Mike Macdonald’s first season as the Seattle Seahawks’ head coach has been an up-and-down affair.
Macdonald started out strong winning his first three games, but that promising start quickly fizzled out as Seattle proceeded to lose its next three. Growing pains were to be expected, especially with the 37-year-old being the youngest head coach in the league, but it’s still quite the whiplash.
During the Seahawks’ current skid, Macdonald is obviously hard at work looking for ways to right the ship. However, he took time out of his busy schedule to attend the NBA preseason game between the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, and ran into former Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll.
During the game, a video of Macdonald and former Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll went viral on social media. The meeting was not business related, but rather just two people chatting with major occupational overlap.
“It was great. We went with Jody [Allen] and Bert [Kolde] and got to meet got to meet the GM and really just hang,” Macdonald told reporters Wednesday. “I’ve never been courtside of any basketball game, even high school, so I thought that was kind of cool. I was surprised. Guys are incredible, the guys are freaks man.
“Wasn’t anticipating Pete being there. We saw him, he was sitting courtside, too, and figured it’d be good to go chop it up with him and it was a lot of fun. He got to meet my wife and just kind of compare notes on some things, but yeah, it was a good time.”
Carroll is still technically with the Seahawks as an advisor, but really holds that title in name only. Besides, Macdonald has plenty of veteran leaders around him, most notably assistant head coach Leslie Frazier. While it’s certainly possible Macdonald and Carroll talked some ball during their meeting, that likely wasn’t the main purpose for it.
No matter what they discussed, though, it seems like they enjoyed their time together. Both of them were smiling throughout the meeting, and they even took a selfie with general manager John Schneider.