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The basics we know about Suns’ interim coach Jay Triano.

He was an assistant with the Portland Trail Blazers for four seasons before joining Earl Watson’s staff. He was the head coach of Toronto Raptors, he’s the current head coach of the men’s national basketball team for Canada Basketball and he was an assistant for the 2010 USA Basketball team that won a gold medal in the FIBA World Championship.

But did you also know he was a coach with Basketball Without Borders in Istanbul, Senegal, Slovenia and Australia? Or that he played college ball at Simon Fraser University and later coached there? Or that he was 1981 NBA draft pick by the Los Angeles Lakers and a pick that same year by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League?

azcentral sports recently sat down with Triano for a one-on-one interview to discuss his basketball life, his relationship with Steve Nash, his love of all sports and his record collection. Some of the answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Q: If you don’t mind, tell the story again of how your relationship with Steve Nash got started. You were recruiting him out of high school, right?

A: We brought him over for the weekend (at Simon Fraser University) and we had our big, annual banquet. We got the players to take him out and then drove him to the ferry terminal. We had to wait three hours because the weather was so bad. I was trying to close the deal and it didn’t quite work out that way because we spent so much time together I had to be honest with him. The one regret I had is that I played NAIA and I never really tried the NCAA so I told him, ‘You have to try it, if it doesn’t work out you can always come back and play for me.’ We got talking and he was like, ‘What are your goals?’ He asked me the same questions I asked him. It was a great conversation. I told him he should probably go to Santa Clara and he said, ‘I’m going to play for you one day anyway because your goal is to coach the Canadian National team and my goal is to play in the Olympics. We accomplished that in the year 2000 and it was one of the greatest memories I have.

Q: Did you ever imagine he’d be a two-time MVP?

A: I knew he was going to be a good player and run a team. I did not know he was going to be as good he was. I just think his drive to be excellent is pretty much unparalleled for a lot of people I’ve ever met in any sport.

Q: Basketball has taken you all over the world. What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen overseas?

A: Oh, I have lots of them. I lived in Mexico and they gave us a car. We drove to where we practiced and the other Canadian that was playing down there paid the kid every day. He said, “Yeah, he watches the car.’ I said, ‘How much do you give him?’ He said, ‘A nickel.’ So when we came out the car was there. One day we went in our sweats and he tried to tell the kid in Spanish, ‘We don’t have any money today.’ So we went into practice and came out and I’m telling you, everything was gone off the car. All the knobs on the radio, the dials, the knobs how to close the windows. We had the key and we had to drive home with nothing left in the car. All for a nickel. We had 17-hour bus rides in Mexico to go to a game. A guy at the front of the bus who I had never seen before on the 17-hour trip was sitting there. I said, ‘Who’s this.’ The driver said, ‘This is our security. You should go talk to him.’ So I went up to him and said, ‘Why do we have security?’ In broken English he said, ‘When we get on roads in the middle of Mexico way up north the banditos will jump out in front of the bus. And when they come on the bus the bus driver can’t run them over. They’ll have guns and they’ll take everything. If that happens, just give them everything. And I said, ‘OK.’ And he says, ‘I’ll be at the front and when they come back up to the front with all of our stuff – and he showed me all his guns – I’ll shoot them and give you all your stuff back. I couldn’t sleep for 17 hours.

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Phoenix Suns coaches through the years

Q: Who have been some of the biggest influences on your career?

A: I would say first and foremost Jack Donohue. He coached our national team for all 11 years I played. We’re trying to get back to the Olympics and he went in 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988 and I was part of three of those. His famous line was, ‘I coached two of the greatest players in the world, Lou Alcindor and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.’ He coached Kareem in high school at Power Memorial (High School in New York). He always taught us to dream the impossible dream. Here was an American who came up to Canada and dreamed about beating the United States. And when we did in 1983 that was kind of his big thing.

Q: You’ve said you’re a basketball nut. Do you have any hobbies other than basketball?

A: I love watching baseball in the offseason. That’s one of those things when I moved from Portland to here I was like, ‘Are you serious? The Diamondbacks are that close and I can walk there?’ I’ll do road trips in the summertime and try to hit three or four different stadiums and just watch games. I just find it relaxing but I love the strategies involved. I love sports. I love all sports. I’m just a huge NFL fan. I was drafted in the CFL in Canada so football is a big thing for me.

Q: So if you try to get away from sports for a day, what are you doing?

A: I was going to say I go golfing, but that’s a sport. I like being around my house here. I lived in an apartment in Portland and I lived in an apartment in Toronto and when we came here we bought a house. I love my house. We bought an old record player and my thing is I’d go home I’d stack three albums and one would play and the next one would drop and I’d do my post-game edit at midnight to get ready for the next day. I find that I’m collecting all the old albums I gave away as a kid. They’re all back in. So we have a huge record collection.

Q: What do you listen to?

A: The stuff I used to listen to. Springsteen, John Cougar, Simon and Garfunkel, stuff like that. I scour Phoenix and garage sales for old albums that I can connect with and listen to that I probably gave away years ago.

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Phoenix Suns season – 2017