New Orleans first-year head coach Willie Green and his counterpart in a Western Conference quarterfinal series, Phoenix’s Monty Williams, are a rare breed among NBA sideline bosses, refraining from using profanity to get across messages to players. That explains why when Green needed to keep Pelicans players thinking positively during a discouraging stretch of Friday’s must-win against the LA Clippers, his words remained suitable for a family website.
“Get your freaking heads up!” Green told his team, after a halftime lead had turned into a 10-point deficit due to an everything-went-wrong third quarter. “This is what we live for!