reinsdorf offered Jackson a multiyear deal at the league’s highest salary to begin a post-Jordan rebuilding. Jackson declined as he didn’t want to be involved in rebuilding. Tim Floyd quit and Reinsdorf paid him the full two years left on his contract. Scott Skiles told management he couldn’t coach the players anymore. They let him go, but they cancelled the offset in his contract so he could go to the Bucks and double dip with two salaries instead of the Bulls getting his Bucks salary. And though there was bitterness at Thibodeau’s discharge, no one in 20 years had hired Thibodeau to be head coach until the Bulls did. And then they gave him a generous contract extension and he’ll make $9 million the next two years. It doesn’t exactly suggest a pattern of coaching abuse.
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"There's nobody that does a better job with his team in the whole league," Van Gundy said Monday on The Carmen & Jurko Show on ESPN Chicago 1000. "I would suspect that he would be back for a long time. I know he loves the city, he loves his team, you can tell. Everything I've ever heard about Jerry Reinsdorf as an owner is that he's a man's man. I'm pretty good friends with [former Bulls coach] Tim Floyd, and Tim Floyd raves about him as does Tom."
Sam: Actually, Phil and Skiles. I know it’s probably hard to believe with Skikes and his snarl. But Scott has a wicked, biting sense of humor that I enjoyed. His bosses don’t always. Phil used to love to bait people as well in his quirky way and rarely, if ever, was someone upset or not trying to break the tension with a joke, which was very difficult with the basically humorless Jerry Krause. Stan Albeck was enjoyable with a good sense of humor, but just around one season. Doug Collins was, as you can guess, pretty intense. Tim Floyd was pretty much working his good ol’ boy routine most of the time. Bill Cartwright was serious but easy to joke with. Vinny was relaxed and could take a joke, but not much for offering them. And Thibs, well he’s misunderstood. You can have a fun time with him, but he doesn’t like many to know that.
It took me about half a season to realize Ben Wallace's nickname was "Body." I always liked that one, especially because it made it easier on a team with two Bens. (Gordon, of course, was "BG.") Most amusing nicknames are inside jokes on the beat, and perhaps my favorite I can share is "Hangdog." We came up with that one to summarize Tim Floyd's look during those lean post-dynasty years. Roman Modrowski--my old competitor and buddy, then of the Sun-Times--and I were easily amused back then. Covering those teams was combat pay.
A former UTEP basketball star will be back on the Don Haskins Center floor this season - this time, as an undergraduate assistant coach on coach Tim Floyd's staff. Greg Foster, the 6-foot-11 center who played for UTEP in the 1980s, has spent years trying to break into the college coaching ranks and is now going to get his shot. "A lot of people are trying to re-invent themselves. I'm no different," Foster said. After dabbling in real estate and as a sports agent with Foster Sports Development, the 41-year-old is finally getting his shot at coaching. "I feel fortunate to have this opportunity," Foster said. "Sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know."
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