Billy Dat
08-13-2012, 02:13 PM
Aside from wanting to hail the USA Women on their 5th consecutive Gold Medal (anybody see The Landlord in the stands?) I wanted to post some of Geno's post-game quotes which show that coaches can be enormously successful and come at thing completely differently. Can you imagine K saying any of the following things about the US Men's National Team? Geno is a piece of work:
On what he learned from this team:
You know what the funny thing is about professional basketball players? They think they’re smarter than you are. That just boggles my mind, because, if they were, why would USA Basketball have coaches? So, I’m constantly amazed by some of them, how much they think they know. It’s a warning for me, as a college coach, to see that no matter how good some of these players are that play professionally, they need coaching. They need direction, and you know what, the great ones want direction. They want to be kind of guided and driven to another place. I always thought that, but this kind of proved it to me – that idea that pros have you go step on each others toes, don’t like to be told what to do, don’t like to be coached. I’ve found just the opposite – they think they don’t want it, they think they’re really smart, they think what they’re saying makes sense. I wish I could tape them and play it back to them, so hopefully they learned something, and I know for a fact that I learned something – no question.
On why Candace Parker shined tonight (note - this was after he gave her some high praise):
You know, as coaches we know a lot about a lot of things, but that’s a question I can’t answer. I think that Candace (Parker) would be better able to answer that question. Candace has a lot of skills, and some nights she really tries to use them and other nights she forgets the kind of skills that she has. Luckily for us, tonight she remembered.
On what he learned from this team:
You know what the funny thing is about professional basketball players? They think they’re smarter than you are. That just boggles my mind, because, if they were, why would USA Basketball have coaches? So, I’m constantly amazed by some of them, how much they think they know. It’s a warning for me, as a college coach, to see that no matter how good some of these players are that play professionally, they need coaching. They need direction, and you know what, the great ones want direction. They want to be kind of guided and driven to another place. I always thought that, but this kind of proved it to me – that idea that pros have you go step on each others toes, don’t like to be told what to do, don’t like to be coached. I’ve found just the opposite – they think they don’t want it, they think they’re really smart, they think what they’re saying makes sense. I wish I could tape them and play it back to them, so hopefully they learned something, and I know for a fact that I learned something – no question.
On why Candace Parker shined tonight (note - this was after he gave her some high praise):
You know, as coaches we know a lot about a lot of things, but that’s a question I can’t answer. I think that Candace (Parker) would be better able to answer that question. Candace has a lot of skills, and some nights she really tries to use them and other nights she forgets the kind of skills that she has. Luckily for us, tonight she remembered.