Malik Allen back with Heat as assistant coach. Allen: ‘It’s exciting, not gonna lie.’
Malik Allen wasn’t ever the best athlete on the court when he played in the NBA, so he used his mind to make up for that disadvantage.
All of that thinking about the game pushed the possibility of coaching into his mind.
“I wasn’t the greatest athlete,” said Allen, who played for eight different teams over his 10 NBA seasons. “So I had to study and learn the game in a lot of ways to find ways to get on the floor. The longer I was in it, I just gained more and more interest in it, the challenges. I just wound up talking and spending more time with the coaches that I had.”
That list of coaches includes current Heat president Pat Riley, who coached Allen for the first two seasons of his NBA career in Miami. Allen spent the first three-plus seasons of his NBA career with the Heat after signing with Miami in 2001 as an undrafted free agent
Allen now returns to the Heat in a coaching role, as he was hired last month to fill Juwan Howard’s spot as an assistant coach on Erik Spoelstra’s staff. The new job has begun with an assistant coaching role on Miami’s summer team, which begins the Las Vegas summer league with a Friday matchup against the Chinese national team at 5:30 p.m
“A lot of familiar faces,” Allen said of returning to the Heat. “I mean, obviously a lot of people are still there when I was there, and you start at the top. So I guess there’s a little bit of a comfort level with that. And it’s exciting, not gonna lie. The one thing I told those guys, though: The nostalgia wears off pretty quickly. It’s about the work and trying to get caught up and learn the program and what they’re doing and where they’re trying to go and how you fit in. That’s been the biggest thing.”
Allen, 41, spent this past season as an assistant coach with the Timberwolves, and was even in position to remain on Minnesota’s staff this offseason after a coaching change was made from Tom Thibodeau to Ryan Saunders. He also spent four seasons (2014-18) as an assistant coach with the Pistons under former Heat coach Stan Van Gundy.
As a former 6-10 forward, Allen is a logical choice to fill Howard’s spot with the Heat seemingly in need of an assistant coach who has NBA playing experience as a big man and/or experience coaching big men. Howard moved on to become the head coach at the University of Michigan.
But to label Allen as a “big man coach” isn’t entirely accurate or fair, with Miami now featuring a new-look frontcourt after trading center Hassan Whiteside to the Trail Blazers in return for Meyers Leonard as part of the four-team Jimmy Butler deal.
“It is limiting in some ways,” Allen said of the notion that he’s been brought in to coach the Heat’s big men. “I mean, because at the end of the day, you get into this to coach. You don’t get into this to coach, like, big men. You get in to coach the game. If that’s what you wind up funneling to, that happens, just as much as you have guard coaches who work with the guards. So if that’s where the role takes you, that’s where it takes you. But you get in it, you get in it, you study, you learn, and get experience to coach the game, period.”
The Heat’s current coaching staff under Spoelstra includes assistant coaches Dan Craig, Chris Quinn (also director of player development), Octavio De La Grana (also a player development coach) and Allen, video coordinator/player development coach Eric Glass, player development coach Anthony Carter and shooting consultant Rob Fodor.
“I had a lot of different aspects of coaching philosophies and I enjoyed that a lot,” Allen said of the coaching lessons he’s learned along the way. “And then as time went on, it really intrigued me a lot. I thought I had something to offer in terms of obviously there’s the lottery-pick guys and those top guys, and then there’s also the guys who come through and they’re trying to figure out what the league is about. So there is the X-and-O part and the development part as young men trying to find their way. And I can really identify with that.”
