J-Speaks:A Coach's Son

The history of basketball consists of a plethora of stories of father, and son head coaches. How that son grows to continue that father’s legacy, has become a cliché in the world of hoops. However, there has never been a father son coaching duo than former NBA head coach, and longtime basketball color analyst than Doug Collins, and his son Chris Collins. Doug was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1973 NBA Draft, and has cast a huge shadow, which his son has emerged from to carve a name of his own. That name grew from a last second shot that finally went in favor of the Collins family. 

Last March, the Northwestern University Wildcats were on the verge of making history, standing just one victory from making their first NCAA Tournament appearance ever. A long pass from the back into the front court landed in the hands of a Northwestern player, and his layup attempt went in at the buzzer to beat the Michigan Wolverines 67-65.

Within seconds the crowd in Welsh-Ryan Arena went crazy, as those that were seated in the student section stormed the court, with the players hugging each other. 

“You know you’re shell shocked. It took me a minute to realize that we even won,” Chris Collins said about that program changing moment for the Wildcat basketball program to Andrea Kramer of HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. “I don’t know if you could’ve script it the way to break the streak any better than that.”

For the younger Collins, the victory made a name for one of the longest suffering programs in the Big Ten. It also made a name for Collins himself. 

As he said to Kramer, the last name of Collins around the state of Illinois carry a lot of weight, as his father Doug was the head coach of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls for three years. 

“To be known as Coach Collins around here is something that I don’t take lightly, because to me, there is only one Coach Collins, and that’s my dad,” Chris said to Kramer. 

Chris’ father Doug Collins is what is considered a basketball savant, who had a reputation of being the NBA’s version of “Mr. Fix It,” as he vastly improved the previously mentioned Bulls, Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards, and Philadelphia 76ers that he coached. 

These days, the elder Collins, who also made a name for himself as one of the best basketball analyst, in studio, and as a color analyst for TNT, NBC, and ESPN from the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s, can be found on the sidelines at his son’s practices, or in the stands during games watching his son’s own reclamation project. 

Filled with a lot of emotions as he expressed to Kramer the incredible pride he felt for the success that his son Chris has had than him. 

“When Chris wins a game, it’s like I won 10,” Doug said of his son, who was born with a basketball in his hands. 

When the family moved to the “Windy City,” in 1986 when Doug took the job to coach the Bulls, and the great Michael Jordan, Chris was the ball boy, who soaked in every moment, from the good, to the bad. The times when he was not with his father on the hardwood, Chris learn the finer points of the game from his father at home. 

Chris said that his most special memories with his father is when they would be in the living room, sitting on separate couches just watching hoops. There were moments if they were watching a game on tape, Doug would pause the game they were watching to point out to explain why a specific set that a team was running worked. 

“That’s how I learned the game from my daddy,” Chris said. “Why were certain players were doing what they were doing? Why were coaches making those maneuvers? And that was kind of our time.” 

Basketball however was not the only strategy that Mr. Collins taught his son. When the two would play one-on-one in the drive way, the no-nonsense coach gave his son life lesson. 

Doug said to Kramer that a parent’s natural instincts is the want to always protect your child, or children always. With his son, Mr. Collins wanted him to feel the difference between winning, and losing, and that he wanted him to earn everything he got on the basketball court. 

“I remember him telling me that when I was a kid, ‘I’m not going to let you win at anything,” Chris said. “You might be upset. You might get mad, but when you win, you’re going to know you earned it, because I’m going to always give you my best.” 

Chris said that the games in the drive way between him, and his father consisted of him being grabbed him as he would try to drive by him. There a few elbows during those battles. 

At age 13 when the younger Collins defeated his father for the first time, he said to Kramer that, “it was the greatest day of my life.” 

There is nobody better who understood that beating Doug Collins was a very hard task on the basketball court than his son, who would watch hours of old VHS tapes from his father’s playing days with the Sixers. One specific tape he watched was the one when his father was 21 years old represented the United States against the old U.S.S.R. in the 1972 Gold Medal game of the Olympics during the Cold War. 

With seconds left in the game, and the U.S. down by a point, Collins stole the ball, and was fouled, and made what appeared to be the game-winning foul shots. 

