Q&A with Mo Cheeks <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Maurice Cheeks first came to the 76ers in 1978, as a somewhat obscure point guard from a West Texas State team that neither ran nor won very much. He came back again in 1994, as an assistant coach who had spent the previous season in the Continental Basketball Association learning about the profession. The first time was a charm, because Cheeks grew into the NBA game, and the Sixers - with Moses Malone, Julius Erving, Andrew Toney, Bobby Jones, et al. - won the championship in 1983. The second time was the beginning of a whole new career, with Cheeks blossoming under Larry Brown and eventually spending three-plus seasons as the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers. It's time to find out whether love is lovelier the third time around, with Cheeks preparing for his first season as the Sixers' head coach, the dramatic successor to the fired Jim O'Brien. In a concise, sometimes introspective session with the Daily News, Cheeks took a break from his preparation for training camp and addressed the past, the present and the future: QYou've been with the Sixers before, as a player and as an assistant coach, but things change when you become the head coach, particularly when you're with players with whom you've had a different relationship. How do you plan to handle that? AAllen [Iverson]'s the only guy on the team I've had any type of relationship with. Allen's a marquee player, and I will figure it out. The one intangible he has is, he plays hard, he wants to play every night; he wants to play 48 minutes. That's an intangible that not everyone has. I have to figure out how to incorporate that relationship to make it beneficial for our team. QOnce the Sixers hired Jim O'Brien last season, did you think your window of opportunity to someday coach here had closed? A I never thought about it like that. I was in Portland when they hired O'Brien for X-amount of years [3, plus a team option]. I never thought about it in terms of a window of opportunity closing. I just kind of went with the flow. QYou learned your craft by going to the CBA as an assistant, by working for John Lucas, Johnny Davis and Larry Brown with the Sixers. What did you take from each of them?</div> Source
