Mike Woodson


Michael Dean Woodson is an American professional basketball coach and former professional basketball player who is the associate head coach of the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association.
With coach Bob Knight's Indiana Hoosiers, Woodson played collegiately from 1976 to 1980. As a junior team captain, his Hoosiers won the 1979 NIT Tournament and he was named to first team All-Big Ten. That summer Woodson won a gold medal as captain of the United States basketball team at the 1979 Pan American Games. His senior year, Woodson and Isiah Thomas led the 1979–80 Hoosiers to a conference title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet Sixteen. Woodson was named the 1980 Big Ten Player of the Year, an NABC All-American, and awarded the Chicago Tribune Silver Basketball. Among Hoosier basketball players, Woodson ranks fifth all-time in total points and his 19.8 points per game average is tied for the second highest by a Hoosier who played four seasons in college.
Woodson played 11 seasons in the National Basketball Association after getting drafted by the New York Knicks as the 12th pick of the 1980 NBA draft. He also played for the New Jersey Nets, Kansas City/Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Clippers, Houston Rockets, and Cleveland Cavaliers. He appeared in 13 NBA playoff games over five post-seasons.
Woodson later coached for seven different NBA franchises. He worked as an assistant for the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Larry Brown's Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons, Los Angeles Clippers, and New York Knicks. Woodson and Brown, who had previously worked together as player and coach, won an NBA Championship with the Pistons during the 2003–04 season. Woodson went on to serve six years as head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, where he made the playoffs his last three seasons and his 206 career wins rank fourth-best in Hawks franchise history. He subsequently spent three seasons as head coach of the New York Knicks, where he reached the playoffs twice and secured an Atlantic Division title.

Early life and prep career

Woodson was born in 1958 in Indianapolis as the second youngest of 12 children. Growing up his family struggled financially and his parents suffered from fragile health. The family moved several times, living in two- and three-bedroom homes for the 14-member family. Woodson's father, Chester, worked two or three jobs at a time—delivering pianos, managing laundromats, and mowing lawns. Chester died of a heart attack when Woodson was 13, with Woodson later remarking that his father "worked himself to death." After the death of Woodson's father, the family lived in separate homes to lessen the burden on Woodson's mother, Odessa, a nurse. Woodson lived for a year with his oldest sister before eventually moving back in with his mom to help support her, giving her half of each pay check.
Growing up in Indiana, Woodson felt the Hoosier Hysteria that permeated the state, which helped prepare him for a career in basketball. He said, "Every yard had courts, little basketball hoops in the yard. If you didn't have it, you had neighbors two doors down that had it. You had parks in every area of town where you could go get a pickup game. Had rec centers where you could go play. It was a place to go learn your craft." He was also able to practice with a large number of talented basketball players in the Indianapolis area, including professionals such as George McGinnis, Roger Brown, and Rick Mount. According to Woodson, playing in Indiana meant "you had to be able to pass, and shoot, and dribble, and play without the basketball, you know, the motion offense. That was Indiana basketball. And Bob Knight is the one who really instilled a lot of the fundamentals and how high school coaches taught their teams."

