The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.

I want to see if the player communicates with his teammates and how he responds to coaching. Another thing to remember is players' bodies can develop better than their skills.

How can I tell the eighth or ninth man on the team that I want you to work hard every day and I want you to improve and get better, but while you're doing that you're not going to get any minutes?

It's hard to get people to overcome the thought that they have to take care of themselves first. It's hard to get players to give in to the group and become selfless as opposed to selfish.

All of those things had been talked about, suggested, rumored, as a manager and as a member of the Knicks organization, I couldn't allow myself to think that way or believe that.

If all I'm remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I've done a bad job with the rest of my life.

Larry Brown thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown type of player.

My first choice was to work it out with Larry Brown. I needed Larry and I gave him 50 million bucks. This is a situation that I'm in and I'll handle it and I'll make it work.

The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.

I've been in pressure situations before. All my life it's been about pressure and having to get it done. Just because you say it publicly, it does not make me afraid of it or make me shy away from it.

Instead of me telling them what they need to work on, I wanted to hear from them what they needed to work on.

It's been made clear to all of us that a player should never leave the playing field and go into the stands.

My thought has always been completion. Maybe you have to rebound better, shoot better, hit free throws, handle the ball, defend better. You have to do all those things in the course of a game.

My greatest gift that I have in life is basketball.

It was important to me to believe, because if I don't believe, how can I expect them to believe?

Everybody wants to be perfect.

We decided to either try trades or just go with older players. If you do that and let contracts expire you can be in the lottery for about four or five years and expect your fans to be patient.

It wasn't about the X's and the O's and the strategy; it was more about keeping 12 guys focused and committed to a task. That group dynamic, and then helping them to grow as people and basketball players.

You're always at war with the guy on the other bench. You pick up their patterns. That's what I got the most out of this year. I know what other coaches like to do.

I would still like to get more athletic and have players that can really cover what's going on in the game.

You have to develop your whole game to completion.

I believe in the players and what I've put together and we'll make it work.

We decided to go the way of trading and getting younger players.

I love what I'm doing.

We were going to have to experiment, and we needed to develop our younger players. And a lot of the changes were because of injuries. But that's where I give a lot of credit to the group in terms of being able to maintain things.

I'll continue to try to make changes to better improve the team.

I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.

I can't think of any NBA team over the last few years that lost three starters. And we replaced them basically with three guys who really haven't played in this league.

The type of athletes we draft still need types of versatility on the defense side of the ball, run the offense. You should still be concerned on the offense side of the ball.

Most players in this league say they want consistency.

It's better to have done because then you know what the player is going through and you understand the pressure, but then on the other hand I know a lot of people that were good players but not good coaches, and vice versa.

I have bought pole vault equipment, the landing areas, posts, which costs a lot of money. We pay for coaches.

Coaches are an integral part of any manager's team, especially if they are good pinochle players.

Acting coaches in Hollywood were always telling me to use my hands and body more. But that was never me. I just breathe and sometimes it doesn't look as if I'm doing that.

As I've said, basketball has been, I think, a real cooperative venture. There have been a lot of people that have been involved in it: coaches, administrators - not recently - fans and nobody, nobody any more so than students over the years.

It's a market economy. Apparently the demand for great coaches exceeds the supply, so of course the price of good coaches is going to be high.

And then ultimately what I tell the kids is: coaches can give you information, they can give you guidelines, and they can put you in a position. But the only person who can truly make you better is you.

We need to make sure parents and coaches are aware of the dangers an on the look-out for the warning signs. Performance enhancing drugs are too damaging to young people for parents and coaches to not be involved.

The thing about it is almost everyone could pass that way, but we were kept from doing it by our coaches.

Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.

First of all, it was such an honor to be chosen. You had to be voted in by players and coaches that time. But having it in Hawai'i was a brilliant idea.

I try to help developing junior chess. When I lived in USSR, I got a lot of free help from very good coaches - now I am trying to repay that debt.

Our coaches want to be a part of South Carolina football when they win it for the first time. When they win the division, when they win the SEC, win a major bowl game, etc. The opportunities to do it all for the first time here make it extra special.

I know a lot of people on the field - players, coaches, managers - are glad that I'm gone.

The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.

Once the World Cup preparations begin there will hardly be an opportunity to do so, since we'll have to put all our energy into the team. We coaches have a list of priorities and dealing with the media isn't in the top five.

The challenge coaches face is replacing players they were counting on to be major pieces of a puzzle. In a lot of cases, there is just no way to make the necessary adjustments.

Let them police themselves, and then it goes another step past them to my coaches and there a coach that is responsible for a different area and different category on the field.

I do have some young coaches, but I don't really believe that is the biggest problem we have here.