WASHINGTON - He is returning to the NBA after a three-year absence. He is a hyper-competitive perfectionist who has never handled losing well and is now with a team in the midst of a nearly two-decade slump.
And you thought Michael Jordan is the only one who'll have to make major adjustments coming to the Washington Wizards. The roller-coaster ride is just starting for Doug Collins, the team's new coach.
Buoyed by an enthusiastic training camp in Wilmington, N.C., Collins has often been frustrated by his team's inconsistent performance in a 2-4 exhibition season that continues tonight in Toronto against the Raptors.
Chris Collins can tell much about his father's mood from their nightly long-distance conversations.
"There are good days and bad days," the younger Collins, an assistant coach at Duke, said earlier this week. "But that's what happens when you're rebuilding with a young team."
It has been six months since Doug Collins was at home in Arizona and took a telephone call from Jordan, then Washington's president of basketball operations. A couple of weeks later, Collins accepted Jordan's offer to replace Leonard Hamilton as coach of the Wizards.
"I had not thought at all about coaching," Collins, 50, said recently. "I really enjoyed my life out there in Arizona. I'd do NBA games [as a television analyst] for six months and then I'd have six months off. When Michael called, we spoke for about 30 minutes, and, at the end of the conversation, he said, `Would you think about coming and coach for me?' "
At the time, Collins had no idea that it would eventually mean coaching Jordan again. Their reunion with the Wizards comes 12 years after they were last together in Chicago, where Jordan's star was rocketing, but his competitive personality was clashing with an equally headstrong young coach.
Collins was fired by the Bulls in 1989 after three seasons, having taken a 30-win team that featured Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant to the Eastern Conference finals. Many, including Jordan, believed at the time that the Bulls needed a more laid-back coach, which led to Phil Jackson getting the job.
"The first time you get fired, it's devastating," Collins said. "The next time it happens, you realize it's just that they want somebody else."
