''My dad kind of embellishes the story,'' Jeff said. ''And maybe I wrote something on a scrap of paper, probably just imitating what my dad had been doing. But I seem to keep getting younger in that story. Pretty soon I'll have been leaving my baby crib to scout teams. But the fact is, I knew I wanted to coach all the way back when I was traveling with my dad.''

The family eventually moved from central California to New York State, where Bill Van Gundy is now the head coach at Genesee Community College in Batavia.

Jeff Van Gundy said he could not analyze what his father has meant to him in basketball terms. ''My father and mother have given me so much love, so much support, that it would trivialize their parenthood if I would reduce it just to basketball,'' he said. ''But my dad does call me before and after every game. And when we lost a game we shouldn't have, he told me it wasn't my fault. And I appreciated that, because he was trying to pick me up. But as I told the players: 'It's all our faults. We all have to take responsibility, and build from there.' ''

Lessons Learned From Pitino

Jeff was a history and education major in college and went to graduate school at Providence to continue those studies, but he found greater satisfaction as a basketball assistant to the head coach, Pitino. ''To be successful in anything,'' Van Gundy said, ''you have to have a passion for it, and that leads to being enthusiastic and demanding. I didn't have it for history. So I wouldn't have been a good teacher in that area. But I had it for basketball. And that's what coaching is, at every level: it's about teaching. Of getting the confidence and trust of players, of showing them how they can make themselves and teammates better, and of maintaining a spirit.''

It was from Pitino, Van Gundy said, that his basketball education grew decidedly.

''Rick was a master at technical skills, but he was also remarkable in getting the best out of his players,'' Van Gundy said. ''One important lesson I learned from him -- or tried to learn -- is to not berate your player to embarrass him. I mean, it was almost funny. He'd take a player out of a game and be clapping for him and pat him on the back in front of the crowd, but at the same time he's killing the guy for making a mistake.''

Van Gundy said he believed that he had made a mistake, for example, in his shouting match with Starks, whom he would eventually suspend for one game. On the other hand, it might not have been such a mistake, because it showed the other players that the young former assistant coach had backbone.

Van Gundy's suspension of Starks was reminiscent of the actions of one of his predecessors, Riley, with whom Van Gundy is often compared. ''There have been people who said I was a Pat Riley clone,'' Van Gundy said. ''But I don't think that's true. While I did learn a lot from him, I could never be him. I mean, we even dress so differently.''