There’s no bull in Floyd’s retooling of the Trojans

When I heard USC’s basketball team had cracked the top 25, I thought it would be nice to stop by the Galen Center and, in my own way, congratulate Coach Tim Floyd.

We hadn’t met previously, because why would we? He’s USC’s basketball coach, and I couldn’t tell you the name of the Galaxy’s coach either.

We shook hands and I told him, “I had no idea until today, in looking at your record, just how bad an NBA coach you had been.”

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Floyd said.

“No. Tough to be that bad, though,” I said, and as first meetings go, I thought this one was going pretty well -- especially when we got the chance to start talking about Phil Jackson.

“I knew for 10 years I’d be coaching the Chicago Bulls,” Floyd said, and considering the 49-190 record he established as Jackson’s replacement, post-Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, here’s someone who could tell us what it’s going to be like the day Jackson and Kobe Bryant are no longer around here.

“I was coaching at New Orleans in 1988 and we had a short college team, but beat a really good big team, which was being scouted by [Bulls general manager] Jerry Krause. First time I met the guy, he walked up to me, introduced himself and told me one day I’d be coaching the Bulls.”

Funny story now, but at the time it eventually leaked out in Chicago and Floyd became known for years as Krause’s replacement-in-waiting for Jackson -- and just maybe there go Jordan and Pippen too. The Bulls’ version of Steve Bartman.

“It was terrible,” Floyd said, while rubbing his forehead -- so hard at one point that it appeared he was trying to wipe the memories away.

“[Krause] called and wanted me to come to the NBA Finals in 1996; he was thinking of making the move then because he thought the team was getting old and it was time -- even though they just won the title,” Floyd said. “I told him I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted it to die a natural death until Phil walked away on his own.”

Jackson stayed for two more years, two more titles and Floyd continued to be regarded as the heavy waiting in the wings to break it all up. Then Jackson called it quits, Floyd took over, “and we became an expansion team,” Floyd said.

“I called Phil before that first season and he said I could stop by and he was great,” Floyd said, and so I asked if he were still talking about Jackson.

“The next year he came back with the Lakers and we played them in Staples and played them well in a close loss. Then I met with Phil in his Staples office.

“He told me, ‘Your boss is going to be excited you played us really well, but you have the type of team that is going to be competitive only once every five nights.’ Then he explained to me the kind of players we were going to need to attract if we wanted to be successful, and what was going to happen.”

If he predicted nothing but doom and gloom at the time, Jackson nailed it. Floyd lasted less than four seasons in Chicago, gave New Orleans a try at the NBA level and then wrapped up his NBA coaching career with a 93-235 overall record, including the playoffs. And people around here thought Paul Hackett did a bad job.

“I didn’t want to live life with regrets and tell myself later I didn’t have the guts to try it,” he said. “If you lose a job coaching in college, you lose your occupation, because athletic directors are going to hire the young assistants at Kansas or Carolina or Duke. So if you’re going to get killed by a .22 or a howitzer, the howitzer being the NBA -- I said, ‘Let’s go with the howitzer.’

“In the NBA the money is guaranteed, and in college it is not. I was in my 40s, my maximum earning years, so why not? When you coach in college, you coach out of fear for the rest of your life -- fear of losing, then losing your job and being poor again.”

Right now Floyd doesn’t look scared of anything. He’s standing in a new $147-million building, his team is ranked 25th, and he’s waiting for O.J. Mayo, “the greatest perimeter player since LeBron James” to join USC next season.

The guy certainly knows how to bounce back from so-called devastation.

“The NBA experience certainly helped me,” Floyd said. “Mayo wanted to go someplace where they know how to market players like Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart and Carson Palmer and he wanted to play for a coach with NBA experience.

“I’ve never met a kid over 6 feet 4 who didn’t think one day he’d be playing in the NBA, and I can tell them all about it.... I’ve also come to a place different from where I had been used to coaching in Idaho, New Orleans and Iowa State. I think I signed two of the top 100 players in my previous 21 years, and now, because of this arena, the success of the football team and my NBA experience, there’s so much more available.”

He can tell recruits now about what it’s like to be nipping at UCLA’s heels, and just maybe what it’s going to be like to play in the NCAA tournament in a few months. He can also give them a tour of the Galen Center, and just watch the awe on their faces.

“I wanted to go someplace where I could win a national title, and no, without this building, I don’t think that could happen,” he said.

“Hey, do you know Mike Garrett comes by here once a week,” Floyd added -- and like that was a good thing. “He just wants to know what he can do to help. Imagine that. It’s that kind of environment here. He told me USC has won a title in every other sport, and he’d like to see us try and do it in basketball. I see no reason why not.”

I mentioned UCLA, of course, and Floyd said that Duke and North Carolina are just up the road from each other, and “there’s a heck of a lot more better players around these parts, so why can’t both schools here build championship programs?

“I’ll just tell you this,” he added. “We’re going to be hanging around here for some time.”

I said, “That will give you the chance then to replace Phil Jackson once again someday.”

Yeah, it was time to go, all right.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at

[email protected]. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.