Q: What do you see in the future?

A: I see success for this group, but success doesn’t mean just to win one, success is like sustaining it. A lot of times the one thing that we all have to understand is it’s OK that if you win, win, win, lose, win, win, lose … there has to be adversity, and whatever the adversity means. Sometimes it can be a loss. … Adversity can come in different ways, and you have to be ready to face adversity, whether it is in one point of a season or in a season, and I think that we all have to understand that knowing that the adversity can always show up, you have to be ready. You have to be ready to fight, you have to be ready to help, you have to be ready to support your players, your group. And I think that’s part of that growing and success is understanding that this adversity will be part of the journey, so that’s why I believe we’ll be good.

Q: How would you describe your leadership style?

A: I think try to organize everybody. Give everybody responsibility. And then accountability. So collaboration, for me, it’s important. You need somebody that organizes everybody, because if you ask everybody, “Oh, what should we do?’” … collective thinking takes forever. So let’s reorganize first, then I’ll give you your part of it. It’s like we’re all trying to do this together, this is your job. And then if you do it, I can tell you, you did a great job. If you’re not doing it, I can tell you, you got to do better. I think being collaborative is very important. But at some point, somebody has to put everything in place.

Q: Do you have a lot of rules, and what won’t you tolerate?

A: Especially at the beginning, I think that if you come with too many rules, everything waters down a little bit. If you have too many that you cannot remember the rules, then the rules are no longer impactful. When you start building, let’s start with the simple rules, right? I tell the players, for instance, being on time is extremely important. Positive energy — because there’s no neutral energy, it’s either positive or negative. So you show up with a group, you need to have positive energy, because that impacts everybody else. And then the last one is be the best leader you can be, because everybody can be a leader, whether if it’s by example or if that goes back to doing what’s best for the team. If we start with three very basic rules of being on time, having positive energy and being the best leader you can be, those are very simple rules. Threes are easy to remember — like, if we go by our culture, it’s get 1 percent better every day … embrace your role … and build relationships, it’s three. What this culture creates, an idenтιтy — be compeтιтive, be selfless, be connected. Those three things in a culture create these three things of your idenтιтy.

Q: What is your definition of a winning culture?

A: A winning culture means that you want to have success in the long run. The most important thing about winning, it’s earning respect. In whatever field you are, you have compeтιтion, and if everybody can see that you do a good job, if they can respect your job and acknowledge your job, that to me is the definition of a winning culture.

Q: Have you seen progress here in the culture?

A: So far, yeah. It’s very early in the process. Right now it’s we want to be compeтιтive, we want to sustain success or winning, and then it goes to what we all want, a championship. And it’s not just one, but multiple? It seems like it’s too far, but you have to start at some point. So I think this is the beauty of going back to collaboration is how you organize everybody, you make everybody be part of it, give people ownership, and then holding them accountable. And it’s not just the players, but the rest of the coaching staff.

Q: What are the traits of your ideal basketball player?

A: The team’s always first. Toughness, and not just physically, but also mentally … missing a sH๏τ or missing two sH๏τs and then shooting the next one, that’s part of mental toughness. And then the last part is easy, is skill, right? You have to be skilled to play basketball.

Q: Are you a good motivator, and how do you motivate?

A: I don’t know if I’m good, but I try. Try to get a common goal. You need to find what people want, and then tell a story. Once you paint the picture of what we all want, we will be on different parts of the journey. And sometimes you’ll feel you’re closer, or you’re far, and then you have to pick those moments to keep everybody engaged, and that’s motivation, right? Where we’re right now, don’t lose focus. Sometimes it feels so far away that you can be disengaged. Can you find like a short-term goal or a mid-term goal? Like I always tell my wife, I don’t read a lot — books — but I’m constantly reading things, and I’m constantly thinking. And thinking is a lot of times exhausting, because you’re thinking on how am I going to explain this. And obviously for me, English not being my first language, it’s like I give it more thought to be clear with my explanation.

Q: What makes you a problem solver?

A: Thinking, believing that I don’t have all the answers in the world, because nobody does. When you feel like you don’t have all the answers, what you do is you start thinking. If you feel you have all the answers, you don’t think as much.

Q: Have you always been comfortable in your own skin?

A: No. I think that we all go for different phases of security or insecurity or confidence. Obviously it starts when you’re developing and you’re a kid, and then you’re a teenager and a young adult and an adult, and obviously you can be more vulnerable because you’re not equipped the same way. You can be equipped because of your education — whether it’s your home education either with your family which is the most important one, or through school education, which is also important. And then experiences will teach you the most. The ones that hurt the most are ones that you will never forget. And from there is where you can feel the pain based on your values, and then it’s where you can build all that confidence in yourself. I think that it’s completely OK to feel insecure. That’s how you build confidence.

Q: Was there one experience you had to endure that was the most painful?

A: There’s been many in my life. There’s been a lot of situations where you feel uncertainty. When I was younger, for instance, you don’t know what’s going to happen with your life. What are you going to do for a living? Yeah, I love sports, I love basketball, but how are you going to do it? If it wasn’t going to happen, what are you going to do for work? The uncertainty always creates stress for me. But then I get to a point in my life that the most important thing … my dad always said, “It’s better to learn from your coaches what not to do than what to do.” I translated that to with my life. You would ask me, “What do you want to do for a living?” I was like, “I don’t know, but I know what I don’t want to do.” When I was very young, I started working in the summer, I worked in a supermarket and a factory at 6 a.m. just making money, learning what it is to go to a real job. And I could tell you that I knew that I did not want to wake up in the morning and feel like, “I’m not enjoying this job.” I want to wake up in the morning excited to go to work, and I want to be excited to spend time with my family. Going into spending hours with something that I’m not pᴀssionate about, that would create a lot of stress.