Hlas: Hornacek’s 2nd season as coach not as sunny as first

ATLANTA - Tuesday night, Jeff Hornacek could have told fellow former Iowa State basketball star Fred Hoiberg that coaching in the NBA isn't always peaches and cream.

Which is nothing ISU coach Hoiberg, who played 10 seasons in the NBA and worked in the Minnesota Timberwolves' front office for four more, doesn't already know.

Hornacek, 51, is finishing his second season as the Phoenix Suns' head coach, and the second go-round isn't as sweet as the first. Tuesday's 96-69 loss to the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena was a brutal way to start four games in six days on the road.

Phoenix slipped to 39-39, and has fallen out of contention for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Suns were 28-20 in early February, but traded away two players who average over 16 points per game, including one (guard Goran Dragic) who was a third-team All-NBA player last year.

Dragic, a free agent once this season ends, requested a trade. He said he didn't trust the franchise's decision-making, and didn't like how he was being used in Hornacek's offense. He's now with the Miami Heat.

'We lose Dragic and Isaiah Thomas (in a trade to the Boston Celtics), that's a pretty good hunk of scoring,” Hornacek said an hour before Tuesday's defeat to the No. 1 team in the East. 'Then your replacement that would help (point guard Brandon Knight) hasn't been able to play much because of injury. We were thrown for a loop there.”

Last season, Phoenix went 48-34 and missed the West playoffs by one game. It was an improvement of 23 wins from the season before Hornacek took the job, his first as a head coach. He was the runner-up to San Antonio's Gregg Popovich as the league's Coach of the Year.

'We were supposed to win 19 games and we won 48 with a bunch of guys who didn't play on other teams,” Hornacek said. 'This year's been a lot tougher. We had trades in the middle of the year. We'd been on the same pace for probably about the same record.”

Hornacek's NBA playing career ended in 2000. He eased back into pro ball in 2007 as a special assistant with the Utah Jazz, where he played for two NBA Finals teams and later had his number retired. He became a full-time assistant coach with the Jazz in 2011.

'I always thought I'd be a coach,” he said. 'My dad was a coach. I probably thought I was going to coach in college, take things I've learned from previous coaches and help guys get to that next level.”

Many assume Hoiberg will one day depart Ames to work with and coach against the best players on earth. Not having to recruit has always made the pros seem attractive to many college coaches, especially those who have known the NBA life.

'Recruiting could wear on you,” Hornacek said, 'all the travel and talking to players, and trying to get them in your school.

'Then again, the atmosphere of college is a lot of fun. Fred's had a lot of success (at Iowa State). It's his hometown there, so it's hard to imagine he would leave.”

The hardest part of coaching in the NBA, Hornacek said, is 'you've got 15 guys on the team who were all-stars in college. They all feel like they can play. You try to win and develop young guys, but you've got veteran guys who think they're better. It gets to be a tough mix when it comes to playing time.”

Before there was Hoiberg playing a brilliant brand of guard at Iowa State in the early 1990s, there was Hornacek. From 1982 to 1986, he helped Johnny Orr lift Iowa State basketball to success it hadn't known in decades.

Hornacek walked on at ISU, but became of the program's all-time greats. He had a game-winning, fallaway 25-foot buzzer-beater in overtime in a 1986 NCAA tournament game against Miami (Ohio) that helped the Cyclones toward the Sweet 16. He remains ISU's career leader in assists and steals.

He was a late second-round NBA draft pick, but put together a 14-season career and became a beloved player in Phoenix and, later, Utah.

It's a hard thing to walk away from, but Hornacek did for several years as he and his wife raised their family. But competitors have to compete.

'I like being part of the game,” he said. 'Even though you're not out there playing, it's as close as you can get. I want to help these guys get to a level where you're trying to reach the pinnacle in Phoenix, and make the playoffs every year.”

Asked if he wanted to coach indefinitely, he laughed and said 'I don't know about that. I'd like to get these guys into a championship at some point, and then quit after that.”

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