As the USA players greeted each other on the floor with bear hugs thinking they captured Gold, confusion ensued, and the officials controversially provided the U.S.S.R. with three more seconds to make one final play. 

That last shot was a long full court out-of-bounds pass that reached on the U.S.S.R. players caught right at the rim, and he scored on to win the game, and put a dagger into the hearts of the United States. 

Mr. Collins described the moment to Kramer from going from being on top of the world with your hands raised up sky high, and someone all sudden comes from behind you, and pushes you. 

Having Gold taken away was the first in a career of “what might have been,” for Mr. Collins. He was as mentioned earlier the No. 1 overall pick by the Sixers in the 1973 draft. He made four consecutive All-Star teams, before knee injuries cut short his career at age 29. 

His first coaching chance that he had with the Bulls, where he led them to the Eastern Conference Finals in the 1988-89 season. He was without warning though given the axe, and replaced by assistant coach Phil Jackson, who would lead the Bulls to two separate three-peat, six titles in eight seasons from 1991-93, 1996-98. Including his time with the Lakers, and his playing days with the New York Knicks in the 1970s, the Hall of Famer would win 13 NBA championships in his NBA career, with 11 of them coming as the head man with the Bulls, and five titles with the Los Angeles Lakers.

“Watching that same team win six NBA titles, you know I think for him, how could you now take that personally, and feel like ‘Man. I never got a chance to be a part of those teams that finally got to the mountain top.” Chris said. 

When asked by Kramer if there was a feeling that Mr. Collins was snake bitten, Chris said, “Never by us, but he feels that way, and I hate that.” 

For all his accomplishments Mr. Collins had as a player, coach, and broadcaster, he casted a huge shadow over his son, who by high school made himself into a star player himself, but was tagged with the unwanted label where even if he had a great game, there would be an article in the papers that would say, “Chris Collins, the son of former Bulls coach Doug Collins.” 

While it irritated him, he used it as motivation that he was going to make everyone see that he can be special in his own right. 

He used that fuel to become Illinois’ Mr. Basketball; a McDonald’s All-American for Glenbrook High School. He would go to become a star for the Duke University Blue Devils, where he would be named to the All-Atlantic Coastal Conference (ACC) Rookie Team in his freshmen in 1993. As a senior, the young Collins, he became team captain; was named Second-Team All-ACC, and received the Swett-Baylin Memorial Trophy, which was rewarded to the player the team named MVP for that season. 

When he graduated from Duke, Chris played professionally over in Finland for two years, and then followed in his father’s footsteps into coaching. He was an assistant for the then WNBA’s Detroit Shock in 1998. That was followed by two years as an assistant for Seton Hall Pirates of the Big East, and 13 seasons as an assistant at his alma mater Duke, where he went from being an assistant to associate head coach in the summer of 2008. 

One big accomplishment that Chris had before he even scored a point in his career at Duke was that he became the first player ever from Glenbrook High to play college basketball. That played a major role in the school recruiting, and signing Jonathan Scheyer, a fellow Glenbrook High, and Mr. Basketball recipient in 2006. 

Scheyer was one of the starters on the Blue Devils 2010 National Championship winning team, and the college All-American like Collins would become an assistant coach on head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s, also known to many as “Coach K” staff, where he currently is now. 

Along with working on “Coach K’s” staff at Duke, Chris also worked with him on the United States Olympic Basketball team, where Chris enjoyed great success, capturing the one thing that eluded his father back in 1972, an Olympic Gold medal. 

In March 2013, he finally got he was offered the opportunity of a lifetime, to coach his own collegiate program at Northwestern University, who had fired then head coach Bill Carmody after 13 seasons. 

When Chris called his father about the opportunity that he was offered, Mr. Collins said to Kramer that his first reaction was one of doubt. He went on to say that he asked his son, “Are you sure that this is where you want to be?” 

Mr. Collins was worried because he was entering a situation that many considered one of the worst jobs in America, having not been to the NCAA Tournament in close to eight decades. Because if he failed, he would never get another chance. 

Chris rolled the dice, and accepted the offer to be the basketball head coach of the Northwestern University Wildcats on Mar. 27, 2013. 

