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.
I also believe that when something negative comes out about you in the media, that’s only one person’s opinion. These guys sometimes believe they’ve been ordained from on high to give the general opinion of the populace, and that just isn’t the case.
I’m not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn’t have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.
When a passer has the option of passing to two players, I expect him to get the ball to the best shooter. I continually stop practice and ask players who the best shooter is and I expect them to know. It is important that you get the ball to your best shooter.
You can’t imagine the number of people in professional sports who have come up to me and said, “God, you treat those assholes like I’d like to treat them.” And my question is, “Then why don’t you?”.
