INDIANAPOLIS -- Rick Carlisle, at 65, is still looking for ways to better himself. Still looking for ways to tilt the board, at the highest level, against the greatest competition in the world. Still learning how to control a plane in his hands, the way his Indiana Pacers defense tried to slow Donovan Mitchell's roll.
It has forced Carlisle, as time does with all who are aware of its passing, to be different now than he was nearly a quarter-century ago, when he got his first head coaching job in Detroit.
In his second head coaching stint here with the Pacers, with All-Star and Olympian Tyrese Haliburton the focal point, Carlisle is seeking a second NBA title to go with the one he got in Dallas in 2011. He's now eight wins away, after his team dispatched the 64-win Cavaliers in five games Tuesday, sending Indiana to its second straight Eastern Conference finals appearance.
"If your desire in life is to lead and to teach, NBA head coaching is the ultimate crucible," Carlisle said to The Athletic Sunday night in his office ab0ut 25 minutes after his Pacers had dropped 80 points on Cleveland in an exquisite first half and won Game 4 of the series, shredding the Cavs' 3-2 zone that had flummoxed the Pacers just 48 hours earlier.
"Everything is at such a high level," Carlisle said. "It's such a fever pitch. You've got to learn from a lot of mistakes that you make, and you've got to try to learn from watching other coaches who do it well. Watching guys like (Gregg) Popovich, Phil Jackson and (Pat) Riley. I worked for Chuck Daly for two years. I worked for Bill Fitch for three years. These guys were all best of the best, Hall of Famers.
"You've got to try to tap into perspectives that you gain working with people like that, and building friendships with people like that."
All of those coaches won NBA titles. All but Fitch won at least two. Carlisle is looking to become just the 15th coach all-time with two rings. Jackson, who won six rings with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers; Riley, who won four titles with the Lakers and one with Miami in 2005, and Alex Hannum, who coached the St. Louis Hawks (1957-58) and Philadelphia 76ers (1966-67) to titles, are the only coaches in league history to win championships with more than one franchise.
Tuesday's win over Cleveland was Carlisle's 79th career playoff victory, tying him with Rick Adelman for 13th all-time in coaching playoff wins, one behind Lenny Wilkens and George Karl, and two behind K.C. Jones, who is currently 10th all-time with 81 postseason victories.
At 993 career regular-season wins, Carlisle will become just the 11th coach in NBA history to reach 1,000 career victories early next season. If the Pacers match their 50-win total next season, Carlisle will pass Adelman (1,042 regular-season wins) into 10th place on the league's all-time regular-season coaches' victories list.
When he first got in the big chair, in Detroit, Carlisle was often abrupt with his players, team management and the media. With the Detroit Pistons and Pacers teams more suited to walk it up and play deliberately, he called almost every play from the sideline. He was a control freak.
Now, while he's still tough, still demanding -- "Oh, he's gonna bark a little bit," center Myles Turner said -- Carlisle's learned that collaboration is a lot easier to navigate than confrontation.
Now, he reaches out. He's empowered his coaching staff just as Larry Bird empowered him to run the Pacers' offense in the late 1990s as one of Bird's two assistant coaches, while the late Dick Harter ran Indiana's defense. Like Bird, Carlisle makes CEO decisions.
But when it came to figuring out the Cavs' 3-2 zone, Carlisle was in his element, under the hood, tinkering.
This is Ph.D.-level time for NBA coaches. Their teams are playing the league's elite players, top squads and their top fellow minds on the opposing benches. The competition level is off the charts. But so is the preparation, the in-game chess match where coaches have to solve, in real time, problems that can send their team home for the summer.
To be sure, Indiana played with more force in Game 4. The Pacers set screens harder and moved with more intention. But they'd also gotten the manual on the best ways to manipulate the Cavs' length, to better find and then attack the soft spots behind the front line, and along the baseline. Indy smoked Cleveland on its first four 3-2 defensive possessions, going 3 of 3 on wide-open 3s coming off skip passes, and getting a layup off a short roll pass on the fourth.
It left Haliburton to call his coach "kind of a savant when it comes to adjustments" after the breakthrough Game 4 win.
"I think he has this, like, kind of hoop ADHD," Turner said. "He just has a bunch of ideas and stuff that runs through his mind that he tries to deliver all at once. I'm kind of the same way. And I think I just understand him as a person.
"He has a lot more experience in this world than I do, but just the things he's into off the floor, that Renaissance man type of approach, I appreciate that type of thing. He's done a lot for my career. Just allowing me to go out on the court and have a kind of free will that I haven't had in the past."
Carlisle stopped micromanaging from the bench in the late aughts, during his first season in Dallas. The Mavs had gotten off to a slow start. But Jason Kidd was one of the most cerebral guards of all time. Realizing that Kidd could process what was happening and what to do about it, just as fast and accurately as Carlisle could, he let his point guard run the show. The Mavericks wound up winning 50 games and made the conference semis.
Two years later, they won it all with Carlisle putting J.J. Barea in the starting lineup mid-series to get more pace in the Mavs' attack. And playing little-used Brian Cardinal ahead of Peja Stojaković up front, en route to Dallas' shocking six-game upset of the heavily-favored Miami Heat.
"A lot's changed in 23 years," Carlisle said. "The game's evolved a lot. At times, my teams have been at the forefront of evolution; at times, we've had to adjust with the game. But one thing you learn is you must be open to change. One thing that's changed a lot is players, how they communicate and how they're brought up.
