Just because he's been out of the NBA for almost a decade doesn't mean Paul Silas has stopped watching. The 77-year old NBA-lifer, who was a regular at Charlotte Hornets games before the pandemic, watches from his home, and as he tells his son, Rockets head coach Stephen Silas, he's not a fan of how the game is played today.
"Why are you shooting all those threes?"
"How come you don't post anybody up?"
"How come they don't play big guys?"
Those are the questions the elder Silas routinely asks the younger Silas.
"He was six-seven, the power forward and couldn't really shoot and was in the mold of more recent guys like Charles Oakley and guys like that," Stephen Silas said of his father. "Any game that's on he'll watch, but he's just not with all the three-point shooting, regardless of the analytics that I try to explain to him that go in one ear and out the other."
It wasn't long ago the Rockets coach viewed the game much like his father. He recalled his time as a rookie assistant coach with the Charlotte Hornets when he'd put Baron Davis through workouts where the focus was elbow jumpers, pull-ups, UCLA cuts, cross screen and post ups, all of which has gone by the wayside today.
"It was just a different era," Silas said. "It's a very static way of playing and my thinking I guess, was very much in the box at that time."
Silas served as an assistant under his father for five seasons with the Charlotte/New Orleans Hornets and Cleveland Cavaliers. He spent the 2005-2006 season as a scout for the Washington Wizards and then joined Don Nelson's Golden State Warriors coaching staff, which became a bit of a basketball awakening.
"All of those things kind of just were kind of set aside and the box was broken," he said. "(Nelson) thinks totally outside of the box, and my vision, I guess, was expanded as far as what you can do and what you can tinker with and how can you create advantages and Nellie was so good at picking on bad defenders or going at certain guys."
After four seasons with the Warriors, Silas returned to Charlotte where he worked for his father, Mike Dunlap and Steve Clifford. When Clifford was dismissed following the 2018 season Silas joined the Dallas Mavericks, working under Rick Carlisle whose views of the game are most aligned with his own.
"He's changed a lot," Silas said. "He's been in Dallas, I think, for 11 years, and they've changed quite a bit. The championship years, it was kind of running through Dirk (Nowitzki), but they also played a bunch of pick and roll with (Jason) Kidd and Jason Terry, and those guys."
Nowitzki's storied career was about over when Silas arrived in Dallas, but he could already see Carlisle adapt to the strengths of his new star, Luka Doncic.
"We were kind of toying around with (playing) five-out and he understands the value of it, but then when the (Kristaps) Porzingis trade came he was all-in on five-out."
Silas was allowed to run the Mavericks offense for the two seasons he was in Dallas, which put him in charge of the NBA's most efficient offense a season ago, and he's installed that same scheme with the Rockets. Paul Silas might not be a fan of the offense his son is running as a first time NBA head coach, but Stephen has managed to win him over since the trade deadline.
"He's so happy right now that I'm playing Christian Wood and Kelly Olynyk at the same time. It's joyous for him."
