Rick Carlisle had just been through it.
Three years removed from an NBA championship with his Dallas Mavericks, Carlisle’s Mavs had just lost in seven to the eventual champ San Antonio Spurs in the First Round playoff series.
So he took some time away.
“It was time to be challenged in a different way,” said Carlisle, now head coach of the Indiana Pacers and president of the National Basketball Coaches Association.
The results changed Carlisle’s life – taking him, literally, to new heights.
And as tens of thousands descend on Indy for NBA All-Star 2024, where the airport popped-up a full-sized basketball court to celebrate, they’ll be touching down in the only NBA town where the team’s head coach is also an instrument-rated pilot.
“The one thing I’ve learned about the highest levels of professional sports and life is that when you are in situations where you have butterflies and nerves, some people view that as an experience that’s uncomfortable,” Carlisle said. “I’ve learned that this feeling indicates that your senses are absolutely alive and that in this state special things can happen.
“Regardless of which way you see it, one thing I know to be a fact: in that state of the human experience, you have the ability to achieve beyond your means. … I don’t consider myself an adrenaline junkie by any stretch. But there are certain things in life that are worth doing because they challenge the human experience.”
Carlisle took his first demo flight in Dallas in the spring of 2014, in a Cirrus SR22 – a high performance single-engine prop plane with an emergency parachute that “has revolutionized aviation,” he said. He bought one shortly after, then jumped into training for his private pilot rating – this is the first step to becoming a full-fledged instrument rated pilot.
Three months after starting training, he passed his check ride, earning his rating for ‘private pilot single engine land.’ The following summer, he’d complete his training to become instrument-rated – which allows pilots to fly in the clouds and other adverse conditions.
Since then, he’s logged more than 650 hours, including 50 jet hours as the pilot in command – and a few to get TJ McConnell to an NCAA Tournament game last year (with a guide, Carlisle made sure to say).
“I started at age 54, which a lot of people think is old,” Carlisle said. “But I found that with the right training the things you learn in aviation are things that you deal with in coaching too.”
How else is it like hoops?
“It’s about being present in the moment,” he said. “Preparation is the biggest thing, knowing you’ve prepared to the best of your ability.
“The human element is everywhere in sports and life. … I’m leading young men who are imperfect. Every so often a guy will have a game that appears perfect, but NBA basketball is a game of managing mistakes. Excellence can be achieved with the proper approach, training and mindset.”
If challenge drove the decision, practicality did too, Carlisle said. Not to mention traffic. He flies from his offseason place in South Carolina to see his parents in Northern New York, where flying cuts a day of commercial airline flights and a 2-hour rental car down to a 3.5-hour non-stop, landing “five minutes from where I grew up.”
Flying also connects Carlisle to his dad, Preston, who dabbled in flight himself when Carlisle was young.
“My dad took some lessons in a Cessna 150 back in the 60s,” Carlisle said. “I don’t know that he got more than 25 or 30 hours, but I remember that he, along with another close friend of the family flew as well.
“My dad flew with me once or twice a few years ago” Carlisle continued. “He loved it.”
One of those flights back home from New York gave the Pacers coach one of his biggest adventures in the cockpit. On the way back to Charleston, he’d expected to beat the conditions from Hurricane Harvey. Until the winds navigated northeast sooner than expected.
“On the approach, I had never experienced a crosswind like that,” he said. “It had every challenging thing you could possibly imagine. As I was coming in, I just understood in my mind that if there was any doubt that this landing wasn’t gonna be safe, I was gonna do a go-round. … This wasn’t an emergency, but in these kinds of situations you have to anticipate.”
He went back around and brought the plane down on a runway more directed straight into the wind. Like coaching, he said, “you deal with quick decisions. And you try to set up situations of redundancy so you’re covered.”
Ten years after he went looking for a new challenge, how has flying shaped him?
“It’s an amazing confidence builder,” Carlisle said. “If you can do something like that — if you can accomplish something like that — you feel like you can take on a lot.”
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