Q: Looking at this situation, it just seems like there is so much to this job and it can lead to so much more after. How are you feeling right now about this that it's now a reality?

A: Well, I don't look at the future in regards to where it can lead. I honestly don't. I just want to try to put together the best basketball team that we can under the rules and guidelines the D-League has. There are certainly some limitations as far as my ability to bring in players the way they control the talent pool, but it's always been the same for me. You do a good job in whatever endeavor you're involved in and somebody is paying you to do, it takes care of itself. The rest of it takes care of itself, and that's how I've always looked at it, and that's how I look at this situation here.

Q: You mentioned the (D-League) rules. There are a lot of them, as far as getting a guy who comes down to your team (from an NBA affiliate team) for maybe one or two weeks. You have the expansion draft where you're not going to get certain guys because the other D-League teams can protect their top players. What rules are you looking at now and wondering how you're going to work with it?

A: My first task is to really study and learn the rules that they have in place, and I think that's an evolving thing. The developmental league continues to tweak and find the best ways they can to make this the best developmental league possible, so that it's a real benefit for the NBA teams. So the first thing is really studying the nuances of these rules. The biggest thing for me this time around, as supposed to my last since in an developmental situation (when he coached and served as a general manger in the CBA in the 1990s) was there was complete open free agency to evaluate the talent out there and communicate with the agent and try to sign that particular player, as opposed to one of your competitors signing that player. This situation, I think a big factor is just real solid evaluation of the talent pool out there and try to make really good decisions once you have this talent pool in place that sign these developmental league contracts. Then in November, when this draft takes place, of all the guys that have been committed to play, is having done the homework on these guys to make the right call at that point to be able to sign those guys. That's the first thing. (The) expansion draft is OK to maybe pick up a few veteran guys, but at the time of the expansion draft, you're probably still not going to know if they're going to commit to playing in the developmental league this upcoming season. Yes, it's a value, but you won't know because obviously all players' first option is to try to be on an NBA roster. Their second option is, if somebody overseas is going to pay them an enormous amount of money, they're going to probably go that route first because it's hard not to from a financial standpoint. Lastly, taking the group you're able to secure the first part of November is teach them to compete and teach them to play well together and develop them into NBA-level basketball players.

Q: In terms of getting a team together, you won't have a full roster probably until a month before the season?

A: It won't even be then. It will be after the NBA training camp. You're talking the first part of November when the (D-League) draft is going to take place.

Q: That's the expansion draft?

A: That's not the expansion draft. This is the draft where all the guys that have signed developmental league contracts (will be available to draft). A lot of those guys will be in NBA training camps, and they'll be those last few cuts on NBA teams in late October that at that point don't have a lot of options in regards to going overseas because the overseas thing will have already started a month before that. So at that point, that's when the league signs all the players to the contracts, puts these group of guys in this pool and then we'll have a draft and that's when at that you'll know really what you're looking like in putting together your team.

Q: It just seemed like a lot of time to get …

A: Prepared?

Q: Yeah.

A: Right. So that's the difference in how it was for me in the past, but, hey, it's a rule that's adhered to by all 16 teams, so it's not unfair more to one team. It's around the table, across the board, fair and equitable and that's why I think the evaluation process that started a few weeks ago with the Orlando (NBA) pre-draft camp. Obviously, I know a lot of the SEC players, having competed against them for years, but that's kind of the process I'm going through now. It's just really about knowing that player so if that player shows up in that pool on Nov. 1, I'm going to know how that person can help this franchise or not help this franchise.

Q: Obviously, your summer is going to be very busy with helping coach the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Summer League (next month). What are you hoping to gain from that experience this summer?

