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 Thursday, December 16
MacLeod weighing offer from Skiles
 
Associated Press

 SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- John MacLeod may be going back to the Phoenix Suns, the same team he coached for 14 years. This time, he would be there as an assistant.

MacLeod said he's weighing an offer from new Suns coach Scott Skiles to join his staff. MacLeod, 62, left coaching last spring after he was forced to resign as Notre Dame's head coach.

Skiles was promoted from an assistant to head coach earlier this week after Danny Ainge resigned to spend more time with his family.

"It's a consideration," MacLeod told the South Bend Tribune from the new Phoenix-area home into which he and his wife, Carol, moved in October. "(The Suns) are already good, but they have a chance to be better. Scott will be a very good head coach."

MacLeod, who spent eight years as the head coach at Notre Dame before resigning in early March, interviewed with Washington and Cleveland during the offseason. Both teams decided to go different directions, hiring Gar Heard, who played for MacLeod in college and in the NBA, and Randy Wittman.

"I wasn't disappointed that I wasn't hired," said MacLeod, who won 707 career games as a head coach with Phoenix, Dallas and the New York Knicks. "I understood that they wanted to go with younger coaches. That made sense (but) things work out."

Skiles, 35, who led Plymouth to the Indiana high school championship in 1982, is the youngest coach in the NBA. MacLeod said he was hesitant to jump at Skiles' offer because several other coaches around the league are said to be on the hot seat and he's still interested in being a head coach.

Should something unfold, MacLeod would hope to land with one of those teams as an interim head coach for the rest of the 1999-00 season.

"It would be nice if all of us had the magic lamp to look into," MacLeod said. "But you just don't know. Coaches change every year. There's always movement."

MacLeod said he's still got the "juice" to coach after 32 years on the sidelines.

"You can only play golf so long," he said. "I need more than that. I miss coaching. When you're a coach all your life, you miss the action of it."
 


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Ainge resigns as Suns coach; Skiles takes over