NBA Teammates, Friends, Coaches: Mike Woodson and Reggie Theus Meet Again

Mike Woodson and Reggie Theus were NBA teammates in Kansas City and Sacramento back in the 1980s. They've remained good friends, and on Thursday night, they'll coach against each other when Indiana takes on Bethune-Cookman.

Jack Ankony | Nov 10, 2022

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BLOOMINGTON Ind. – Reggie Theus wears many hats at Bethune-Cookman University, a small historically black college in Daytona Beach, Fla. As the athletic director, he builds the schedule, then he builds the game plan as the head men’s basketball coach.

Theus, a former NBA All-Star, believes in playing a competitive schedule, so he called Mike Woodson, the coach of the No. 13 Indiana Hoosiers who has been a friend for more than 40 years. Theus is excited to coach against his former teammate, long-time friend and golf buddy, but he knows an immense challenge awaits for the Wildcats, who are a big 31.5-point underdog in Thursday night's 8:30 p.m. ET game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

“I'm not happy because obviously he has a really great team,” Theus said during a phone interview with HoosiersNow.com on Wednesday. “So we're going to try our best to compete and give ourselves a chance, but I may have to hear this for a long time, so I'll just take it out on him on the golf course. He gets no strokes."

Theus and Woodson’s paths first crossed midway through the 1983-84 season when Theus was traded from the Chicago Bulls to the Kansas City Kings, a move that eventually led to Chicago drafting Michael Jordan the following offseason. Theus, a 6-foot-7, guard began his career with the Bulls as the ninth overall pick in the 1978 Draft after reaching the Final Four at UNLV in 1977. He was the runner-up for the 1979 NBA Rookie of the Year award, and became an All-Star in 1981 when he led the Bulls to a first-round playoff win over the New York Knicks, scoring 37 points with 11 assists in the series-clinching game.

Teaming up in Kansas City, Theus and Woodson played in the Kings’ backcourt for 195 games across two and a half seasons. They were part of the franchise’s move to Sacramento before the 1985-86 season, and both averaged over 14 points per game during this time. Eddie Johnson led the Kings in scoring two of these seasons, and he and Woodson made sure their point guard, Theus, knew where they wanted the ball.

“The only thing I get on Reggie about, me and Eddie Johnson always ride him a lot,” Woodson said. “When [Theus] first got to the team, he would always throw us bad passes when we were in a scoring position, so we couldn't shoot the ball, we'd have to pass it back. That was his big issue when and had to get him straight right off the bat. Put the ball in the pocket where we can catch it and be ready to deliver a score, a bucket.”

Theus, of course, remembers this part of their playing days differently, taking credit for at least some of Woodson’s 10,981 points in the NBA.

"Anything that wasn't right to them at the exact moment that they wanted it, they whined all the time,” Theus said. “One thing's for sure with Eddie Johnson or Mike, they couldn't put it on the floor. So I had to spoon-feed them all their shots, and if it was just a little bit off it was like 'Oh, come on.' … We always laugh because I tell them all the time, he scored a lot of points, and a lot of those points came from my passes. So he can complain all he wants, but I'm the one who got him shots.”

Woodson and Theus’ run as teammates came to an end following the 1985-86 season when Woodson was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers. Theus remained in Sacramento for two seasons before being traded to the Atlanta Hawks for Woodson’s college teammate, Randy Wittman, who won the 1981 national championship at Indiana. Theus and Woodson each called it a career in 1991, retiring as members of the New Jersey Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers, respectively.

Theus never aspired to be a coach during his playing career, so he spent a handful of years as a studio analyst for the Los Angeles Lakers, called Pac-12 basketball and was even featured in a few movies and sitcoms. But after about a decade, he felt the itch to teach the game of basketball instead of comment on it. He volunteered as a coach at Cal State LA, where he was “the happiest I'd been in a long time teaching the game.”

This led to Theus becoming an assistant on the 2005 Louisville Cardinals Final Four team under Rick Pitino, before head coaching jobs at New Mexico State and with the Sacramento Kings.

Woodson coached for 26 years in the NBA, leading the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks to playoff appearances as a head coach. But despite going on their own journeys for over three decades after two and a half seasons as teammates, Woodson and Theus remained good friends on and off the court.

“Mike was always a guy that you could count on to get the truth, always, and you could count on him always if you needed to talk,” Theus said. “When you have trust as a teammate, it goes a long way, and I know that what he teaches and what he talks to with his players, whether it be NBA or college, that trust that you build as teammates, he walks the walk because he's always been a very trusting, very loyal friend and someone that has been incredible reliable over the years.”

Theus accepted his current role as athletic director and men’s basketball coach at Bethune-Cookman on July 3, 2021, which presented quite the task. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bethune-Cookman shut down all sports on Oct. 27, 2020. Eight of the 15 players on the 2019-20 Wildcats were seniors, so Theus inherited a program in the midst of significant roster turnover and one that hadn’t played in over a year. But for Theus, teaching the game and devoting his life to something bigger than himself has been a special experience.

“Now getting the opportunity to be at an HBCU and also have the chance to be an athletic director is a real blessing for me,” Theus said. “I consulted with Eddie and Mike before I took the job and they thought it was such a great opportunity to do more. For us, at our age, to be still coaching and into it, you've got to love it.”

On Thursday, Theus brings his team to Assembly Hall to match up with Woodson and the Hoosiers. Indiana has cruised to comfortable wins in two exhibition games and the regular season opener against Morehead State. Bethune-Cookman is coming off an 89-58 loss at Iowa on Monday and a 9-21 record in 2021-22, which Theus said puts him in a different position as the underdog. When Theus, Woodson and Johnson compete on the golf course, “I call those guys my little buddies,” Theus said.

"Although we've competed against each other, whether it be as players or on the golf course or as coaches, above and beyond all that we're family,” Theus said. “And we understand competing and also basically stepping on the guy in front of us if he gets in the way. It's only out of respect that we compete so hard against each other."

But most of all, Theus is glad to see Woodson back at Indiana, a place where Theus knew Woodson expressed a desire to coach years ago, and now he’s leading a top-15 Hoosiers team.

“When it's all said and done,” Theus said. “[Woodson] gets a chance to really make a difference in these kids' lives and the decisions they make, so I'm just extremely happy that he ended up at his alma mater … This was always a coveted job for him and something that he's always talked about, so I'm happy to see it happen for him."

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