"Social media has had a major influence, understanding those pressures. And having a 21-year-old daughter has taught me some things about communicating with that generation. I love the fertile environment of the NBA. There's something that can be learned every single day. And I'm always working on being a better communicator."
With this group, Carlisle reaches out in different ways.
"I can only go off of what I heard, the rumors and whatnot," said Turner, who predates Carlisle II here, having spent a decade with the Pacers since going 11th in the 2015 draft. "He's still the same coach. But he's taken a more Zen approach. ... he's kind of a little bit of a cooler head. He's not as quick to react to things. And I think he's taken on the personal journey of it. We're hoopin' and whatnot, but he's also trying to build men. I think it's something he takes pride in."
But he continues to look for ways to keep his mind sharp.
Carlisle taught himself to play the piano while in college at the University of Virginia. It's a hobby that's become a lifetime's passion. You know how when your kids talk about LeBron James, Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, and their faces light up? That's how Carlisle talks about the late, great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.
"We were on the road one time; we were getting off the bus, and he said, 'Hey, a friend of mine is playing a small venue downtown tonight. You want to come?' " recalled Mark Boyle, the Pacers' longtime radio play-by-play man. "And I said, 'Sure.' And we got to the place, and it was ... Bruce Hornsby. 'A friend of mine!' "
A decade ago, looking for another challenge, Carlisle took up flying. He bought a Cirrus SR22 Turbo in 2014, figuring buying the plane would make him take the lessons and do the hours of supervised training required to fly the plane. Recently, he's been training on a Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, a micro jet approved for single-pilot use. The SF50 can cruise up to 31,000 feet, has an autoland system and a parachute system that can slow the descent of the plane in case of an emergency.
"When I met Coach, he was like, I love basketball. But, he's a family guy," said Mike Matthews, the executive director of domestic sales for Cirrus, who sold Carlisle his plane, did much of the training with him and who now calls Carlisle a close friend. "His parents are up in Ogdensburg, N.Y. It's at least two transfers on a commercial flight to get there. It's a whole-day thing. If you've ever spent time with Carlisle, he's a creature of habit. Everything's timed out. He has a half hour for this; he has two hours for this. It's very regimented. I respect that about him.
"When he called me, it was, 'I want to learn how to fly, because I want to see my parents. I want to be more efficient. And as we spent more time together, he saw how he could use the airplane to get in front of his players, because he's a relationship guy. I want to be in Kiawah (S.C.), where he summers, and I want to be able to get in front of players, and in front of my coaches, and do summer programs, player development. And, most importantly, see my family."
Carlisle had been inspired by his brother, Bill, who'd spent 20 years as a sheriff's deputy, only to pivot and then immerse himself in a law degree program to become an attorney at age 48.
"To me, that was very inspirational," Carlisle said. "So, I didn't want to go to law school, but I wanted to be challenged. And there were things about flying that seemed to -- seemed to -- parallel with coaching. Redundancy. Spatial, situational awareness, those kinds of things. There is truth to it."
And, it was a new way to spend time with his players. When Pacers guard T.J. McConnell wanted to see his former Arizona coach Sean Miller, who'd moved on to Xavier, in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 two years ago, his coach gave him a lift in the SR22 from Indy to Greensboro, N.C., where the Musketeers played Pittsburgh. And then from Greensboro to Charlotte, where the Pacers were playing the Hornets the following night.
Carlisle also has been intentional in trying to uplift the coaching profession.
He was nominated and elected president of the National Basketball Coaches Association in 2005. He was present for neither. The Pacers had a pre-draft workout scheduled, so he was on the court when he got the votes. The late Michael Goldberg, the longtime, bow-tied executive director of the NBCA, gave him the news.
"And you know Michael, in his New York accent, he said 'Coach Carlisle, I need to talk to you,' " Carlisle said.
Carlisle is completing his two-decade run as NBCA president next December. In the position, he's been intentional in raising the profile of young coaches and coaches of color. He is quick and vehement in his public statements when yet another seemingly successful head coach is let go, in an increasingly impatient league.
He pushed to get an annual Lifetime Achievement Award for coaching excellence kick-started in 2009, and named for Daly, the late two-time NBA championship coach for the Pistons, the head coach of the 1992 "Dream Team," and a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honoree.
In his second go-round with the Pacers, Carlisle has a very different team than the one that took part in the infamous brawl at Auburn Hills, Mich., in 2004, which destroyed a promising young team featuring Jermaine O'Neal and Metta Sandiford-Artest and Stephen Jackson. These Pacers chirp, are feisty and defend at a high level, but they aren't fighters. However, they will beat the brakes off you if you don't get back in transition.
But Carlisle also has found the best ways to unlock Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard and Turner.
For much of his time in Indy, Turner has faced yearly trade rumor talk. He struggled to find his place playing alongside Domantas Sabonis. Even though Turner's been here for 11 years now, it's been more rocky than smooth. But Carlisle, while promising Turner nothing, has convinced him that he's got his back.
"He's the first coach I've had in the league that's had this, I don't know, uninterrupted belief in my abilities," Turner said. "He just lets me go out there and do my thing. I think psychologically, me and him, we align."
Carlisle says it's "a bit of a stretch" to make too many connections between his avocation and vocation. The turbulence of the playoffs, blah, blah, blah. But, always tinkering, always seeking solutions to often complex situations in real time? That jibes. Putting games and aircraft on autopilot is usually only a very brief respite from what's coming next.
"One thing you do learn with flying is, when you're off course a little bit, my instructor always said 'small adjustments normalize the situation,' " Carlisle says. "In basketball, life and basketball coaching, small adjustments and normalizing the situation as much as possible have a lot to do with problem solving."