Monday, January 26, 2009

Players want to be coached and they want to get better

The Cleveland paper had a good Q&A with former Bucks GM and current Warriors assistant Larry Harris recently.

Among the questions he was asked was how being on the bench differs from working in management for 20 years:

"[As an assistant] you get a chance to see [the players] from a different viewpoint -- from the coaching side. It's really helped me in my evaluation. Sometimes when you sit upstairs or are observing from a distance, you don't get some of the nuances of what's going on within the team. It really becomes a lot clearer for me now that I've been on the floor.

Being in management, the biggest thing is patience. One thing is, the players do want to be coached, the players do want to get better. Our job is, more than anything else, whether you're in management or coaching, it's all about communication. If we can find out what their roles are, we can eventually get them to maximize their effort on the floor which gives us a chance to win every game."