Wolves coach Rambis: His time is now

Timberwolves boss David Kahn last summer interviewed 14 coaching candidates and contemplated the choices for more than a month before he hired Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach Kurt Rambis.

Inevitably, undeniably, he knew about Rambis the way you know about a good melon.

Ripe and ready, Rambis tonight moves to the head coach's seat a walking tapestry woven from where he has been -- and more importantly, who he has been around -- in a 28-year NBA career that has provided six championship rings as a player and assistant coach in sunny southern California.

Once the sweaty, gritty counterbalance on Pat Riley's flashy Lakers "Showtime" teams, he now is a cerebral, soft-spoken, sarcastic man with a four-year guaranteed contract who not only evokes mentor Phil Jackson with his basketball philosophies but also often with his speech inflections and cadence.

A decade ago, Rambis led the Lakers for the final 37 games in a stressful lockout-shortened season, winning 65 percent of his games, but was replaced when the Lakers lured Jackson out of Montana and back into coaching.

"I definitely wanted another chance and I always thought I'd get another chance," said Rambis, who spent seven of those ensuing years as Jackson's assistant and another three in the front office. "Then years went by and I started to wonder if I would get another chance. I had other opportunities with other ballclubs, but they just weren't right.

"This is the right opportunity for me. This is the right time for me. I fully expect to be here for a long time."

Jackson said he would have recommended the Lakers hire Rambis when he decided to leave Los Angeles, and Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak called Rambis "the leading candidate" if Jackson had ever decided to take his collection of titles -- a record 10 and counting -- back to the mountains.

But with Jackson not going anywhere anytime soon, Rambis agreed to leave the beach, forfeit his deep tan and tackle the cold, dark winter and a job with a franchise that exhausted eight coaches in its first 20 seasons while only once reaching the Western Conference finals, an achievement considered a failure any year in Los Angeles.

He did so at age 51 only after Kahn guaranteed him that four-year contract, a stipulation that dissuaded Sacramento from hiring him in June.

"You don't get a person better prepared to be a head coach in this league," Kupchak said. "If you just look at his pedigree, he is as good a gamble as anyone you could get. Quite frankly, he is what you look for."

Always seizing opportunity

Rambis swears he'd never be here today -- in the NBA, let alone at the Wolves' season opener -- if Kupchak hadn't blown out his knee with the Lakers early in the 1981-82 season.

The NBA roster expansion by one player that year let him make the mighty Lakers as a rookie out of Santa Clara University that fall. Kupchak's injured knee and Rambis' defensive performance against Pacers forward Herb Williams one night in Indiana placed him in the starting lineup beside Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the rest of the season.

In turn, that opportune night helped create a player who became an antithetical icon on a championship team stylish and sleek, in a city glittery and golden. The Lakers long ago left the Great Western Forum where Rambis once played, but you'll still find Staples Center fans -- the lingering remnants of a cult movement called "Rambis Youth" -- sporting the fashionably unfashionable black athletic glasses he wore in his playing days.

"I hated those glasses," said Rambis, whose father bought the most indestructible pair he could find after Rambis broke countless pairs playing football and basketball when he was a kid in northern California.

Nearly 30 years later, fans nationwide remember those ugly glasses, the cheesy moustache and long, stringy hair dripping with sweat. They also will never forget a 10-second sequence that helped make famous a 14-year playing career: He scrambled up ready to fight after being clotheslined in the 1984 NBA Finals by Boston's Kevin McHale, the man he coincidentally replaced as Timberwolves coach.

"People associated myself and the glasses with the hard work, the passion, the effort," Rambis said when asked how he became popular in a culture all about glamour and flash. "There was nothing [glamorous] about me then, and there isn't now."

Learning from the master

He swapped the glasses for laser eye surgery and a coach's suit, but retained the passion and work ethic while he apprenticed at his coaching craft.

From Riley, he learned about meticulous preparation and a single-mindedness that borders on obsession.

From Jackson, he learned how to challenge players intellectually, how to manage personalities, how to let go.

"This is a person who is hardworking," Jackson said. "You say, 'Well, what's the work about?' A lot of it is just understanding there's another element of the game beyond who you're going to get the ball to in the post. What's the ingredient that makes a team tick? He understands how to stop teams, how to hold teams down. I think he and I are very much alike as players and coaches."

So much so that when you hear Rambis talk -- particularly in media interviews -- it sometimes sounds like Jackson.

"If you closed your eyes, you'd think it was Phil," Wolves forward Kevin Love said. "It's definitely that same calmness. At first I thought he was kidding the way he was talking to us at training camp. I was wondering when he was going to start yelling at any moment, like any other coach."

Instead, Rambis possesses more than a bit of the qualities that have given his mentor the nickname "Zenmaster."

"When you hire Kurt, you're not getting Phil Jackson," Kupchak said. "You're hiring Kurt Rambis and all his experiences. He'll be the coach he wants to be. You won't get a Phil clone."

Teacher, not a screamer

Rambis does indeed yell, for emphasis. He also teases and cajoles and chides. He sometimes instigates a debate with a player or newspaper reporter seemingly just for sport, or perhaps simply for intellectual stimulation.

"I will stress them, I will ask questions, I will tease them just to see how they handle things," Rambis said. "I'm not a yeller and screamer, but I'm going to be very demanding. I see myself more as an educator. My job is to get them to understand how to play the right way together, how to help each other, how to cover for each other.

"The game happens so fast. When situations arise, I want them to have the instincts, the intelligence to make the right decisions."

He does so now with an assurance he did not possess a decade ago, when he assumed command of the Lakers on an interim basis after Del Harris was fired as head coach. The next day, the team signed Dennis Rodman. Rambis coached the Lakers to a 24-13 record the rest of the way and the playoffs' second round in a crackling season that featured a condensed schedule, Rodman's theatrics and the tenuous relationship growing between superstars Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal.

Los Angeles newspaper reporters who covered the Lakers that season e-mailed a Minneapolis colleague this fall inquiring whether Rambis is handling his second head-coaching job with more ease and calm.

"I've grown, evidently they haven't," Rambis said with a bemused grin. "I've matured, evidently they haven't. That was a completely different situation. I put an exorbitant amount of pressure on myself to make everything perfect because I felt that was my opportunity. And it just wasn't going to happen in that environment. I still think I did a really good job, given all the circumstances I had to deal with."

A new beginning

To get his second chance, Rambis left a franchise that knows nothing but winning for one that knows so little about it. He also has left his wife and family in Manhattan Beach, Calif., while his daughter finishes her senior year of high school for a cold, dark winter, perhaps in more ways than one.

"You have to remember: Kurt played on an expansion team in Charlotte," said Jackson, who promoted Rambis to head defensive coach last season in a move he cited as one reason the Lakers won their 15th NBA title. "That's something he understands. He's capable of withstanding the weather. I know he's a southern California guy: He likes the beach. He likes the sun. I've got a pair of snowshoes I can send him, if that'll help any."

He'll need more than that to transform a franchise that hasn't made the playoffs since 2004. Kahn guaranteed Rambis at least $8 million for the next four years because he became convinced the sum of Rambis' experiences will transform the Timberwolves.

"I think it would have been a terrible waste of his talent and his readiness to return as an assistant coach," Kahn said. "I feel like he's completely ready for this. It feels to me like he has been doing this for a long, long time. I knew he was ready, but I didn't know he was this ready. I think he has seen a lot. There's very little that will surprise this guy."