Indiana University playing career

Woodson elected to play college basketball for Bob Knight and the Indiana University Hoosiers. During one recruiting visit by Knight where Woodson's high school coach, his mother, and his pastor were all present, Knight got into a heated exchange because Woodson's high school coach was not convinced Woodson would fit into Indiana's system. However, according to Woodson, "I wanted to go somewhere where I could play, and where I knew I could get a great education, and my family didn't have to travel far to see me. So it was perfect. And I thought I was playing for the best coach in the country at that time."
In Woodson's freshman year, the 1976–77 season, the Hoosiers were coming off a 32–0 undefeated season. Reflecting on that year, Woodson remarked, "My freshman year I only weighed a buck-85 playing small forward, and I could never keep anybody off the boards, and Coach told me early on, I kept missing block outs, and Coach was like 'Dammit, you miss one more block out and you're gonna run them stairs until I get tired.' And sure enough I missed a block out. And there I go, I ran all the way to the top, and walk all the way down. And this was going on for about an hour and I was like 'did I come to IU for this?' So he hollers up and says 'Well, I guess I've got to put up with your ass for another three years. Get on down here.'" In Woodson's sophomore year, the 1977–78 season, the Hoosiers finished the regular season with an overall record of 21–8 and a conference record of 12–6, finishing 2nd in the Big Ten Conference and advancing to the Sweet Sixteen in the 1978 NCAA Tournament.
In Woodson's junior year, the 1978–79 season, he served as captain of the Hoosier team. During the final game that season, against Illinois, word leaked out that Big Ten coaches had left Woodson off their all-conference first team, despite averaging 21 points and 5.7 rebounds while shooting 50 percent from the field. Woodson proceeded to lead Indiana to victory and score a career high 48 points. At the post-game press conference, Coach Knight criticized the media voters. "He just erupted," Woodson recalled. "He was like 'how the hell can this guy not be on first team All-Big Ten,' and then the next day they put me on first team All-Big Ten." The Hoosiers went on to win the 1979 NIT Tournament.
Following that season Woodson was selected to play for the United States in the 1979 Pan American Games on the basketball team coached by Indiana's Bob Knight. Behind Woodson's leadership as captain, the U.S. team compiled a 9–0 record and won the gold medal, while averaging 100.8 points a game—the first time that a United States team averaged more than 100 points-per-game in the Pan American Games. Following Woodson's team-leading 18.3 points per game, Coach Knight believed Woodson "was the best player in the country, and headed for a spectacular senior season."
The 1979–80 Hoosiers, led by Woodson and Isiah Thomas, began the season ranked No. 1 in the polls after a rare 78–50 blow-out of the Soviet Union men's national basketball team and then went on to four straight college victories. But Hoosier star Randy Wittman broke his foot and Woodson was forced to miss seven weeks due to back surgery on a herniated disc. Hobbled by these injuries, the team dropped to a 7–5 conference record, but upon Woodson's return on Valentine's Day with a win against Iowa, the Hoosiers went on a six-game winning streak and finished with a conference record of 13–5, finishing 1st in the Big Ten Conference. After winning the 1984 NBA All-Star MVP, Isiah Thomas was asked if that was his biggest basketball thrill, to which Thomas replied, "No, my biggest thrill was my freshman year at Indiana when Mike Woodson came back from back surgery and hit his first three jump shots at Iowa." The team advanced to the 1980 Sweet Sixteen and ended the season with an overall record of 21–8.
Woodson finished his career at Indiana with 1,279 points in conference games and 2,061 points in all games. Despite playing just six conference games his senior year and missing seven weeks, Woodson was named the Big Ten's Most Valuable Player and an National Association of Basketball Coaches All-American, and received the Chicago Tribune Silver Basketball award. Among Hoosier basketball players, Woodson ranks fifth all-time in total points and his 19.8 points per game average is tied for the second highest by a Hoosier who played four seasons in college.

NBA professional career

The New York Knicks selected Woodson 12th overall in the 1980 NBA draft. He played in the league from 1980 until 1991, averaging 14.0 points over 786 games. After a season with the Knicks, Woodson played for the New Jersey Nets in just seven games before being traded to the Kansas City/Sacramento Kings. There, Woodson alternated between starter and sixth man in five seasons with the Kings, averaging a career-high 18.2 points per game in 1982–83, including a 1983 playoff run. Kings assistant coach Frank Hanblen later reflected on Woodson: "Great guy, great teammate, gave you everything he had." In August 1986, Woodson was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, the same month his mother Odessa Woodson died. He stayed with the Clippers in the 1986–87 and 1987–88 seasons, and then played with the Houston Rockets and Cleveland Cavaliers.
Woodson's coaches and mentors during his NBA career included Red Holzman, Larry Brown, Cotton Fitzsimmons, Gene Shue, and Don Chaney.

NBA coaching career

Assistant coaching

Prior to his six years as head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, Woodson was an assistant coach with Chris Ford's Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Larry Brown's Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons. With the Pistons during the 2003–04 season, Woodson worked closely with head coach Larry Brown to help win an NBA Championship. Woodson was known for getting the most out of defensive players, allowing teams coached by him and Brown to limit opponents to just under 42% shooting.
After two stints as head coach, with the Hawks and Knicks, Woodson once again served as an assistant. On September 29, 2014, the Los Angeles Clippers officially announced that Woodson had been hired as an assistant coach under Doc Rivers and he would hold that position with the Clippers throughout the next four years, missing out on the playoffs in only his last season there. Woodson would later announce his resignation from the Clippers on May 15, 2018. On September 4, 2020, Woodson was hired as an assistant coach for the New York Knicks under head coach Tom Thibodeau, but he left that position to serve as head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers.