Carlisle's talents remain on display

Nearing completion of his seventh season as an NBA head coach, Rick Carlisle has firmly established that he knows how to handle players.

But with over 300 victories, the 2002 Coach of the Year award and three division championships on his coaching resume, it's easy to overlook just how good Carlisle was when the ball was in his hands.

Carlisle's path to a fruitful career in professional basketball began in a most unlikely place: Lisbon, where he played in the obscurity of Section 10, graduating in 1978. His senior season at Lisbon, though, was sensational: He averaged 33 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists, and broke the Northern Athletic Conference record with 60 points in a game against Parishville-Hopkinton. Overall, Carlisle scored more than 1,000 points for the Golden Knights.

After Lisbon, the Ogdensburg native spent a year at Worcester Academy, a prep school in Massachusetts. From there, he moved on to the University of Maine, where he averaged 14.3 points and 4.5 assists over two seasons.

Carlisle's final two seasons of college basketball were played at the University of Virginia. Playing at guard, he averaged 10.9 and 11.1 points per game, respectively, as a junior and senior for the Cavaliers. He also served as a co-captain for the 1984 squad that advanced to the NCAA Final Four. Carlisle scored eight points in Virginia's 49-47 loss to Houston in the national semifinals. In the second round of the '84 tournament, he sank a 10-foot jump shot with 4 seconds left in overtime to give the Cavaliers a 53-51 win over Arkansas.

He left Virginia with a bachelor's degree in psychology, and the Boston Celtics selected him in the third round of the '84 NBA draft with the 70th overall pick. While Carlisle's statistics in the pros did not match those of his college days, he stuck around to play parts of five seasons in the NBA. His best season as a pro was the 1985-86 campaign, when he averaged 2.6 points in 77 games for the Celtics, who ended the year by beating the Houston Rockets for the championship.

Carlisle also played for the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets, averaging 2.2 points in 188 career NBA games. He played just five games in the '89-'90 season before hanging up his sneakers to become an assistant coach for the Nets. He also worked as an assistant at Portland and Indiana before landing his first head coaching position with the Detroit Pistons in 2001.

Finally in charge of his own team, Carlisle was an instant success. The Pistons went 50-32 in '01-'02 as Carlisle was named the NBA's top coach.

After two seasons with the Pistons, Carlisle took over as head coach at Indiana, where he led the Pacers to a franchise record for wins (61) in his first season on the bench. He coached Indiana for three more seasons and took over as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks before the start of the current NBA season.

Carlisle, whose career in and around the NBA also includes work as an analyst, will turn 50 on Oct. 27. He and his wife, Donna, are the parents of a daughter, Abby.

To read about previous selections to the Times' list of The North Country's Greatest Athletes of All Time, log on to www.watertowndailytimes.com