When he was 12, David Adelman was sprawled on the floor of the empty Portland Trail Blazers locker room, in pain. He called for his dad, Blazers coach Rick Adelman. Screamed for him. Nobody came.
He had been left alone in the bowels of Memorial Coliseum because as a pre-teen, Adelman practically lived in those halls, and those locker rooms. Not only was he the youngest son of the coach for the region’s most popular basketball team, he was also a ball boy, alternating between the Blazers and visiting teams for the past four years.
As he folded towels and filled coolers with Gatorade, he listened to pregame speeches from the likes of Jerry Sloan and George Karl. As he tidied the locker room, he studied the chalkboard diagrams of Phil Jackson and Don Nelson. Two years earlier, in the 1991 Western Conference finals, Lakers guard Magic Johnson summoned him from the locker room into the trainer’s room and asked him to lie on his knee to help him stretch. At the request of players, he got phone numbers from women in the crowd, fetched hot dogs, and filled coolers with beer. All while hearing jokes, arguments, and absorbing how grown men handled the joy of victory and the agony of defeat.
The locker room was where David Adelman grew up. But now, writhing in pain, the locker room was where his life would begin to change, and set him on a path to where he is today: interim coach of the Denver Nuggets.
Read more on Adelman and the Nuggets below.
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