Toronto Raptors head coach Sam Mitc is not a screamer. He thinks it is important that the world knows that about him.
He says that he does not berate his team after a bad loss, such as the one Sunday in Charlotte. He says that he does not single players out in the locker room. No, Sam Mitc will only scream when it is functional.
"That's the thing I'm trying to get people to understand," a cheery Mitc said during the Raptors' Tuesday morning shoot-around at Amway Arena in Orlando. Toronto plays the Magic Tuesday night. "They see me walking down the sidelines yelling. I'm not yelling. I'm yelling out instructions.
"Why? There are 20,000 people in the arena. So I can't be like," Mitc said, before adopting a hushed tone, "'‘Pssst, hey Jose. Hey, Hey. Jose. This is coming.'"
The topic came up because of Sunday's ugly loss in which Toronto allowed 32 second-chance points off 18 offensive rebounds. How does a coach approach his team after a game like that?
Mitc said there is simply little sense to yelling at most of his players. He will get vocal with Jamario Moon for repeating mistakes. Sometimes, he screams at Kris Humphries for failing to roll to the basket, or at Joey Graham for doing any number of things that Graham does frequently.
"There's no point of me really yelling at Jose [Calderon], Chris [Bosh], A.P. [Anthony Parker]. Even Andrea [Bargnani], for the most part, you can just tell Andrea what you need, whether he makes a mistake or not," Mitc said. "If he makes a mistake, he sort of understands what he did.
Rasho. I mean, you don't yell at Rasho. Rasho knows."
Still, the fact that he has to scream at all irritates Mitc . In fact, it might be more exhausting than pacing down the sideline.
"After the game, the last thing I have to do is go anywhere where I got to talk to people. I have just been talking and yelling and screaming for two-and-a-half hours," Mitc said. "A lot of times I don't even eat after games. I just get something to drink. Drink an orange juice or something like that. Then I go home, man. Then I want to go turn on the TV and listen to someone else talk."
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