After A Life In Basketball, Juwan Howard Is Ready To Lead As A Coach

There were not that many reporters there in the first place, honestly, and most of them had left to speak with the big names of the Miami Heat's Orlando Summer League roster, Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson. A small group was still gathered around Juwan Howard, though, because Howard still had something to say.

"This is what I do," Howard said. "This is what I love. This is what I enjoy. I look at it as serving and helping these other guys who are looking to go on and be," Howard paused as if lost in thought, "great basketball players. Whatever their goal is. Oh shucks."

Howard stops again. He's not trying to answer the question, this time. He's trying to figure out why the standings behind us are wrong; the Heat team Howard coached in Orlando had just won, and the standings should have shown them in first place. It didn't. "We're tied. Oh no, no. That's not recent. I'm sorry. I was looking at the points system."

There are few things in basketball less meaningful than the standings in the Orlando league, the first and most under the radar of the NBA's three exhibition leagues for young players, fringe players, aspiring fringe players, and players further out on the margins gunning for a shot at a contract anywhere. But the competitor in Howard, and now the coach in him, wants every win he can get.

When you remember Howard, you are probably remembering a basketball player. The member of the Fab Five yelling about how they're going to shock the world. One of the first NBA players ever to receive a $100 million contract, and then a journeyman that played for eight different franchises. Howard's career was long, but somehow seems even longer—he was drafted by the Washington Bullets and won a championship ring in 2013; he was teammates with Scott Skiles, God Shammgod, and also LeBron James; he played with Terry Davis, and against Davis' son, Ed. Howard's transition to coaching doesn't just make sense, it seems to have begun five or so years ago, when he signed on as a bench player emeritus with the LeBron-led Big Three Heat.

But if Howard's career move makes sense, it hasn't been easy. He has adapted quickly to the mindset of a coach, looking forward to plan his next set, or work up the next game plan. Basketball knowledge is not the problem, not by a long shot. The challenge is mentally being ready for coaching's workaday, and the everyday grind that comes with it.

"Take, for example, yesterday," Howard says. "I had a late lunch. While I was engaged in a conversation, while I was listening to the person talk back to me, I was thinking about some of my ATO sets I was gonna run today. Then I went back. Took a nap. And I missed the fireworks. I go to bed, I couldn't sleep, so I didn't go to bed until 1:30 in the morning. Guess what time I woke up? 5:30. Brain just working. I'm trying to force myself to go back to sleep. But I'm still thinking (about) the game. Unfortunately I didn't get much rest. Hopefully I sleep well tonight after this victory, then I'll get ready for practice tomorrow.

"I've lost some hours of sleep," he says. "I think that basically says I'm a head coach."

What has happened to Howard wasn't always in his plans. For the majority of his career, Howard's post-basketball aspirations involved a move upstairs. That changed during a late-career stopover in Portland.

"At first, my goal was always to work in the front office," Howard says. "I wanted to be an executive and help build a championship-caliber franchise. Then I started talking and picking coach Nate McMillan's brain. And I started getting that itch. Maybe coaching is not that bad. I had the notion of okay, long hours, it's a grind. Then I got to Miami, and I was like, 'I like being in the thick of it.'" Howard says he still talks to McMillan regularly, but he is most closely aligned with Miami's famous coaching tree. No team in recent memory has seen so many coaches move from the bottom of the ranks to the top. There is a path for Howard to follow, and it's the same one that Stan Van Gundy, Erik Spoelstra, and new Memphis Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale took.

Howard's first steps on this trail came in 2010, when he joined the James-led Miami Heat. He played sparingly—he was joining a stacked team at age 37, so it makes sense—and his most memorable Heat highlight was telling off a young Lance Stephenson for throwing a choke gesture at James in the playoffs. Howard was never expected to be a key contributor to the team on the court, but his locker room impact was made clear when the Heat moved him on to their coaching staff as soon as he retired after the team's 2012-13 championship.

"I talked to David Fizdale," Howard says. "And being around Coach Spoelstra that inspired me a lot. I know I've seen him behind the scenes, how hard he works. The guy is such a basketball genius, so I was like, 'wow. Not only do I have the opportunity to be close and learn from Pat Riley, but Coach Spoelstra' … people just don't know. That guy is such a great coach."

In Orlando, Howard was both successful—the Heat lost just two games and one of those was without Winslow and Richardson—and notably active. Strange as it sounds to compliment someone for constantly being out there coaching, the way that Howard did it stood out. He was not just calling plays and telling his team to push the pace, but also directing individual players' every movement—if Howard thought a player would do better on one wing than the other, he'd point them there, and if a play failed because of an adjustment that he made, Howard was quick to say that it was on him. He had his entire roster of players up and cheering on every play. No bench was as active as Miami's, not by a long shot; no coach was as involved as Howard, by an equally wide margin.

Richardson and Winslow notwithstanding, most of his players are guys that Howard won't be seeing on a roster with the Heat anytime soon. That didn't stop him from putting in the work to understand their individual games. "I've asked our staff to give me film on all our guys," Howard said. "The guys that came in as free agents and trying to win jobs, I did my homework before they arrived to camp, trying to fast track myself to get to learn their skill set. The hardest part for me has been knowing names. But as far as game, I know them very well. I know them more than they think I do. I also remind them that I watch film on them, so they can't think I'm just making stuff up on the fly"

The Heat team dominated much of the Orlando league en route to finishing fourth, which is to be expected given that they had Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson playing against summer league talent. More surprisingly, though, Howard got fine performances out of players like Briante Weber, Stefan Jankovic, Rodney McGruder, and, in a twist that doubtless made all involved feel old, the former Detroit Mercy star Juwan Howard, Jr. Richardson and Winslow did a lot to deliver the dominance, but the consistency was the result of a group playing at a new level, against another class of competitors.

Howard is open about wanting to be a head coach in the NBA, but is not looking to jump up at the first call. He has watched the names ahead of him on Miami's coaching tree climb hand over hand to the top, and he knows it takes time. "I'm waiting for the time that someone feels that I'm ready," Howard says. "I'm not gonna rush the process. My goal is to get better and better … I want to be the most well prepared coach as I grow time after time, year after year, whatever you want to call it. Until I get my chance."

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