Dollar Eager for Next Opportunity

Whenever I see Cameron Dollar I always think of that April night in 1995, when Dollar had just completed the performance that would define his career.

After capably filling in at point guard for the injured Tyus Edney in UCLA’s NCAA championship victory over Arkansas, Dollar sat in the locker room, wide-eyed but not overwhelmed by the crush of reporters surrounding him.

His statistics--six points, eight assists--weren’t so remarkable. He was a hero because he was only a sophomore and he didn’t go to pieces in the face of Arkansas’ harrowing defense, committing only three turnovers in 36 minutes when his team desperately needed him.

“It’s funny,” Dollar said that night. “Sometimes something happens and pushes you in the spotlight. When opportunity knocks, you’d better be able to answer.”

He doesn’t want to wait idly for another opportunity. It’s Dollar who is doing the knocking now, trying to barge his way into the head coaching fraternity at the tender age of 22. He’s an assistant at UC Irvine, one year out of UCLA, and looking to become a head coach. Not down the road. Now.

“I can see it happening,” Dollar said. “I know I don’t know everything. You surround yourself with people who have experience and you continue to learn.

“You’ve got to have respect for coaches. I don’t ever want to be seen as the arrogant little punk--’Who does he think he is? He doesn’t know anything.’

“I say to that: As far as years in dealing with basketball, I’ve used them wisely, to not just play, but collect. As a player, I’ve always been a coach. I’ve always dealt with the psychological side of it, taking care of players, making sure they were motivated to play.

“You don’t want to show disrespect for the guys who have paid their dues. But in my eyes, I’ve been training to do this for a lifetime. I really think that I can do the job.”

It’s what Dollar has wanted to do since he was 7. His father, Donald, was a coach, and still is at Clarkson High School in Atlanta. Cameron spent his summers in basketball camps, soaking up information. During his playing days at UCLA, he didn’t just do the drills.

“He’d [ask] about why we would do certain things in practice, what do we talk about in our staff meetings, how do we come up with our drills,” said Pepperdine Coach Lorenzo Romar, who was an assistant at UCLA for Dollar’s first three years.

“From [Jim] Harrick, I got the ability to let your players play. You give them structure, but you let them flow within it,” Dollar said.

Anyone who’s heard Steve Lavin can guess what Dollar learned from him: “the importance of staying in your stance.”

So how does Coach Dollar view this year’s UCLA team, which seems so devoid of leadership with a freshman backcourt and suspended upperclassmen?

“My thing is this,” Dollar said. “When I was a freshman, Ed O’Bannon was a junior. We lost to Tulsa, they said we had no leaders. When I was a sophomore, we won the championship, we had leaders. When I was a junior, Cameron Dollar, Charles O’Bannon were juniors. They said we had no leaders. When I was a senior, Cameron Dollar, Charles O’Bannon were leaders.

“I think that [the media] don’t give them the time to grow and mature as a team. There’s a time to grow into a team, there’s a time to grow into their roles.”

Dollar thinks his head coaching time has come. He has done his research. He knows that Rick Pitino was 25 when he got his first head coaching job at Boston University. Bobby Knight took over at Army four years after graduating from Ohio State.

Dollar’s gone all the way back to Branch McCracken, who started coaching Indiana in the 1930s at age 22. The legendary Phog Allen began his head coaching career the year he graduated, in 1906.

“Different people have different routes,” Dollar said. “Nothing discourages me. But what encourages me are those people I just named.

“If you noticed, all those guys I named, none of them are African American. You get a chance to be a pioneer that way.”

Dollar is preparing a booklet that’s part resume, part portfolio, part master plan of his vision for a college basketball program, right down to the assignments for the secretaries.

All he needs now is a college athletic director or president who is willing to take a chance. UCI Coach Pat Douglass thinks Cameron’s presence could win him a job.

“I’ve seen him with kids 11 years old and I’ve seen him with adults,” Douglass said. “There isn’t an age group he doesn’t electrify.

“There’s no telling what might occur during the interview.”

“Cameron has a presence about him that commands respect,” Romar said. “But he also has an uncanny ability to believe. A lot of that has to do with his faith in the Lord, a lot of it has to do with he’s always been an underdog. He’s the type of guy that all you have to do is tell him he can’t, and it’ll probably get done.”

We’ve already seen what he can do when he gets a chance.