Sports Illustrated: Doug Collins the Sixer Fixer

In this coming weeks Sports Illustrated, they have a lengthy article on Doug Collins.  The article covers everything from Collins participation in the '72 Olympics through current day, with an obvious focus on his current work with the Sixers.

A few anecdotes and quotes I found interesting:

One Christmas, Collins decided to thank his lawyer John Langel for being such a good friend. He endowed a full scholarship at Temple's law school in Langel's name. When Collins runs a basketball camp, he knows the names or nicknames of all 250 kids by the second day.

"I want them to feel important," he says.

In Chicago and Detroit, giving was his problem. He couldn't stop. After losses, he would gather his team, pull up a chair and give a detailed breakdown on how it went wrong. Collins was not a big yeller, but as his former player (and current Sixers assistant) Michael Curry says, "It's not so much the yelling as the constant reminding. I think that wears on a guy."

...

When the 76ers called Collins last summer, Kathy and the kids told him they would support him if he took the job, under one condition: He had to enjoy it.

And he has. Collins loves his team. He has not had to fine anybody for being late to a practice or bus ride the entire year. "Unheard of," he says. Chris was worried about him coaching such a young group, but Doug prefers it. It gives him a chance to teach players before bad habits become ingrained.

...

Collins says his assistants have "taken half the workload off of my plate," but really, he shoved half his workload onto theirs. He doesn't want his players overdosing on Doug Collins.

"When I need to say something, I say it," he said. "When they hear my voice, I want it to be important. And I don't want them to hear it too much."

Some praise from Jrue Holiday:

Collins inherited a 20-year-old point guard, Jrue Holiday, who admits, "There was a period where I was just throwing the ball away." Collins harnessed Holiday without slowing him down. Now Collins sees Holiday as a future All-Star, and Holiday says, "There's been times when we've messed up and he handled it well. He says if he was younger, then he would have just killed us. My career is going in the right way because of him, because he's here."

The issue should hit newsstands this week.