Legendary Nuggets coach Doug Moe, the Godfather of the Run n’ Gun offense, gets his due

His typical practice lasted only 60 minutes. He thought it would be best if his best players only practiced every other day. Toward the end of his practices, players’ children would usually invade the court forcing an end to his sessions.

From the casual dress code he enforced to his unique coaching ideology, calling legendary Nuggets coach Doug Moe unconventional would be a drastic understatement.

An NBA trailblazer for his innovative and sometimes unconventional coaching philosophies and considered by many to be the Godfather of the modern NBA Run n’ Gun offense, Moe was named the recipient of the 2018 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Basketball Coaches Association announced. He accepted the award Sunday at Oracle Arena before Game 2 of NBA Finals between the Warriors and Cavaliers.

“I am incredibly honored to be named the 2018 recipient of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award. Winning this award carries a special significance because Chuck was a good friend and a tough competitor. But when the game was over, it was over, and we both appreciated that,” said Moe. “To win this award bearing his name is a true honor, especially as it comes from our peers, and a great way to keep his legacy alive. I’d like to thank the National Basketball Coaches Association and the Selection Committee for choosing me for this prestigious award.”

Moe’s coaching career spanned 25 years and began in 1972 as an assistant on Hall of Famer Larry Brown’s staff with the ABA’s Carolina Cougars. He was the Nuggets’ head coach from 1980-91 and amassed a 432-357 record. As a player, Moe starred at the University of North Carolina where he played with Brown. Moe was an All-Star in three of his five ABA seasons and won an ABA title with the Oakland Oaks in 1969.

Over Moe’s first two seasons in Denver, the Nuggets went 125-43 and finished as the runner-up in the 1976 ABA Finals to the New York Nets. Moe led the Nuggets to a then-franchise record 54 wins in 1988 and was honored with the NBA’s Coach of the Year Award that season. During Moe’s 10-year run in Denver, the Nuggets led the league in scoring six different times, were second and third twice and fourth once.

Some would say Moe was ahead of his time.

Moe’s team never ran plays. His offensive system was called “The Passing Game” and revolved around crisp ball movement, a high volume of screens and constant motion. His offensive gameplan, which centered around continuous player movement, is similar to many of the same schemes the league’s most potent offenses run today.

“I always wanted to play for him,” said former Nuggets player and current broadcaster for Altitude TV Scott Hastings. “He let bigs do what they could do best.”

The only rule within The Passing Game was that players couldn’t hold the ball for longer than two seconds at a time.

“In the 1970s and 80s Doug Moe established a pace and space game that was decades ahead of its time,” said Dallas Mavericks head coach and National Basketball Coaches Association President Rick Carlisle. “Congratulations to a true visionary on this special recognition of innovation and accomplishment.”

Under Moe’s watch, the Nuggets made the postseason in nine consecutive years, won two Midwest Conference titles and reached the Western Conference Finals in 1985. The organization raised a banner honoring his franchise-record 432 wins to Pepsi Center’s rafters in 2002. It hangs alongside the numbers of three Hall-of-Famers who Moe coached in Denver, David Thompson, Alex English and Dan Issel, and Nuggets greats Fat Lever, Byron Beck and Dikembe Mutombo.

Moe was a consultant for the Nuggets in 2003 for coach Jeff Bzdelik when current Denver assistant Ryan Bowen played for the organization.

“He was straight-forward and told it how it was. He didn’t care who you were, didn’t try to sugarcoat anything,” Bowen said. “If he had something to say he was gonna say it. He always told it like it was. It’s tough in today’s NBA. But he didn’t care who you were. He didn’t care who he was talking to. He didn’t try to put anything in nicer terms, he just blurted it out and said what he had to say.”

Moe’s 628 career wins as an NBA coach is the 23rd-most in league history, but he’s somewhat of a forgotten name in NBA folklore. It’s fitting that Moe won the award in 2018, the same year two historical offenses that are both built on similar pillars to Moe’s meet in the Finals for a record fourth-straight season.

*Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Moe played for Brown at the University of North Carolina, when in fact Moe and Brown played together.