"My 30 Years of Basketball Madness in America".

OVER THE PAST 30 years, I have been a citizen of Greece for 11 months of the year. All my Octobers have been spent in the United States.

The basketballs of the NBA and NCAA are bouncing by then, and I have to be there. Basketball is my game and nobody plays it or coaches it the way they do in America. I go to all the practices I can and talk to some of the greatest basketball minds in the world.

The first leg of my long journey last October took me to San Francisco, home of the Golden State Warriors. Pete Carlesimo, the coach (at the time), has been always more than kind to me, and I always enjoy the intensity and thoroughness with which he conducts his practices.

I stayed with Golden State for a week and watched all the two-a-days. It was a week full of the kind of basketball played on the pro and college levels.

Paul Westhead, an assistant coach, took the Warriors through offensive transition with the same enthusiasm and showmanship with which he used to teach his famous run-and-gun offense at Loyola Marymount.

Meanwhile, Bob Strack, another assistant, was killing himself preparing the team on defense.

The Warriors looked very organized. Rod Higgins, veteran player whom I knew from his career in Greece, was showing what a significant addition to the staff he was going to be, while Greg Bittner, the team's chief scout, was doing a fine job of covering every little detail of the team's preparation plan.

During my stay in San Francisco, I also had the chance to attend the practice sessions of Harry Pantazopoutos, the head coach at City College of San Francisco, where Harry and his advisor, Brad Dugan, are doing a lot of good teaching.

The next stop on my journey was eastward to Detroit, where Head Coach Alvin Gentry and assistants George Irvine, Larry Drew, and Mo McHono gave me a warm welcome--just like the ones I always used to get from Chuck Daly and his staff. (This was my fifth trip to the Pistons' training camp.)

While in Detroit, I also attended three of the Pistons' exhibition games (vs Sacramento and vs the Sixers in Grand Rapids and Dallas).

General Manager Rick Smits provided me with all the assistance I needed to follow their installation of a new style of running game.

Chicago was my third stop. As everyone knows, the departure of Michael Jordan and Coach Phil Jackson have heavily affected both their roster and staff. Tim Floyd, a traditional collegiate coach, heads a completely new staff.

During my stay in the Windy City, I also spent significant time watching the practice sessions of Northwestern and DePaul. Kevin O'Neill, a real student of the game, was coming off a great season with Northwestern, and Pat Kennedy had had a good year at DePaul. They both were expected to do even more the coming season.

It was a real pleasure to spend time with these talented people. Both are very good teachers and I was impressed by their minutely planned practice and great attention to detail both on the individual and team levels. These two aspects of the American game have helped me the most since I first started coming to the U.S. in the early 70's.

The last stop in my journey was with the Knicks in the Big Apple. I have been a partisan of the Knicks since the Clyde-Pearl-Reed-Bradley era.

Scott Layden, the GM last year, made a significant change in the organization. Scott has been a very close friend since his days with the Utah Jazz (under his Dad, Frank). This time I had the opportunity to get even closer to the Knicks and I also got to watch their exhibition game with the Nets.

I was pleased to add to my New York agenda with a stop at Fordham University, where former NBA coach Bob Hill had taken over the program. Coach Hill and his assistants, Mike Brown, and Frank Martin, impressed me with their meticulously planned practices.

And there in New York my 1999 quest ended. As always, it had been a great learning experience. I have been more than fortunate in being able to attend the training camps of such NBA teams as Utah, Milwaukee, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Minnesota, Detroit, Orlando, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Washington.

I attended several of them more than once, but everyone of them was a unique experience and unforgettable.

And my visitations were not confined to the professional game. I also had the pleasure of visitation with college giants such as North Carolina and Indiana, other schools with strong programs such as Utah, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ball State, and many smaller colleges with dedicated coaches. All of them added constructive hours of basketball teaching to my learning experience.

I have always felt something special about my trips to Utah--I've been there four times--and Philadelphia. My visits to those basketball centers have really influenced my basketball philosophy.

Coach Rick Majerus is a great teacher at the U. of Utah, while the Utah Jazz have been very fortunate to have coaches such as Jerry Sloan, Phil Johnson, Gordy Chiesa, Kenny Natt, and David Fredman.

In Philadelphia, I watched Larry Brown, another heralded teacher, do his special thing in training camp, and I also sat in on practices of the city's five basketball colleges--St. Joseph (Phil Martelli), Temple (John Chaney), Drexel (Bill Herion), Villanova (Steve Lappas), and Penn (Frank Dunphy).

How well I remember the summer of '71... almost 30 years ago, when I launched my journey to the cradle of basketball. It started with the first great clinics organized by Scholastic Coach, which teamed up such legendary coaches as John Wooden, Jack Kraft, Jack Ramsay, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, Digger Phelps, Fred Taylor, Ted Owens, John Bach, Dick Mota, Don Donoher, and Bill Foster.

And there were two other people I met at the time who have continued helping me improve my knowledge of the game. I refer to Herman L. Masin, editor, and Bruce Weber, publisher, of Scholastic Coach.

When I think back to those earlier years, I know that I'll never forget Pete Newell, one of basketball's greatest coaches. Few people know the whole game the way he does and nobody knows how to teach the Big Man Game the way he does.

He is always ready to spend time talking to me about the game when we meet at the Final Four every year.

I've met so many more coaches on my wonderful journeys to my adopted basketball country. Some I have met only once. Others twice or more. I remember all of them and I am beholden to them for all the time they have spent with me. I can't help thinking of Hubie Brown. What an engaging personality and what an awesome encyclopedia of knowledge he is!

This, dear friends, is the journey of a basketball "crazy", who has been doing it every single October for almost 30 years. Having been a guest of the NBA and College Basketball teams, I feel very privileged and more than grateful to the coaches, players, and staffs, of American basketball.

I know there are a lot of people out there like me and I urge all of you to get more involved with the game and to begin your own journeys into the beautiful world of Basketball.