VEN - Coach Musselman

MAR DEL PLATA (FIBA Amercias Championships) Eric Musselman achieved what almost every coach in the world desires when he became a NBA coach in Sacramento and Golden State during three seasons.

Four years after Musselman's last NBA game, Venezuela Basketball Federation chairman Carmelo Cortez decided he needed a new coach to rebuild his national team.

He chose an experienced coach, who has finished as a runner up to San Antonio's Gregg Popovich as the 2002/2003 coach of the year award.

The 46-year old coach also led Dominican Republic to the gold medal game at the 2010 Centro Basket, which they lost to Puerto Rico.
Musselman changed a few things as soon as he arrived in Venezuela.

He first organized a six-week training camp and gathered a young talented team to prepare for the FIBA Americas Championship, but especially for the following years.

Venezuela will make their tournament debut against Brazil on Tuesday. Games against Dominican Republic, Cuba and Canada will follow.

Coach Eric Musselman talked to FIBA about his impressions on his new players and the team's goals.

FIBA: What do you expect from this tournament?
The one thing we want to do is improve every day. Some of these teams have been together longer than us. Some of these coaches have been with their national teams longer than we have. So their systems are in place. We feel we are getting better and better every day and we have seen improvement on a daily basis.

We understand that Argentina is the most talented team, a team like Brazil are very well coached and they are experienced and the Dominican Republic could have the most talented team player by player in the entire tournament. They have three very good NBA players and an all-star player. Obviously we will have to work out our force for the first two games: Brazil and Dominican Republic. Our guys make up a scrappy group that have good toughness and they believe in themselves.

FIBA: How did you finish the preparations?
We had a very difficult training camp, never took a day off and always did two (training sessions) a day. The players are trying. We have a very young inexperienced team and we know it's a tough tournament and we have very little room for air. In order to win games, we have to play 40 minutes, we can't play 35. We have improved. On our last friendly game (a 77-73 loss to Argentina) it was a complete different story than the previous defeats. It was the toughest game day I've ever had. We played four games in four nights, travelled internationally through customs on the game's day and then had to wait for two hours to check-in the hotel. I've never seen a group prepared as we were before the game. In that moment I realized we were ready to play.

FIBA: Why do you think Venezuela hired you?
When Carmelo Cortez hired us, he wanted us to bring discipline, he wanted us to bring the style that we defended and add structure. Hopefully, that's what we've done.

FIBA: Would you be happy if you finish between the third and the fifth place and make it to next year qualifiers?
We just want to get better. This team was put together not only for this tournament but also for the future of Venezuela and really one of the things Carmelo wanted to be sure I understood that this wasn't just for this year. We need these players to be better next year and the year after that. Every team goes through ups and downs. Argentina are on the big run right now. With Venezuela, we are on a different spot than them but we want to compete every night and give ourselves the chance to win.
 

FIBA