Harris ready to learn Chinese
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-04-03 15:34

Dallas Mavericks assistant coach Del Harris said language would be the biggest problem for his new job as the head coach of the Chinese national team, and he is willing to learn some Chinese.

"No question," when he was asked about his biggest challenge in China by NBA.com's reporter Bob Peterson.

Harris took the job on Feb. 19, the team's first foreign head coach, for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

The former coach of Puerto Rico (1969-75) and advisor to the Canadian national team for the 1994 World Championships will join the Chinese team after the season.

"The majority of speaking (in my pervious experiences) was all English. This will be the first time I'll need to rely a fair amount on translating and having an interpreter," Harris said.

"What I'm trying to do is learn enough basketball terms in Chinese that by the time the Olympics come around, I can do a good job and minimize the problem."

Former Lithuania national team coach Jonas Kazlauskas joins Harris in China as associate head coach. Kazlauskas is in China now training the national team with two Chinese assistants.

"Jonas has been here in Dallas for the last two-and-a-half weeks. We've gone over some things that he'll work with for the next several weeks until we're finished with the NBA season," Harris said.

With Houston Rockets center Yao Ming and former Toronto Raptors ' center Menk Bateer in the future lineup, China is in urgent to find quality guards for the Olympics in August.

"We have a lot of big guys ... We don't have many in the 6-foot to 6-3 range by comparison," Harris said. "They're good catch and shoot players, but they haven't been trained on the art of penetration and learning how to make plays off the dribble successfully and have that mid-range scoring game as well."

"We just hope that by the middle of August that we've impacted that area enough that we can be competitive."

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