Lloyd Pierce, the rookie head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, has a tall task ahead of him to lead a rebuild with one of the youngest teams in the NBA. Having spent his last five years as an assistant coach for the Process 76ers, though, Pierce has a lot of experience with young players, and he’s learned some interesting things about the league’s new wave of talent.
In an interview with Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck on The Full 48 podcast, Pierce told Beck, “These young guys are different in terms of just how they approach it. We marvel at speaking events how many guys don’t watch other NBA games, how many players don’t watch other NBA games.”
Pierce later elaborated:
I had the same conversation with J.J. Redick when he first got to Philly. I said, you’ll be surprised. You’ve been in LA with a lot of veteran guys. You’re coming to Philly with a lot of young guys, a lot of them don’t watch, they don’t have League Pass. He said: get the hell out of here.
The Hawks coach made it clear that he isn’t trying to change his players, but rather adapt his coaching style to account for their viewing habits. Pierce is fairly young for a head coach at 42, just eight months older than his veteran Vince Carter, but even he faces a challenge relating to 20 year-olds who would rather play video games than watch League Pass when they’re on their own time.
“You just have to coach them everyday, and you have to have conversations with them,” Pierce said. “You have to get in to their world and how they see the game and how they approach the game and then figure out how to help them within that.”
It’s a little surprising to hear that younger NBA players don’t closely follow what the rest of the league is doing, considering how frequently we see social media posts of veterans posting highlights or commenting on their former teammates. It’s especially interesting to wonder who Pierce was referring to back in Philadelphia, considering which 76er has the most prominent commercial for NBA League Pass.