A: I think (the day of the press conference when Treloar was named Erie's coach) it became obvious to everyone here that the Cavaliers' commitment to this is pretty high. Very high so from my standpoint this summer is to have the opportunity to really get to know those guys better -- the coaches, the scouts, all of those people there in the front office. It's a resource for me to learn about this talent pool because obviously they've invested an enormous amount of money in researching these players. So they've opened that up to me. It's a chance to get with the coaches with their summer league to study and learn their system. How they teach their system. Their defensive principles. Their defensive terminology. Those kind of things we'll be able to use here to put players in a situation where if they're called up by the Cavaliers, they're a little further along than they might be otherwise. So that's what the month of July, especially with traveling with them with the summer league out in Las Vegas, will do.

Q: As busy as you've been your entire career, how did you find a wife (Debra) who has been able to handle this lifestyle? What is it about her that's enabled this to work?

A: I'm a person of faith and so the way I see that is that's the person -- the good Lord brought us together. It's been our foundation and strength to take it a day at a time in this life and do the best we can. She's very supportive of my career and certainly holds down the fort with all the travel and so forth and does a great job with it, but it does take a special person to go through the ups and downs of the coaching profession with the wins and losses and the emotion that goes along with your players and seeing the players grow and mature and learn and all those things. When I was coaching in Wichita Falls in the CBA, that's where we met. (We've) been together since the late 1980s. Our family looks forward to coming here and being a part of this community.

Q: Looking at you as a coach, what made John Treloar decide hey, this is it. I want to be a coach?

A: Well, when I came out of college (at Belhaven College in Mississippi in 1978), I studied business in college and didn't know exactly the direction I was going to go in. So the first year out of college, I worked for an oil pipeline company that I had worked summers for down in southern Louisiana. By the end of that first year, I had a yearning to be involved in basketball. That was my love, and so I decided to go back to graduate school. I got a break to be involved at the University of Alabama in doing my graduate work and was led to the break to coaching in Europe and have been doing it ever since. As a lot of basketball people will tell you, it gets in your system, your blood and it's hard to let go. I guess I was one of those people. Just unable to let it go.

Q: (Former LSU coach and Treloar's college teammate at Belhaven, John Brady) said your route to here wasn't conventional. He said you've got to think about a 23-year old going overseas to coach. When you look back on it now, how would you evaluate this journey?

A: The thing that I feel so fortunate about is to have a chance to be a head coach at such a young age in a very competitive environment in Europe was a great blessing for me because it taught me at a very early age what it took to be successful as a head coach. Until you do it. Until you have to make the decisions that are going to affect winning and losing and ultimately employment or unemployment, you figure out what works. You figure it out or you don't survive in this business. So that happened at an early age for me, which was a tremendous blessing for me. The other thing about this unconventional route was having a chance to go and live in Europe during those years and being there in Germany where the front line of the values and democracy and freedom faced off with the Soviet Union. And to feel that and to make those drives through east Germany to Berlin was something I never would have learned had I not experienced it. So all of my stops along the way, I have felt very fortunate to have experienced those things I did that brought me here to where I am today.

Q: One of those experiences was obviously coaching at Indiana under Bob Knight. A lot of people, when they found out you were the coach, the first thing they asked me was, "He coached under Bobby Knight right?' I'd say "Yeah." They'd say, 'I wonder what that was like."

A: (Treloar begins laughing)

Q: So I ask, what was that like?

A: It was for me another great experience. I had been a head coach at that point a number of years so that was the biggest adjustment -- giving up the role of the head coach and all the things that go along with that and assuming the role of one of Coach Knight's assistants. So what I tried to do was give him everything I could in helping him win championships and teach those young men. It was a great education for me because it allowed me to be on the inside with a man that has won three national championships. He won an Olympic gold medal. He's done it all without a single (NCAA) violation, so he's doing it within the NCAA rules. So it was a great learning experience for me.

From a basketball standpoint to learn things that maybe I had looked at differently before that. As I finished that situation and moved on down the line to LSU and so forth, certainly I have taken some of the things that I learned and have implemented. Others, maybe not, but you have to coach and teach the young men that you're working with within your own personality. You can never try to be somebody you're not, and so I took things from that situation just as I did in the years in the CBA coaching against all these guys who have become NBA head coaches that I had to go head to head with, I took from them as well. It's all a learning experience.

