Let’s take a moment to put in proper perspective who exactly the Bulls landed in Maurice Cheeks.
Why should the current news avalanche overshadow the significance of Cheeks’ reported addition to Billy Donovan’s coaching staff?
A Chicago native who enjoyed a 15-year NBA playing career, Cheeks is a Hall of Fame guard and champion with the star-studded 1983 Philadelphia 76ers. He has nine years of NBA head coaching experience and another 15 as an assistant, the past five as Donovan’s right-hand man in Oklahoma City.
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But the beauty of Mo Cheeks is he’s content with the Bulls and their fans never making a big deal of any of it.
Beyond drawing attention for being debonairly dressed on the sidelines, complete with an endless collection of designer ties he’s fond of and has been known to give as gifts, Cheeks is as unassuming as Hall of Famers come. He carries a quiet confidence that belies his stature and he never craves the spotlight.
Cheeks has mastered being a legendary presence without being the center of attention. As much as anything else, that’s my lasting memory of the man, whose first four-year stint with the Thunder under former coach Scott Brooks overlapped with mine as one of the team’s beat writers.
The Thunder’s media relations department uses its discretion for allowing interviews with assistant coaches. In those four years, Cheeks, fresh off eight straight seasons coaching Portland and Philadelphia, did all he could to avoid the limelight.
Even when he agreed to field a few questions, Cheeks did so reluctantly. The two of us sat down only a handful of times for on-the-record discussions during his time with the Thunder — to talk about Russell Westbrook’s early growth, Cheeks’ friend and former teammate Moses Malone’s tragic 2015 death and to relive that memorable moment from 17 years ago.
Maurice Cheeks carved out a Hall of Fame career as a point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers. (Jim Cummins / NBAE via Getty Images)
It was April 25, 2003. Cheeks rescued a 13-year-old, eighth-grade promotion winner who forgot the words to the Star-Spangled Banner in the middle of singing it prior to a Blazers home game. Six years later, after many requests during his first season with the Thunder, Cheeks relented and in his own succinct way shared his recollections of that night.
“I was brought up the right way by my mother and my father,” Cheeks told me then. “We didn’t have the best life. But they instilled in us to treat people the right way. That’s all that is. It’s no secret. It’s no recipe to it. It’s just treating people correctly, and if you do it correctly it’ll come back to you.”
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The Bulls now field a front office that prioritizes that idea, a head coach who makes it his mission and a lead assistant who is an expert.
“No question that was a special moment. But that’s who he is,” Brooks told me for that story in 2009.
Del Harris, an assistant for Dallas during that 2003 first-round playoff matchup with Portland, went a step further.
“I just thought it was one of the classiest acts I had ever seen in the NBA,” he told me in 2009. “It was very touching. For a guy in a real pickle with playoff basketball on the line, to be able to think of somebody else like that just represented the best that there is in human beings.”
Cheeks’ connection skills undoubtedly will have a positive impact on the likes of Zach LaVine, Coby White and most any other player who passes through.
“He was a great influence on a lot of our players,” former Thunder forward Nick Collison told me in 2013. “He was a guy that could talk to guys on the side and calm guys down in certain situations or build guys up in certain situations. He just really has a good feel for players and the mental part of the game. He did a lot here.”
One of Cheeks’ most memorable moments as an assistant came in February 2013, during a Thunder home game against Memphis. It was a night that Westbrook was throwing one of his patented meltdowns.
A turnover led to a disagreement among teammates, which lead to tensions rising. Westbrook, fuming following a timeout and a benching, stormed into the tunnel in the middle of the game. Cheeks sat with Westbrook on the end of the bench, the only guy with Westbrook’s ear in that emotional moment. And when Westbrook stormed off, Cheeks gave chase.
It’s those little, everyday contributions that Cheeks will now bring to his hometown team.
“I learned a lot from him,” Brooks said in 2013, after Cheeks became Pistons head coach. “I love how he thinks the game. He has a very strong, systematic approach of getting better every month. It’s kind of like what I believe in. But he’s a big part of that. Their team will always be better month by month, year by year. That’s the way he approaches things. He’s very consistent in his work.”
(Photo: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)
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