Basketball Is Once Again in Dollar’s Court

Cameron Dollar is 22 years old and a head college basketball coach.

Yes, sometimes Dollar takes the towels home to launder, and he’ll probably be driving a lot of vans on trips this winter. Dollar thinks he’s younger than “six or seven” players on his team, and his office is decorated mostly with unpacked boxes, even though he started work at Southern California College in Costa Mesa in April.

But on this fall afternoon when lots of his friends, guys he played with and against while he was a point guard at UCLA, are disgruntled and locked out of their NBA jobs, Dollar can’t stop smiling.

For Dollar is living a dream. If you don’t believe that, just listen.

“These are my guys now,” Dollar says of the 13 players he has brought in from as far away as Boston and as close by as Long Beach. “My family. It is so much different from being the assistant to being in charge. I can have such an impact on these guys. I can really make a difference in young people’s lives.”

Dollar is wearing black shorts and a T-shirt that has a Bible in the middle and the words ‘Soul’ and ‘Food’ above and below it. Dollar, who was the restricted earnings assistant coach at UC Irvine last season, says a big reason he was interested in this job at a 900-student National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics school is because Southern California College is a Christian school.

“I’m encouraged to speak about Jesus Christ,” Dollar says proudly. Dollar will not push his faith at a stranger, but he is happy to be around people who feel strongly about faith.

And, really, Dollar is happy about everything.

Since he was 6 years old, Dollar says he has wanted to be a coach.

“My father was a coach, still is,” Dollar says of Donald Dollar, coach at Clarkston High near Atlanta. “My brother [Chad] is an assistant coach at Western Carolina. Coaching is just what I’ve always wanted to do. More than I ever wanted to play in the NBA.”

Dollar played for his dad as a sophomore in high school. Then Dollar transferred to Prospect Hall near Baltimore, a prestigious prep school with a nationally acclaimed basketball program coached by Stu Vetter. For two years, Dollar studied hard. Books and basketball. Even now, seven years later, Dollar speaks enthusiastically of the way Vetter coached.

“He had a system, and no one was bigger than the system,” Dollar says. “No one’s ego could grow out of the system. Everybody and everything fit.”

At UCLA, Dollar would sit in on meetings with then-coach Jim Harrick. Dollar would listen and learn. About planning a practice. About conditioning workouts. About recruiting. About everything.

Because at UCLA, Dollar experienced everything. The incredible high of winning a national championship. The extreme embarrassment of losing to Princeton the next year in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The nastiness of seeing Harrick fired when the university and the team were in the middle of an ugly and acrimonious hissing match.

None of the bad stuff moved Dollar one bit away from his dream. “What I learned,” Dollar says, choosing his words carefully, “is that if you are honest and do what is right, you will not have anything to worry about. At least, I won’t.”

When Dollar graduated after the 1997 season, which ended with a loss to Minnesota in the Elite Eight, he took a job with a company that embroiders athletic caps and planned to work out seriously until the NBA draft. Dollar went to the NBA tryout camp in Portsmouth, Va. He planned, if undrafted, to try out for an NBA team.

“And then,” Dollar says, “out of the blue, Pat Douglass calls.” Douglass is the head coach at Irvine. Douglass had heard of Dollar’s eventual career goal. Douglass offered Dollar, sight unseen, the job of restricted earnings assistant. A job that came with a salary of about $16,000. “It took me about a minute to say yes,” Dollar says. “That was it for the NBA.

“Because I wanted much, much more to be a coach than an NBA player. Some people don’t believe that, but it’s the truth. Could I be playing in the NBA now? Yes, I believe so. But I would much rather be doing what I’m doing.”

It is Dollar’s hope that some day he will be a Division I head coach. The typical career path is to move up from restricted earnings assistant to No. 2 assistant to No. 1 assistant at progressively bigger Division I programs. It is uncommon for a coach to move from NAIA to Division I and, yes, Dollar says, he knows that some people think he should have stayed at Irvine.

But last spring, when another coach called Douglass and asked Douglass for a recommendation for this job, Dollar was immediately interested.

“It’s like a stock-market thing. You’re supposed to follow a certain path to make the big money,” Dollar says. “But I’m not interested in the big money. What I’ve always wanted is to run my own program. To be a head coach. And here it was. The chance.”

Dollar asked Douglass, “Am I ready?” Douglass told Dollar, “Yes, you are ready as a coach. But what about your personal life. Can you be a husband, buy a house, organize your time?” When he heard this, Dollar says, “I smiled. Because I knew I could do those things. It was the coaching stuff I was worried about.”

With Douglass’ blessing, Dollar applied for, and then got, this job.

He has had his first practice. “I wasn’t nervous at all. Just itching to get going,” Dollar says. The first game is Nov. 13. “Nervous about that? Nah. I’m raring to go.”

And has Dollar ever wished he had tried for the money? Gone for the NBA.

“Are you crazy,” Dollar says. “Not even once. This is it. I’m doing the thing I’ve wanted to do since I was 6 years old.”