“I can’t tell you all enough how excited I am to be back in Chicago,” he said at the introductory press conference. 

Before he started this great challenge, Chris got similar advice that he stressed to him years ago when they started playing one-on-one in their home driveway. 

The two things Mr. Collins told him consisted of him being resilient, and gritty because in the early stages, you are going to get your rear end handed to you along the way. 

That took place in his first two season where the Wildcats went 14-19, and 15-17 respectably, finishing tied for 10^th in the Big Ten. 

Chris said to Kramer that the lowest moment for him was in his second season of 2014-15 at the helm, where they suffered 10 straight losses in succession, which included a 68-44 setback versus the mighty Michigan State Spartans, and head coach Tom Izzo. 

“I was trying everything, and it wasn’t coming around, and I was losing confidence in myself.” Collins said to Kramer. 

During those tough moments, Collins turned to his father, and his coaching staff for guidance, and they kept on saying to him to hang in there because the team was on the right track, and that things were eventually the tide was going to turn. 

The programs started to turn around two seasons ago as the team went 20-12 (8-10 in Big Ten) in 2015-16, there best season since before World War II. In the stands watching his son Chris through every moment, high, and low was his dad Doug, who facial expressions were as noticeable like anything one could ever see. 

While those moments that fans in the stands, and those watching on television might find to be funny, to Mr. Collins it’s not. 

“It’s hard. There’s nothing you can do, accept hope that they win,” Collins said to Kramer about his reactions to seeing his son coach.  

Leaning on all the lessons that the young Collins learned from his dad, last season the Wildcats were on the verge of their first NCAA Tournament birth in a long time. Standing in their way were the Michigan Wolverines back on Mar. 1.  

With the scored tied at 65-65 with 01.7 seconds left on the clock, Northwestern’s Nathan Taphorn threw a long inbounds pass to Dererk Pardon, who scored on a layup as time expired to give the Wildcats a 67-65 victory, and not only secured the program’s first ever birth in the NCAA Tournament, but set a program record with their 21^st victory. 

“The ball was in the air for like 10 minutes, and all of a sudden our big guy comes out of nowhere. Snatches the ball out of mid-air. Turns. Lays it in, and it was like everything was frozen in time,” Collins said of that moment. “That was kind of the moment we realized that we’re going to the big dance.” 

What made that play even more special that the young Collins drew up that won him the biggest game of his coaching career was the same play that has haunted his father for 45 years. 

“The joy of what Northwestern was feeling, was the joy or what the Soviets were feeling against,” Mr. Collins said to Kramer about that moment. As far as that moment being one of pain for him, and of joy for his son, the elder Collins said, “That’s okay, because I’m all good with that.” 

While the pain of that loss in the Olympics will never go away, but on the night that Mr. Collins was honored at the basketball Hall of Fame Chris had a major surprise in store. 

On the heels of winning his Olympic Gold medal as an assistant on that 2008 U.S. team, he gave it to his father during a private party with all the family’s closet friends, and he put the medal around his dad’s neck, with tears going down his eyes. 

During that moment, Mr. Collins said to Kramer while putting the Gold medal around his neck, “Thirty-Seven years too late, but you have your Gold medal.” 

“It’s a night with Chris that I will never forget. I saw how much he loved his dad, and he knew how much that hurt.” 

With that big gorilla of their back, the Northwestern Wildcats opened the 2017-18 season earlier this month in hopes of making it back to “March Madness,” and building on their 24-12 (10-8 in Big Ten) campaign a season ago. In the stands was Mr. Collins in mid-season form rooting anxiously rooting on the team being coached by his son. 

After a long career in basketball as a head coach, and broadcaster, being in the stands is where Doug Collins wants to be, watching his son Chris continue the family name in the sport that he wanted to carve out his own legacy, which he has done. He is no longer Chris, son of Doug Collins. 

“It’s Doug Collins, dad of Chris. That’s where the comma is now,” Mr. Collins said of where the comma is when people refer to who is who. 

Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 11/21/17 edition of HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, with report from Andrea Kramer; www.espn.comg/mens-college-basketball/recap?gameid=400915060; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Collins_(basketball); https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Scheyer; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Carmody.