Q: The reason I ask is because although I have only known you for a little bit, your demeanor seems very relaxed. Anyone who has seen Bob Knight, his demeanor is not a relaxed one. It doesn't seem like it to me. So how were you to able to co-exist when you're this way and he seems to be the exact opposite in terms of demeanor and how he presents himself?

A: Great question and I've been asked that a lot, but Coach Knight is the type of person that if you're a hard worker and you do your job and you do everything you can to be the best at that job, that task that you're given? I can say this, in the years I was with Coach Knight, Coach Knight never raised his voice to me one time. Not one time did he ever raise his voice, yell and scream and this and that because I did my job. I did it with everything I had in me to do it as well as I could and if you do that, he is going to respect that and you're not going to have any issues at all. He respects that. I think to me, knowing Coach Knight in my years with him, when I watched him last season at the end of the season as an ESPN analyst. That was a great picture of who Coach Knight is. Now he was very informative. It was very educational to listen to him talk about the different games and the teams and the players because that's who he is and what had been removed from the equation, he was not involved in the winning or the losing of a competitive ball game. A competitive situation. He's a fierce competitor and that fierceness I think a lot of times was cast one way or another or misinterpreted. Hey, he was a fierce competitor who did not like to lose, and as a fierce competitor who didn't like to lose, during those times when he might have lost a game or not have as good as season as he would have liked or not seen a group of guys perform to their potential, then he reacted with that intensity everyone saw. But Bob Knight, in everything I know of him, is a good man. I feel privileged to have had a chance to learn from him. That's how I feel.

Q. You haven't been a head coach in a while. (Treloar's last head coaching job was in 1997 with the Connecticut Pride in the CBA and overseas in Venezuela.)

A: It's been a minute.

Q: Yes, it's been a minute since you've been running the show. The reason I ask is I know we've talked about offensive styles, but in your world, what is your offensive philosophy?

A: To take an evaluation of the group of guys you have. Take what their skills and abilities will allow and give them the direction on the offensive end that will allow them to succeed, and if that means being able to run the ball or push the pace offensively because they have that ability, then certainly, I would want to do that. If we did not have the abilities or skills to do that, then certainly I would not ask them or try to get them to do something they're not capable of doing that would lead to nothing but failure ultimately. We'll know once we get to camp in November what we have and you'll see it evolve those first few weeks of November as we go along. It's a constant adjusting process and there are challenges. An example being if Cleveland has a guy that they send to us and say, "OK, we're sending him down for a few weeks. We're sending him down for a month," then there is going to be an adjustment. We're going to constantly be adjusting to the group that we have offensively. Where I don't see a lot of adjusting is just trying to set up solid fundamental defensive principles to allow success.

Q: Brady also said that you're a no-nonsense guy and that you demand a great deal and that if you don't see what you like, there is going to be a problem and you're going to hash it out or work out it or get it to the point they understand that. A, how do you go about doing that? And B, if that is the case, where did that start for you to have that kind of approach to coaching?

A: It's the teaching process. Again, I've been very fortunate to have worked with a lot of very talented, young basketball players, and what I've always tried to do is help them reach their goals and aspirations and most of their aspirations have been to play at the NBA level. And I've been able to do it for a long time and I know what it takes in each of the positions on the floor from the point guard the big spots, to be able to be successful and make an NBA roster and be an impact player or a player that can stick and stay in the NBA and be on the floor. With that being said, I'm going to try and impart that knowledge to these young guys. If they knew already, then they wouldn't be here with us. So what I'm going to try to do is help them understand the process and what it's going to take for them to get from this point to get where they want to go.

Q: Just have three last things. I appreciate the time. First thing, developing guy and being a film rat is what I heard right off the bat about you. That's what he enjoys. That's what he likes to do. Explain to people why you enjoy it because there are people out there that probably would want to coach, but really when someone told them, "Hey, you've got to sit in the film room for four hours or you've got to work an hour extra with this player," they probably wouldn't do it. So this just seems like that extra work you have to do to be successful, so explain why this is something you've always enjoyed.

