Monday, October 27, 2008

Coach Harris on the similarities between Avery Johnson and Vinny Del Negro

Del Harris, who enters his 50th year of coaching this season as an assistant on Vinny Del Negro's staff in Chicago, sees similarities between Coach Del Negro (here with Kirk Hinrich) and former Mavs coach Avery Johnson, with whom Harris worked in Dallas:

"Avery kept good notes over the years and he played for some outstanding coaches. As it turns out, Vinny has played for about the same coaches and did the same thing. He prepared himself as he went along and really prepared himself the last few years for this. This wasn't just something he thought about. He's amazingly organized and very bright."

What's different, according to Coach Harris, is where Chicago's team is this season and where Dallas' team was when Coach Johnson took over:

"We're new altogether to the program and he's new to coaching as well. We had an established team in Dallas when Avery started. This is not an established team. This reminds me more of when we started with Mark Cuban after he took ownership of the team, where we had bunch of young guys that weren't established stars but had star potential."