Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Rebels Basketball:

Good doing whatever he can for UNLV, as long as it doesn’t include acting his age

Dave Rice file photos

Las Vegas Sun file

UNLV assistant coaches Max Good, left, and Dave Rice talk before the Rebels play Fairfield at the Thomas & Mack Center Sunday, November 21, 1999.

Max Good has a lot of sayings. Walking out of UNLV’s under-renovation basketball offices Wednesday morning, Good stopped to talk to sophomore Christian Wood, who turned the conversation around and quizzed Good on the one he’s used most since Good joined the Rebels’ staff in early August.

“You’ll say the worst to my face and the best behind my back,” Wood said, unknowingly repeating a line Good had said himself during an interview five minutes earlier.

This is Good in his element. Before 6 a.m. the 73-year-old was on campus to help lead the team through workouts, and after talking to Wood he was heading to the weight room. The politics and posturing often required of college coaches don’t appeal to Good because they distract from the fun he has helping players get better.

Another saying Good is fond of helps explain what led him back to UNLV, where he was an assistant and then interim coach from 1999 to 2001. The phrase says growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

“I’ve chosen not to grow up,” Good said. “I wouldn’t be very comfortable with people my age, and I know they wouldn’t be comfortable with me.”

Good’s coaching career has taken the Maine native all over the country, from Kentucky to Maine to Las Vegas to Rhode Island to Los Angeles and back to Las Vegas. His career record as a head coach is 319-340, and when his contract wasn’t renewed after six injury-plagued seasons at Loyola Marymount, Good got a call from old friend Dave Rice.

The two were colleagues at UNLV, and then Rice was on Good’s staff when Good took over for Bill Bayno during the 2000-01 season. While others may have looked toward retirement, Good doesn’t believe he’ll ever voluntarily step away from the game.

“I think I’ll coach until the day I die,” Good said.

With a little more than a month on the job, Good said he’s happy with his decision. The position, special assistant to the head coach, is different than he’s used to, but it still offers him the chance to work with young players, which Good said is all he wants.

As for what that will mean once the season gets going, it’s a little murky. Per NCAA guidelines, Good is allowed to attend practice but not participate in any on-court instruction. One line of thinking is that he’s here to coach the coaches, though Good doesn’t entirely agree.

“That’s a little grandiose,” Good said. “I don’t think they need a lot of coaching.”

For example, Good has already had his eyes opened a bit by the differences in the guy he used to sit next to on the Rebels’ bench. At a recent practice, Good said, Rice lit into the players about what he was seeing.

“I’d never seen that side of David,” Good said. “… He’s learned that sometimes kids can take kindness for weakness, and I think he’s expressed vehemently that there’s no (expletive) weaknesses here.”

The lack of an older, experienced coach on the bench has been an outside criticism of Rice during his tenure leading UNLV. Rice was willing to admit the coaches could use help, to the point of urging the Rebels’ boosters to raise the $50,000 for Good’s annual salary in the newly created position.

Now that he’s here, Good’s focus is on helping in any way he can. He has experience turning around teams that returned almost no production, although never with the skill level UNLV has recruited. In theory, that should make the job easier, so long as he can apply the same principles.

“I think it’s amazing how much gets done when nobody worries about who gets the credit,” Good said.

The first official practice is less than a month away, with the first exhibition game slated for Nov. 5. The season will come faster than anyone realizes, which is just fine with Good. Not only does that mean another year of helping kids get better, it also means getting away from Good’s least favorite season and one of the only things he doesn’t like about being back at UNLV: It’s a dry heat.

“Yeah, well pizza ovens are dry. Do you see people sticking their heads in a pizza oven?” Good said. “That’s about as dry a heat as you can find.”

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.

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