Olympic medal record
Men's Basketball
Silver
Munich 1972
United States
Paul Douglas Collins (born July 28, 1951 in Christopher, Illinois), is a former four-time NBA basketball All-Star and NBA basketball coach.
Collins enjoyed a successful high school basketball career in Benton, Illinois, after which he went on to play for Illinois State University, close to where he grew up, in 1969.
Collins was chosen to represent the United States at the infamous 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. While those games are mainly remembered for the terrorist attack that left eleven Israeli athletes dead, there was also the controversial gold medal basketball game between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which Collins played a key part. The United States was undefeated in Olympic basketball competition history, and widely expected to remain undefeated after these Olympics. After Collins had hit two free throws, the time had apparently expired in the gold medal game; the United States had a 50-49 lead and seemed to have secured yet another gold medal. However, in a very controversial move, it was decided by the game's referees that there were still three seconds left to play, allowing the Soviets one more chance, which they utilized to make a lay-up. This gave the U.S. its first ever Olympic loss by a 51-50 margin.
After that controversial game, Collins went on to be drafted by the Denver Nuggets of the American Basketball Association. In a 1973 supplementary draft, he was chosen by the New York Nets. Despite being drafted by ABA teams, he never played in that league, instead choosing to play in the NBA, where he had been the number one overall pick in the draft, picked by the Philadelphia 76ers. He only played 25 games his rookie year, the 1973-74 season, averaging 8 points per game.
His numbers improved substantially over the next few seasons, scoring almost 18 points and dishing out 2.6 assists while getting almost 4 rebounds per game in 81 games played during 1974-75 season, and then scoring 20.8 points per game and grabbing four rebounds per game in 1975-76. Collins made four All-Star teams in the late 1970s.
He kept tallying an average of about 19 points and four rebounds per game for the next three seasons, as the 76ers reached the NBA Finals during 1976-77 season. Although the team featured Julius Erving, among others, the Sixers could not overcome Bill Walton and the Portland Trail Blazers in those finals, losing four games to two.
During the 1978-79 season, Collins suffered a serious injury, which limited him to only 47 games that year, and eventually forced him into retirement as a basketball player. His last season was 1980-81, in which he would only play 12 games before announcing his retirement.
Collins scored a total of 7,427 points in 415 NBA games, for an average of 17.9 points per game, while grabbing 1,339 rebounds for 3.2 per game, and passing for 1,368 assists, averaging 3.3 assists a game. As the three point shots were new to basketball when Collins retired, he only took one of those during his NBA career, missing it.
After his injury, Collins turned to coaching. He was the head coach of the Chicago Bulls from the middle to the late 1980s, where he coached Michael Jordan. Although the Bulls had a string of playoff appearances during Collins' tenure, they were unable to win a championship, and Collins was replaced by his assistant, Phil Jackson.
Collins was named the head coach of the Detroit Pistons in 1995, for whom he served until February 2, 1998, when he was fired and replaced by Alvin Gentry. Collins then became a television broadcaster, working for many years at various networks, such as NBC and TNT. He worked as a broadcaster for about five years, before being hired to coach again, by the Washington Wizards, before the start of the 2001-02 NBA season. After the Wizards fired Collins following the 2002-03 season, he returned to announcing games for TNT.
In eight seasons as an NBA head coach, Collins amassed a 332-287 won-loss record (.536 winning percentage) and a 15-23 won-loss record in the playoffs (.395).
During the 2008 offseason, Collins was in negotiations to become the next head coach of the Chicago Bulls. However, according to the Chicago Tribune, Collins has decided to withdraw his candidacy as coach.
Collins will serve as an analyst for NBC Sports coverage of Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Doug and his wife Kathy have two children. Their son Chris, a former professional basketball player, is now an assistant coach at Duke University and their daughter Kelly is a school teacher in Pennsylvania.
The basketball court at Illinois State University's Redbird Arena is named after Collins.
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Collins"
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