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Rick Carlisle's changing style has helped Pacers reach 2nd straight Eastern Conference finals

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle still prefers brutal honesty to nuance.

He doesn't sugar-coat mistakes, doesn't fear taking his critiques public and doesn't shield players from high expectations. It's not who he is — and these young Pacers embrace it.

Yes, after winning nearly 1,000 regular season games, one NBA title and surviving 23 up-and-down seasons as an NBA head coach, Carlisle has seemingly found the perfect fit in a locker room that views a tough, demand coaching through a more genteel prism.

“A savant,” two-time All-Star Tyrese Haliburton dubbed Carlisle during Indiana's semifinal series. “When it comes to adjustments and getting the best out of guys, we follow his lead, and his intensity come playoff time is easy to follow. When we have a game like (the Game 3 loss to Cleveland), he sets the tone with our energy, practice, film or whatever."

Carlisle is back in his third Eastern Conference finals not because he stuck to his old-school philosophy, but because he figured out how to adapt to the league's new ways.

Instead of routinely calling plays from the bench or complaining when opponents produce 40-point quarters, the 65-year-old Carlisle trusts Haliburton and the Pacers ball-handlers on the floor and now understands high-scoring quarters are just part of today's game — even if he doesn't like it.

The transition hasn't come without some rough edges such as the sideline clash between Carlisle and All-Star guard Rajon Rondo in February 2015.

“I would literally give him (Rondo) my play sheet, and he would make calls.” said Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers, who coached Rondo in Boston. “I remember Rick calling me and the last thing I told him was ‘Rick, I may have created a monster, I don’t know. You’re going to have let him help you on the floor.’ It was like 24 hours later you see them getting into it on the sideline because Rondo didn’t want to call that play.”

The two patched things up later. But in the decade since, things seem to have changed.

Center Myles Turner, who grew up in Dallas, believes Carlisle has given the players more freedom to work their magic on the court. New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson also saw that side of Carlisle during his first five pro seasons in Dallas.

Brunson and Carlisle will meet for the second straight year in the playoffs Wednesday night in Game 1 at New York.

“Different personnel, but that’s just coach Carlisle. With the personnel he has he’s going to adapt and going to play with whatever their personnel’s strengths are," Brunson said Monday. "What he’s been able to do there (with Indiana) in a short time is special.”

Carlisle's coaching principles are the result of a 40-plus year resume that reads like a basketball history lesson.

He was teammates with Ralph Sampson, Larry Bird and the late Bill Walton. As a coach, he worked with stars such as Reggie Miller, Chauncey Billups, Dirk Nowitzki, Luka Doncic and Brunson and endured the pain of playoff losses with some of the game's biggest names — Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O'Neal and the late Kobe Bryant.

Carlisle won a championship with the 1985-86 Boston Celtics, one of the greatest teams in league history, and in 2010-11 as the Mavericks coach. And in between he dealt with the fallout from one of he NBA's biggest black eyes, the 2004 brawl between Indiana and Detroit.

But Carlisle never shied away from a challenge, and he managed to navigate the NBA's ever-evolving world long enough that he'll head into next season as the league's second-winningest active coach, behind Rivers, and needing seven victories become the 11th member of the 1,000-win club.

“I think all of us have had to change," Rivers said. “Where Rick has been always good, in my opinion, he just coaches the team he has, and I think he realized early on with Haliburton, this may be one of those teams where ‘I just have to wind them up and let them go.' I think that’s why he’s a sensational coach.”

And Haliburton & Co. have taken full advantage.

A year ago, they ended a franchise-worst nine-game skid in the playoffs, won their first postseason series and reached the conference finals for the first time in a decade.

This year, they won 50 games and earned home-court advantage for the first round for the first time since 2013-2014. Now the Pacers are four wins away from reaching the NBA Finals for the second time and to nobody's surprise, Carlisle is back on the bench for this run, too.

“He let's players go out there and create,” Turner said. “I think that helps, especially this time of year, because in the playoffs, everybody scouts, everybody knows your plays and whatnot. So you've got to freelance more. I think his experience with different personnel, different guys in this league, he knows how to adapt.”

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