A Quote by Doug Collins
I remember when I went to try out for the Olympic team in 1972, Coach Iba told me he didn't care how many points I could score because if I couldn't guard anybody, I wasn't going to make the team. I knew to make the team I had to become a better defender. If you can play offense, you can defend. It just comes down to competitive will.
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It's a mystery coming out each and every game to try and figure out how a team is going to guard me and how I'm going to dictate how my team wins.
Growing up in Australia and the way I was raised, my dad told me to play as a team and to be a team player. You have five guys on the court. It's easy for five guys to defend one guy. It's hard to guard five. It's just a natural thing to do.
I missed the Olympic team in 1996 - missed making the team. I tried to make a comeback in my sport, and soon after the Olympic trials, Johann Olav Koss, who is a Norwegian speed-skater, called me up and asked me to be a part of Olympic Aid. Now Olympic Aid is Right to Play. It's a wonderful, narrow focus.
I've had the privilege of coaching the best basketball team in the history of the world, and that's the USA national team. I've had a chance to coach them for eight years. If you were to ask me if I could end my career only coaching one team for the rest of my coaching career, I don't think it could get better than that, especially with the players that I've had during those eight years. When you've coached at that level, you know, you've coached those players, it's pretty hard to say, I would rather coach anybody else.
I absolutely think I have the ability to be a world-class athlete and make a team. But even if I never make another world championship team or Olympic team, I think there are so many things I can say about the sport that can really excite me and bring me a lot of motivation in the day to day.
I'm in the team to score goals. I try and score as many as I can in the season to help the team out.
If I were a high school coach, I would put my best players on offense. The best athletes on my team, I would give them the ball and score points. I wouldn't play them on defense. I would play them where they can get the ball and score points.
Certainly our job as an offense to try to score points and that's running the ball, throwing the ball, whatever it is. Somehow, someway we've got to try to score points to help our team win. That's where the focus is and it's pretty easy just to focus on that.
Perhaps the toughest call for a coach is weighing what is best for an individual against what is best for the team. Keeping a player on the roster just because I liked him personally, or even because of his great contributions to the team in the past, when I felt some one else could do more for the team would be a disservice to the team's goals.
I want to make sure the other point guard can't start his offense until 12 or 13 seconds. Then I've put my team in position to defend just one pick-and-roll and one pass.
I gave up on the national team - I thought to myself, 'Well, that's just not something that's going to happen for me.' The national team was in residency camp; I was 6,000 miles away. Nobody was watching, nobody cared... I'm just going to go play for myself and my team and try to be great... and I had more fun than I'd have ever had.
Rick Tocchet is what I call a warrior. He really brings a lot to a team because he really believes in team play. He's tough on himself and he's tough on the team. As a coach, if you had even one guy like him on your team, you'd have a heckuva chance to do your job well.
I'm not trying to get back on a team, but I have tried to stay in shape just in case a team needs a point guard. A championship team. I wouldn't go to any other team.
When you're playing a good team, not too many point guards want to go one on one. When you're playing a not-so-good team, teams that are fighting to make the playoffs, guys are going to want to try and get their own. It's just a different read of each team.
The team was going into transition. The team that we had could not continue to exist. Because of age, injury, it could not get to that same level. It had to change. I wish this team could have been frozen in time for 10 years, but that's not the reality.
I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team.
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