I just hope we do start to see more females coaching teams like you see across American sports.
It took a lot of years of me on my own, coaching myself, to look in the mirror and love the reflection.
As I look back on the day I signed my professional contract in 1973, I’ve never gone to sleep wondering if I could pay the bills or take care of my family. That’s what basketball has done for me. It’s given me the greatest of thrills from high school to college to the Olympics to coaching to broadcasting.
I worked under Francis Schmidt, and he was the biggest influence on my coaching career.
I always feel like I’m coaching for my job. Just like when I was a player for nine years in Chicago. I came in every day wondering if I was going to get cut. This is no different. I come to work like I did as a player and that’s to do the best I can.
You cannot just copy and paste Carlo Ancelotti. He’s been coaching for 20 years now and I have never heard a player complaining about him.
Luis Enrique and his coaching staff can do great things.
I can control how hard I play. This is how I respond to coaching. This is how I respond to my teammates. If I focus on that, the other things that come with that are going to come.
It’s a unique situation to have, but again they say sometimes talent doesn’t win. It has to be brought together right. That’s the coaching’s job. That’s what we’re doing.
I’ve started doing my coaching badges, I’d like to be a manager one day.
In coaching, you don’t ever really have that joyful fun, but there’s no question that it’s enjoyable.
You get different philosophies in coaching, usually depending on what position the coach himself played.
I liked coaching in an underdog situation.
For the most part, from the player standpoint, the coaches do the coaching and you try to come in and execute the game plan or the scheme they put in front of you.
I know when I was an assistant coach and I started interviewing for head coaching jobs, I actually lost out on many jobs, several jobs, and the complaint that I got was, ‘Well, he doesn’t fit the mold of a head coach. He doesn’t look the part. He’s not gonna jump up and down. He’s not going to scream.’
The most difficult problem about coaching at Notre Dame is losing early.
I am thinking about doing my coaching badges and seeing if I enjoy that, because I do miss the game.
The platform that we have created here in Tottenham is the most important, the platform we created between all the coaching staff – in the academy and the first team. The platform we created is more important than one person.
During most of my playing career, the performance gap between men and women was slowly narrowing. Federations began providing more coaching and competitions for girls and women.
I can talk with my team-mates, understand them and it’s better for understanding the coaching staff and the game itself. If someone’s making a run and they shout for the ball, I know now.
If you have time to be with a dog, and the dog is smart, you come to understand the dog, and the dog understands you. They’re not hard to train. But they have to be smart, and you have to spend time with them. It’s like coaching. I was a better coach when I had smart players.
When I was coaching with the Patriots, the players pulled a practical joke and I said, ‘Do you think I’m Charlie the Tuna, like a sucker?’ After that, they called me Tuna.
I remember teaching a clinic to other coaches, and a guy raised his hand and asked if I had any advice when it came to coaching women. I leveled him with a death-ray stare, and said, ‘Go home and coach basketball.’
I don’t think it’s my job or anything that I owe somebody. But it is nature – coaching – and I like to think I’m pretty charitable in the sense that I like to help people out, share and talk football.
The challenge of coaching a national side like England would be something different. The job is not about coaching every day.
Coaching England is a huge job, and no ambitious coach would rule himself out completely.
But the problem with coaching is that it is a full-time job. By that I mean for at least 40 weeks in a year you have to be with the player, either travelling or training. Right now I don’t want to do that.
I didn’t know that I’d like it this much, coaching both boys and coming out all the time and seeing how excited they are to play hockey. It reminds you of when you were that age and you wanted to be out on the ice.
The coaching staff expected us to show up on time, give it our all and leave nothing out there. By all means play hard but work harder. That was part of the Liverpool Way.
No, I’ve never had any interest in coaching, probably because I hated being told what to do when I was a player so I wouldn’t like to be lecturing others now.
People are remarkably bad at remembering long lists of goals. I learned this at a professional level when trying to get my high-performance coaching clients to stay on track; the longer their lists of to-dos and goals, the more overwhelmed and off-track they got. Clarity comes with simplicity.
A lot of times in coaching, that’s more than half the battle, to get people that are willing to buy in because they trust you and understand that you’re genuine in your motivations.
It was a great learning curve because I knew I could put on a session, but I couldn’t set out cones straight! That’s one of the hardest things to do in coaching, little things like that to be able to prepare a session properly.
Coaching the Bruins is like going bear hunting with a butter knife.
Coaching changes are a part of football; they arrive ready to meet the goals they have been set, so you respect them and work with them like any other.
My dad’s view about coaching was that you have to express yourself. When I was young at academies, I wasn’t allowed to do that.
Whether you’re in year one or you’re in year 12, every day you’ve got to show up with a willingness to compete and to prove that you belong there and a willingness to get better and listen to coaching.
Coaching is really a big fraternity. You can get in if you know the right people.
Whenever a team has three weeks to prepare, and it’s an excellent coach and coaching staff and great players, you’ve got to work on it all.
People say you have to know when to retire, which is a dumb thing to say. If you want to go out on top, yeah, it becomes important when you quit. But I wasn’t afraid of that. And I wasn’t worried about getting fired. I knew the risk. To me, it’s not an ego thing. I enjoy coaching. I enjoy helping people achieve something.
I was just thankful to be a student manager, and if that led to a high school coaching job or maybe I could stick at a small Division I school as an assistant, that would have been a success for me.
When I got fired from coaching, I started coaching high school because my son played. I realized real quick that high school football is in trouble. There’s no budget. A lot of kids have got to pay to play, and every year, coaches are getting out of the profession. Kids aren’t playing like they used to. It bothers me.
I’m a Christian first. I’m a family guy second. As much as I like coaching, as much as I like basketball, it’s third, fourth, or fifth down the line.
I think the coaching and the emphasis being put on different aspects of the game is what makes Texas high school football the best out there.
And some of the best coaching you can do is not telling kids something.
At the minor-league and major-league level, you know how important your coaching staff is, but in a big market it becomes absolutely huge.
My dad was a huge influence on me. He taught me how to play and a lot about the game. He was very passionate and intense. As I started coaching, he wanted to tell me about all of the presses and man-to-man coverages and big philosophical things.
I’m coaching ‘swing at this, don’t swing at that,’ and in the middle of it, a kid looks at me and says, ‘Coach, I think I’m going to fail history.’ Or maybe their girlfriend just dumped them. These are kids, and once I embraced that, this became a lot more fun.
I loved going to the Knicks because we won the Atlantic Division championship. We went from winning 21 games or 19 games to winning 52 games in a short period of time. I loved coaching Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley and all those guys.
I don’t ever remember wanting to do anything but coach. My dad obviously influenced me. But it wasn’t because he sat there and drilled coaching stuff into our heads. We were on the bench keeping the scorebook and traveling with the team on weekends. It was such a great upbringing.
Playing 16 years is completely unexpected and going through everything we went through. Big disappointments, huge wins, creating that type of union with the coaching staff, with the front office, with the staff, teammates. It’s been an amazing journey, way beyond anything that can be expected.
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.
When I picture myself after football, it’s down home, coaching high school football, just a relaxing, normal life.
I have never made a secret of the fact I am excited about the coaching position at Bayern Munich and that I would be happy to take on this job if this unique opportunity should arise.
