INTERVIEW WILL BILLY BAYNO

A big thanks to Fran Fraschilla for bringing my attention to this article/interview with Coach Billy Bayno of the Toronto Raptos -- a lot of good stuff here!  The article ran in USA Today and was written by Jorge Sierra.  You can (and should) read the entire article here.

Here are some of the things I got from the article.

Bayno is coaching the Dominican Republic in the off-season (which speaks to his work ethic) and for someone as well travelled in the profession who obviously has the attitude of being a continual learning as you can see in this statement:

"It's a good experience and as long as you're coaching, you're continuing to learn. I'm picking up some new things, and I think that will help us with the Raptors, watching other teams, and some of these great coaches on the international level. So I'm lucky to be here and I love it and it's nice to win. "

When asked about the success last year of the Raptors, he pass the credit off to the players and the team's general manager saying:

"The credit goes to the players: Kyle Lowry really stepped up. Then Masai Ujiri made an unbelievable trade where we were able to get four players for pretty much one."

And when questioned about the importance of staff chemistry, he responded:

"Staff chemistry is so important. I've always said that if I, as an assistant, can't get along with the other assistants, or can't be able to agree to disagree, then I'm being disloyal to the head coach and the organization. I don't know what happened over those places, but I think the biggest thing is that you can't have an ego. It has to be about the team. It's the same thing we tell our players. We all have our own ideas, we all want to make our impact, but the bottom line is that the head coach makes the final decision, and then we have to buy in, we have to teach it the way he wants it taught. And we have to put our ego in our pocket. Our ego is not our amigo. That gets you in some trouble in all facets of life. It's what we tell our players, it's about the team, it's not about you, about stats. That's what our players did great, no one cared who scored. We knew DeMar and Kyle were our main two guys but they were unselfish, they passed the ball and no one cared. And you have to have that as a coaching staff. And the only thing that really gets in the way of that is your ego. It's a good lesson for all assistant coaches to learn from other people's mistakes."