Micah Nori is in his first season as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers. (Getty Images)
Micah Nori is in his first season as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers. (Getty Images)
PORTLAND, Ore. — It was August, during the first meeting with his staff, when new Portland Trail Blazers coach Micah Nori gave each of his coaches a gift: a paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway’s novella, “The Old Man and the Sea.”
Nori had spent the majority of the meeting laying out expectations of his staff: how he wanted game plans to look, how practices would be structured and the roles of each coach. The gift – the classic book published in 1952 – was the string to tie it all together.
During Nori’s 28 years around the NBA, he learned that coaching wasn’t only about diagramming plays and running practices. A coach needs to reach his players. He has to communicate.
There was a challenge, though. With all the verbiage and nuance in today’s NBA, there was a tendency for coaches to over-communicate. To ramble. To become a garbled mass of undecipherable words to the ears of young players.
Nori believes players today prefer their information in short, relatable doses.
Enter Papa and perhaps his most celebrated work.
Hemingway was known for his clear, concise prose, which irked some of his contemporaries. William Faulkner, who used a flowery and complex writing style, once said of Hemingway, “He has never been known to use a word that might send the reader to a dictionary.”
Hemingway’s retort: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
At the same time, Hemingway had a reputation for being able to deliver complicated messages. The “Iceberg Theory,” which Hemingway mastered, states that much of the deeper meaning of a story should be implicit, lying beneath the surface. In other words, Hemingway was good at telling intricate stories directly.
Only 82 pages, “The Old Man and the Sea” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. It was minimalist prose at its finest.
So why was the tale of a hard-luck fisherman and his pursuit, capture and subsequent shark pillage of a great marlin now in the hands of the Blazers’ coaching staff?
“In this day and age, everything the players digest is Instagram … Snapchat … TikTok … Twitter … everything is 10 seconds,” Nori said. “The attention span of this generation is very quick. … So, I wanted to get across to our coaches that you can tell your story, get your point across with not so many words. Keep the main thing the main thing.”
Using Hemingway as a tool or an example was a concept Nori borrowed from Chris Finch, the head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, whom Nori served as assistant head coach under for the past five seasons. Hemingway is Finch’s favorite author, and years ago he gifted Nori and the Timberwolves staff the book. When Nori first finished reading it, something clicked.
”(Hemingway) didn’t use a lot of words. Everything was essentially headlines and cut to the chase,” Nori said. “So I figure as a team, we are together for seven months. I don’t want my voice to become like that Charlie Brown teacher (wah-wah-wah). You can hit these guys with your point, then get out.”
A month after gifting “The Old Man and the Sea” to the Blazers staff, Nori became curious. Did anyone read it? Did the book resonate with them as it did him?
The first week of training camp, Nori ended a coach’s meeting with a twist: a pop quiz. Ten questions, multiple choice, about Hemingway’s book.
What was the name of the fisherman? What was he fishing for? Who was his favorite baseball player? What did he dream of at the end?
“It was more lighthearted than anything,” Nori said of the quiz. “I didn’t mandate that they read it, but I also wanted to see how their minds work.”
The results were wide-ranging: Mike Williams scored nine out of 10. Jay Triano got eight out of 10 correct. Two unnamed assistants answered only two questions correctly.
“What do they say … your actions speak so loud I can’t hear a word you are saying?” Nori said, chuckling, paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson to poke fun at a coach telling on himself.
Perhaps it’s Hemingway’s influence, or perhaps it’s growing up the son of a coach, but Nori has a way with words. After last week’s preseason opener, in which the Blazers played with great effort but poor execution that resulted in 21 turnovers, Nori tempered his disappointment and chose to look on the bright side.
The mistakes he can correct, especially since many of them were byproducts of opponents putting pressure on the Blazers. At least he didn’t have to coach effort, he thought.
“It’s easier to say, ‘Whoa!’ than it is to say, ‘Giddy up!’” Nori quipped.
He is often quick with a smile, and he readily looks to make others smile. That is not to mistake him for one without edges. Twice this season, he has had to coach sternly. Like Hemingway, he didn’t belabor the point.
The first was the second day of practice. After an inspiring opening workout, the Blazers were sloppy and disjointed. Nori told them they weren’t meeting his standard, but cut them some slack considering it was so early in the season. The second came last week, the practice after the unsightly preseason opener. A six-minute scrimmage was scheduled for a window of practice. About three minutes in, after watching balls fly out of bounds, passes being dropped and plays being run incorrectly, Nori said he blew his whistle and stopped play.
“The margin for error in the West is so small,” Nori said, thinking about the moment days later, “and these little turnovers, and missed assignments – even if it’s in practice – just cannot happen. If you let it happen, you are enabling it, saying it’s not important. So, when things don’t go well, I stop it, point it out and correct it.”
With the whistle blown and play stopped, the team looked at Nori. What followed was not a soliloquy of strategy, not a filibuster on form, not droning on the need for defense. It was Hemingway in sweats, with a whistle.
“Unacceptable,” Nori said he told the team.
The clock was reset to six minutes and play resumed.
“He understands players … so everything is calculated,” swingman Toumani Camara said. “The way he communicates to us, the way he is, playful and easy to talk to … makes it easy to work with somebody like that.”
Camara thought back to the stoppage in play.
“We need those types of moments,” Camara said. “There’s going to be ups and downs, and days where the energy is not going to be there. The head of the snake, the head coach, has to respond and make them realize this is not how we are supposed to play. So, I can have nothing but respect for that. You don’t want a coach that just lets things happen and sweeps it under the rug like, oh, we’ll get it right tomorrow. Like, let’s get it right today. And I feel like that’s his mindset.”
Added guard Scoot Henderson: “I like his coaching style: He will get on your ass, then also cheer you up. We don’t need any sugarcoating, especially with the team we have. We can’t have any sugarcoating, lenient guy in charge at this point. We need a guy who is … Micah Nori.”
Williams, the coach who scored nine out of 10 on the pop quiz, is an avid reader, but he had never tackled Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” Williams’ takeaway would have pleased Hemingway, for Williams appreciated the hidden meanings in the work. The Iceberg Theory.
“To me, the story was kind of like a love-of-craft type thing, the way Santiago loves fishing,” Williams said. “His life is kind of how we treat basketball and coaching. And like Santiago finds, sometimes it’s going to be hard, and there is a lot of struggle with that, but it’s all for the love of what you do. And that struggle makes it actually worthwhile, even if you don’t get the prize in the end.”
Nori’s main aim in gifting the book – helping the coaches understand concise communication – wasn’t lost on Williams.
“Hemingway is arguably one of the best writers of all time, and his style is very simple,” Williams said. “And when we are communicating, simplicity shows true understanding.”
The gift from Nori on the first day was not the last. Williams said the more he is around Nori, the more he appreciates the lessons and knowledge being passed down.
“He is unbelievably prepared,” Williams said. “I mean, watching him day-to-day, he’s got everything mapped out, so his preparation has been really cool for me to watch. Very, very detail-oriented.”
It was Nori’s first signature move as a head coach, albeit one he borrowed from Finch. And even while he reflected on Finch’s impact that came from introducing him to the book, Nori had to chuckle at another lesson learned in the wake of Finch’s gift: Always have a Plan B.
See, Nori wanted to thank Finch by getting him a signed copy of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” The cheapest version he could find was $33,000. Nori printed off a copy and bought Finch a hat that said Boston Whaler to match Finch’s boat.
“So, instead of $33,000, I spent 33 bucks,” Nori said. “I told him: ‘It’s the thought that counts.’”
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