In 1986, as the head coach of the boy's basketball team at Hart Junior High School in Washington, DC, I wrote a letter to Notre Dame's Digger Phelps asking his advice for a first year coach. He wrote, "Be Yourself."

At age 24, I had no idea what that meant in regards to coaching. What I have learned over these last two decades is that Digger meant you have to know who you are, what you stand for, the things that are important to you, and what type of personality and delivery you will use to transmit those to your team.

You also have to know how you want to play, and how you will get your team to that point. The things you value as a person and as a coach – that's what he meant.

You don't learn that being a player, and you certainly don't learn that as an NBA head coach.

You learn those things coaching junior high teams, working week after week of summer basketball camps, going to clinics, watching video tapes, staying up into the night with other coaches after a tough loss to St. Mary of Grace Prep at the buzzer.

The struggles Vinny Del Negro is having at the highest level of the game are lessons learned by most coaches with their first J.V. teams. They make mistakes in every phase of the profession – from dealing with players to structuring their programs to substitution patterns. They learn the best way to discipline players, and develop a sense of what rules are truly important.

You learn that you can't start instituting silly rules and fines for things like eating in the locker room after your players have already realized you are way over your head.

How'd that curfew for the Kings translate into success for Head Coach Reggie Theus?

One crusty old veteran coach I knew told me, "I had two rules: Be on time, and play like hell when I tell you to."

You learn you can't curse people out publicly and expect them to respond to you. We've all learned that one and heard, "Man, you ain't my daddy." I challenged a guy publicly in the lunch room my first year of teaching and started a riot in the cafeteria.

From that, I learned to take it behind closed doors, keep it private, and you can say anything you want to, in any tone of voice, and use whatever adjectives you prefer. You get it settled and move on.

One current NBA player and I had one of the classic private confrontations of all time after he and I started to get into it on the court.

I backed off (recalling the lunchtime brawl) and said, "In my office." Things got pretty heated, and had it been public, it would have been ugly. But, it stayed between us, we got it settled, and we have had a respectful relationship ever since. No riot this time – I learned my lesson from that first year.

You make that mistake at the pro level, and you can lose a player or a team permanently.

We've all been where Vinny Del Negro is right now. It's just that when we made some of those same kinds of critical, sometimes near irreparable mistakes, we usually made them and learned those lessons against Fredrick Douglass Junior High.

The only witnesses to our blunders were the 18 people in the stands, not the 18,000 people in the arena, or the 18 million television viewers. More importantly, our mistakes didn't negatively affect players making $18,000,000.

Vinny's in a tough spot, because he's learning all these lessons that most coaches learn at a summer camp.

Contrast his situation with Erik Spoelstra, a first year coach with the Miami HEAT. This is a guy who has paid his coaching dues, learning the craft and the profession. Here is a young coach who players like Dwayne Wade and Udonis Haslem gushed about when he was named their head coach.

Why? Because he had earned their respect with his work ethic, his coaching I.Q., and his commitment to his players, his team, and his profession.

As an assistant, this guy ran pre-game workouts before HEAT games with more intensity than half the teams in the league play with in a game.

If you ever saw him coaching in summer league, he was into every possession, coaching each player on every play. You can't help but respect that kind of passion, effort and commitment. NBA players will play for a coach like that – regardless of his age or his playing experience.

That's a guy who knows what it means to "be yourself." He's learned who he is as a coach by doing just that – coaching morning, noon and night, and learning valuable lessons along the way.

Vinnie played in the NBA, and has been an executive in the league. He knows himself in those roles, but he doesn't know who he is as a coach or what his strengths, weaknesses, style and personality are or should be. And his team and the players are suffering for it.

Although there is no doubt he is working hard help his team and he is committed to trying to help them win, starting your coaching career as a head coach of an already highly dysfunctional NBA team could not be a more difficult assignment.

It's like starting law school by arguing before the Supreme Court.

The head chair on an NBA bench is not a place to begin to find yourself as a coach. And with things looking the way they are, the Bulls will be finding themselves out of the playoffs once again.

But, at least they can eat a sandwich while they watch the games.