NICK NURSE

I think there's always enough right in front of me worrying about who's playing the minutes tomorrow, but you've always got to have an eye on a year or two from now and what those guys will do if you think, 'Well, let's give them a full year at the 905 and see how they progress.'

Football is a pretty complex numbering system most of the time: run the three back through the four hole, things like that. We kind of do the same thing - the three man sets for the four, or whatever.

Predictability can eventually be defended.

They do not eat Yorkshire pudding on Sunday in Iowa.

Phil Handy played for me in England and has obviously risen to stardom in his area of what he does.

Esthetically, let's move the ball. Let's guard people. Let's fight.

I've got way more attention than I ever needed or wanted.

I loved every job I had.

I was in love with the triangle because it was so different to what everybody was doing in the NBA. Everybody else was dribbling down, throwing it into the low post, and then their guy would go to work. To me, it was boring.

As an assistant, you are grinding it out and churning out work like there are not enough hours in the day, really. As a head coach, you are doing similar.

One of the things I like to do is let the players play and the coaches coach.

I think we're always chasing a win once the ball goes up.

I've had a lot of really good preparation. I've coached a lot of games around the world.

I place a lot of value on pace of the game, going after people... always be the aggressor and forcing the issue a little bit when we have the ball, and when we don't have it, we want to come at you, too.

I love jazz and blues, where there's a structure, but a lot of the cool stuff is veering off the page and playing.

Sometimes, I don't enjoy the wins, and I don't enjoy the losses, but I'm here just to get the result and get moving.

I said it when I got hired. I said, for five years, I had a 1,000 people telling me I was going to be a head coach in the NBA. And when I got the job, those same 1,000 people were shocked.

I think switching is like a lot of things. You can do it - it's a game plan - but you better do it well. You better practise it.

I think it's all machismo - 'Come on, you've got to guard your guy, man. If you can't guard your guy, then you can't play defence.' A lot of it is accountability, where you say, 'Hey, you're matched up with him. Go do your job.' The zone kind of sometimes moves a lot of pieces around.

I think I jumped the gun a bit on head coaching. I got named a head coach at 23, and I really didn't know what I was doing. I remember getting that job and going, 'Oh my God, they gave me the job.'

We are trying to get away from those traditional centre, power forward type things.

It's really an organizational job with a football team to watch them go through their day.

It's not like I'm shy or anything. I'm not.

I tried to convince those guys at the Bullets in the '95-'96 season that they could try to beat the mighty London Towers, who won everything the year before. I got out of bed every day with the mindset of getting the team to Wembley for the play-off final and to win the championship.

When I came back to England after my stint with Derby in 1995, I really wanted more time to study coaching.