A: In regards to the film, the one thing about the film is it doesn't hide the truth. It doesn't distort the truth. It is the truth and coming from Europe and the CBA, I had not seen film dissected like I did at Indiana. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned from Coach Knight was the amount of time he spent studying film and preparing in that way. When I was in Europe and that was back in the 1980s, when I first started, you had that this, I don't know, 16-millimeter or 8-millimeter film. Then the VCR came in during the '80s and so forth. Then in the CBA, you didn't have anybody to even do the filming for you. So I had just never learned it.
When I got to Indiana, I learned it and I understand the value of it and the great teaching tool that it is. It is a slow process. It's a meticulous process, but it's one that again, I learned from Coach Knight and tried to use. You know, there are a lot of people that are not willing to sit there and go hours on in to try to find a way to come up with a game plan that will beat Mike Krzyzewski in the Sweet 16 to allow you to get to the Final Four (In 2006, when Treloar was an assistant at LSU, the Tigers beat Duke in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament and eventually made it to the Final Four). It comes down to a lot of preparation. As far as the individual work with the players, that goes without saying. They all want to get better. Every one of them wants to get better. They want to work on their games. That's a non-issue with me.

The one thing I look forward to is getting back into those opportunities to have the mental exchanges and battles that go on between head coaches on game night. To have had a chance to go up against (current Denver Nuggets coach) George Karl in seven-game series and all the things that went on between us that gave us a chance to beat his teams or Bill Musselman's or Eric Musselman's and Flip Saunders', I enjoyed those and I look forward to doing that again.

Q: Second thing, people here would love to see a winner. People here are also coming to grips with the fact that this is a developmental league and that's the priority. I've talked to other D-League teams, and they've talked that's the balance you've got to find. Sometimes it's going to lean more to the development of players than the wins and losses. How do you handle knowing that your job is to develop talent, but we want to win games? I'm just curious about the mindset you have to take toward that.

A: I believe that the philosophy (NBA commissioner) David Stern has handed down in this developmental league project is he wants this component to help develop some young guys that are just not quite ready for whatever reason. Maybe they lack something that can be improved upon. So that they can have this talent pool that can come up and help whether it's because of injuries and so forth. I agree with that 100 percent.

There is no reason for the NBA to pour money into a situation that has a bunch of 28- to 35-year-old guys that are still chasing a dream they're never going to catch. So I believe in the philosophy of the developmental aspect, but there is no reason in my teaching to these young guys that I can't teach winning and what it takes to win and the unselfishness and the working together and that it's a team sport and all those components that go into winning. I view them as skills that have to be learned for some guys as well and so, hey, there is nobody who wants to win a D-League championship more than me. I'm going to everything I can every year that I'm here to win that championship, and I'm going to do everything I can to stay within the philosophy of developing these young guys. We're not going to bring has-beens that have no chance. The veteran guys we bring that I've always brought in have been guys that had the ability to help me teach this young group. If they don't fit that, then we're not some rec league team with guys 30, 35 years old having fun and playing ball.

Q: Last thing. At this moment, the season is months away, but months can zip on you like that. There is so much work involved. How will try to enjoy the moment? Enjoy the atmosphere? Enjoy the following you're likely going to have? How will try to sneak a little fun into this?

A: I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I did not enjoy it. I'm not that kind of person, and it's probably a shortcoming of mine. I love what I do. You spoke of the Fanfest to me earlier (The BayHawks had an event for the fans free of charge last Saturday in Erie). I understand the work this group of young people are involved in and I'm going to do everything I can to help them be successful, and so at the Fanfest, if they ask me to do whatever they ask me to do, I'm going to pitch in and help. I enjoy it. I do. I feel fortunate to be a part of the game and thankful for the opportunity.

Q: Thank you, coach, Appreciate the opportunity.

A: Hey, no problem.

-- Duane Rankin