For quite a while, the Houston Rockets looked like they had a franchise point guard on their hands with former superstar Steve Francis. But it didn’t take long before Francis came back down to earth for the Rockets in the mid 2000’s. How much of an impact did Jim Boylen have on the career of Francis in Houston?
An old Sporting News piece shows Boylen trying to adjust the mindset of Francis to convince him to have confidence in his shooting ability. Boylen states in that piece:
"“One of the toughest things we’ve had to do here is to convince the guy he is a good shooter,” says assistant coach Jim Boylen. “He was always able to take guys off the dribble, just shake guys and get to the rim and dunk. But he is a good shooter; we have always told him that. And he’d say, ‘Well, I know, but, but, but . . . Then he’d go out and try to dunk again. He has changed that.”"
Apparently the relationship between Boylen and Francis is closer than most NBA fans might think. But Francis was a truly special point guard while Boylen was an assistant coach with the Rockets. His best season with Boylen at the helm with the Rockets saw him average 21.6 points per game, 6.4 assists, 7.0 rebounds, and 1.2 steals, in 2001-02. That season was the first of three All-Star selections for Francis.
Still by far the longest coaching tenure to date for Boylen was with the Rockets. As previously mentioned, he was an assistant coach on the Rockets staff from 1992-2003. He still has roughly another eight years to go with the Chicago Bulls before he could reach that mark.