Nearly one year ago to the day, the Philadelphia 76ers introduced former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan as the franchise’s 22nd head coach. He brought a promise of a pledge of dedication to defense and a totally new offensive system(Princeton Offense) to a team which had won 41 games and had made the playoffs in consecutive seasons. Unfortunately that well devised plan went up in flames from day 1 and after posting only 27 wins on te seaspn, Jordan wasn’t shown much love or affection on the way out of town, in a place known as the “City of Brotherly Love.”
Fast forward to May of 2010, and we once again were invited to a press conference, but this time, oft criticized GM Ed Stefanski made the right decision to go with the tried and proven Doug Collins, who has more than 300 career victories. Collins has coached and has had a hand in the development of some of the best guards and small forwards in the modern era like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Joe Dumars, and most recently Gilbert Arenas. To most basketball purists, he is credited with the building of the original Chicago Bulls dynasty which went on to win 6 titles in 8 seasons, even though Collins’ assistant Phil Jackson took over in ’89-’90, and received all the credit.
Collins return to Philly has a lot of parallels to his playing career nearly 30 years ago. After starring at Illinois State during the early 70’s, and starring in the most infamous game basketball game in Olympic history, the Sixers chose Collins as the 1st overall pick in the 1973 NBA Draft. He was the Sixers reward for posting what is still the worst record in NBA history, Philly’s horrific 9-73 disaster of a ’72-’73 season. After 9 very productive seasons with overall career averages of 17.9 ppg, 3 rebs, and 3 assists, Collins was forced to retire early after the ’81 season because of injuries.
As a point of interest, Doug is a man of many nicknames. Early in his career he was known as the “Benton Brawler” as a reference to his roughhouse style of play and his high school, Benton HS, in Illinois. Then with Philadelphia, fans gave him a name to go along with his boyish looks like “Dougie Dougie Puddin Pie” and “Lights Out’llins” because of his ability to drain jumpers, and “Action Jackson(?).” But the tone of his nicknames as a coach were a tad less complimentary like “Early Onset Dementia” and “Play-A-Day Collins” for his penchant for micro-managing games and calling out plays on virtually every possession during games.
As a coach, Collins is known as a builder. Although he has never won an NBA title, he has most times left a team in better shape than when he arrived, with the exception of the Pistons. Could the same scenario occur in Philadelphia? With a number of young and talented players, as well as the #2 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, Collins has at least half a chance to finally bring the Sixers back to respectability that the franchise hasn’t seen since the Allen Iverson/Larry Brown era of the early 2000’s.
You can check out some of Collins career highlights as a Sixer here.
Doug Collins Press Conference:
Allen Moll is an avid NBA and College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen is a regular columnist for thehoopdoctors.com, Bleacherreport.com, UpperDeckblog.com, and his own site, Hoops Haven.
