Mizzou, Gates show a new side before the biggest game of the year
SACRAMENTO, CA—Dennis Gates’ stoicism has gone national this week. The stone-faced, complete lack of reaction during games has been the topic of conversation in Sacramento for much of the first three days of the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
On Friday afternoon, meeting with reporters before the biggest game of his still young head coaching career, Gates broke character. He laughed. Multiple times. No, really, he did.
His players did the same. Nick Honor cracked a joke about the meme of DeAndre Gholston that hangs in his apartment. Aidan Shaw first tried to sit down at the spot on the podium reserved for Gates and Gholston commented about the freshman not being used to this. Shaw shot back, “I just wanted to sit next to my teammates. Guess I can’t sit by Dree.”
As the Tigers get ready to play the biggest game of every one of their lives, it’s tough to tell if they’re preparing for the program’s first shot at the Sweet 16 in fourteen years or if they’re getting ready for a Tuesday practice in November. That’s just the way Gates likes it.
“They do a great job of keeping it light,” he said. “Our staff does a great job because we know how to mock those guys, too.”
Gates said it’s been that way since the Tigers came together for the first time last summer. They just got along. And they worked at getting along.
“I would say before you can win on the court, you have to win off the court,” Honor said. "He always tells us this thing is for life, so he's not just a basketball coach, he's pretty much there for all of us every time off the court, whatever we need. We can talk to him about anything.”
The presence of sports psychologist Joe Carr has played a part in that. Gates and the players referenced how he has helped them this season. Carr was sitting in the third row as Gates addressed the media. None of this has been accidental, but that makes it no less striking.
“Shout out to Dr. Carr, man,” Gholston said. “He rule.”
If there are any nerves in any of Missouri’s players, they sure aren’t outwardly visible.
It may sound like no big deal, but Missouri hasn’t often shown that face publicly. Not that they’ve appeared tight, but they’ve never appeared quite this loose. In front of the media, it is almost all business almost all of the time. The players’ press conferences have all been at a podium sitting next to Gates and often seem scripted. You hear rumors of Gates commanding a room and showing off his personality, but on this side of things—the side that is decidedly removed from the locker room and the day-to-day interactions—it’s the needle in the haystack or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It very well might exist, but you’ve never seen it.
That a coach’s players see a different side of him than the media or the public does is hardly unique. And whatever Gates has done behind closed doors has most certainly worked for this Missouri team. This isn’t about second-guessing his public persona or any button he has pushed with his team. What Gates has brought to this Missouri team is obviously exactly what it needed. Friday was revelatory only in the fact that it was the first chance for any of us that don’t wear a jersey or work for Gates to see it.
What does Gates remember about his experiences as a player in the NCAA Tournament? “That was long ago. I don’t remember that much.”
Laughter.
How important is it to have a short memory in March such as when Kobe Brown turned the ball over leading to a three that gave Utah State a second half lead? “That wasn’t Kobe Brown’s first turnover.”
More laughter.
Maybe this is who Dennis Gates really is. Maybe this is the way the players have been all year. Perhaps this is the chemistry they’ve talked about again and again. But chemistry is a mythical thing that’s impossible to quantify if you’re on this side of it. If you don’t see them every day, you wonder if it’s just talk. Does chemistry create success or does success create chemistry? At this point, it doesn’t really matter. Missouri has both of them.
“I feel like I have a connection with all my teammates,” Shaw said. “It will be a life-long connection just because coach Dennis Gates and all his ideologies, what he believes in.”
“Sometimes when you ask, ‘What has happened behind the scenes that allow your team, Coach Gates, to get to where they are?’ I think it's easy to figure that out,” Gates said. “They have fun with each other. They ultimately have fun playing basketball with each other.
“This is how they've been since June.”
The jokes, it seems, are a staple. The smiles. The laughter.
“On the bus, they'll impersonate me to the T,” Gates said. “That means they're listening. That's what that means. That doesn't mean they're just mocking. It means they're really listening because they have the wherewithal to turn that into a joke, turn that into a way to deepen their belief in it.”
A Dennis Gates impression? One that goes beyond standing on the sidelines, arms crossed, the proverbial calm in the eye of the March Madness storm? Will we ever see that? Is that the final frontier?
“You probably have to tune into Sternberg Scoop and figure out from Ben if Tre Gomillion or Dree Gholston or Sean East has done it,” Gates jokes. “I'm sure it's on film somewhere. I'm positive.”
He laughs again. So does the rest of the room.
Who is this guy?
Apparently, the one his players have known for the last nine months. The one who has guided them, who has let them be themselves, who has brought out the best in them. Who has led them to 25 wins and back to the NCAA Tournament and to Saturday at 3:10 in the Golden 1 Center playing a game which would allow them to be one of college basketball’s final sixteen teams still standing for the first time since 2009. And the one who has them acting like this is just another game, just another press conference, just another day in the season, not the eve of the biggest day of their basketball lives.
“When you have the right guys in the locker room at the right time, it's a special place,” Gates said. “You get to build special memories.”
Sweet ones, even, perhaps.
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