It’s been a busy couple of months for new Brooklyn Nets coach Lionel Hollins, and CBS’s James Herbert has a chance to talk to him — pretty early in the morning, as it turns out — about how he’s adjusted to his life coaching again.
There’s a bunch of interesting tidbits in the interview, but one in particular, if you’re interested in how the Nets will look under Hollins next season:
“It’s going to be a lot different,” Hollins said. “Coaching is about adjusting to the personnel and trying to implement something system-wise that gives them, the group, the most success. This team doesn’t have the personnel to play like the team I had before, so why would I try to put that system in?”
There are some parallels between the Nets and those Grizzlies teams Hollins coached, but he’s openly acknowledging here that some of the things he implemented with Memphis just won’t work. For one, he doesn’t have a defensive anchor like Marc Gasol, who won Defensive Player of the Year under Hollins while playing 35 minutes per game. He had a scorer akin to Joe Johnson in Rudy Gay during most of his tenure, but the two find their points in different ways. Deron Williams could be one of a thousand different players, depending on how his ankles hold up. But Hollins knows that this team has a new set of challenges, and is ready to take them head-on without relying exclusively on past knowledge.
Full interview below.
CBS Sports — Lionel Hollins, back in business
