A biography for Billy Donovanhasn’t been written yet.
“I do think officiating an NBA game in the playoffs is so hard, because you have such incredible familiarity. All the coaches do is sit around and watch tape. The players know everybody's plays and what they're running. They know what's coming. You try to get every little possible advantage you can.”
“It was five great years in Oklahoma City.”
“We're all chasing something in life and that's regardless of what we do for a living. I think what you have to look at is what is the chase molding in you?”
“It was very interesting, when I went on the road and started recruiting college and I spoke to coaches around the country, of how little coaching assistant coaches in college did actually do. The head coach did everything.”
“DeRozan is a very high IQ player.”
“We all have experiences in our life that we can share and help each other get better in.”
“The hardest position to go from high school to college and college to the NBA is playing the point guard position. Because you're running the team. You're making decisions. You've got to communicate.”
“No one is going to play perfect all the time.”
“I have never been a big believer in payback.”
“What happens in pressure situations is most teams revert back to your habits.”
“There's always a time and a place that, with certain guys, elite players offensively, you're going to iso them, put them in situations.”
“It's not so much we need to come down and take a shot in the first six seconds. But what we need to do is initiate our offense in the first four or five seconds, so we have some time to work off each other and we have more time on the clock to do more things.”
“From a philosophical standpoint, there's certain things I really, really believe in offensively that would probably be broad-stroke things.”
“You want to be able to make deep runs in the playoffs.”
“That's what you've got to be able to do is create good shots.”
“From an offensive standpoint, because a lot of times your personnel can change - whether it's through graduation in high school and college, or whether it's through different changes in the NBA - I think you've got to locate and figure out what each guy's strengths and talents are.”
“I think you're always in the NBA dealing with different roster changes and those kind of things.”
“I coached against Nick Collison when he was at Kansas, and he was a dominant low-post player. Really good. And Kansas ran all that high-low action, and Collison just posted up, and he beat people up. He couldn't do that in the NBA, so he had to reinvent himself.”
“Zach LaVine is a guy that's got great offensive ability and can create his own shot.”
“I think any coach-player relationship, there's always going to be some level or form of disagreement, or maybe not always seeing things the same way.”