Hall of Fame basketball coach Dollar dies at 86; led Douglass to state title
Donald Dollar, selected for induction into the Georgia Atlantic Coaches Association Hall of Fame this year and best known for building Douglass High of Atlanta into a boys basketball state power in the 1970s and 1980s, died this week. He was 86.
Dollar is the father of Cincinnati associate men’s head basketball coach Chad Dollar and former University of Seattle head coach and UCLA player Cameron Dollar. Chad Dollar confirmed Friday to the AJC that his father died Wednesday.
Dollar won two state championships at College Park’s Eva Thomas High in the 1960s before taking the Douglass job in 1973. He quickly established the Astros as perennial contenders in the Georgia High School Association’s highest classification, reaching the state finals in each of his first three seasons.
Douglass was 403-104 in Dollar’s 18 seasons and advanced to the state quarterfinals 12 times and the championship game five times. Dollar’s 1984 team, led by future NBA first-round draft pick Chris Morris, won Class 4A.
Another of Dollar’s Douglass players is Morehouse athletic director Harold Ellis, also a former NBA player.
Former Coastal Carolina star player Marquis “KeKe” Hicks was a senior on Douglass’ 1990 team. Hicks said Dollar changed his life as a child growing up in a tough family environment in the housing projects of College Park, where Dollar first met and coached him in recreational leagues. Hicks lived with the Dollars for a time in high school.
“Coach Dollar was what I’d call a man’s man,” Hicks said. “… He held you accountable. He’d tell you when you’re wrong. He was a strict disciplinarian, but he loved you at the same level. I played college basketball, but I never wanted to play as hard for anybody as coach Dollar because I wanted to please him that much. He was everything to me.”
One of Dollar’s closest friends was David Jones, who won boys basketball state titles at Southwest Atlanta and Southside as one of Dollar’s contemporaries in Atlanta Public Schools.
“If you went to play him, you’d better have good guards because he was going to press you and play defense from the time you loaded off the bus until you got back on it,” Jones said. “And Don did an awful lot for high school basketball in Georgia that people don’t necessarily know or understand because he didn’t toot his own horn.”
After leaving Douglass, Dollar coached one season at Clarkston and two at Carver of Atlanta. He then became an assistant coach at Morehouse and at West Georgia.
In 2009, at age 69, he joined the University of Seattle’s staff when son Cameron became head coach. The father coached alongside his son for six seasons.
When he retired, Dollar had been at courtside for nearly every season since 1962, when he graduated from Morehouse and became the 22-year-old head coach at old J.P. Carr, the high school for African Americans in Rockdale County.
Dollar left J.P. Carr for Eva Thomas in 1964. His first state title, in 1968, came in the Georgia Interscholastic Association, which administered sports for Black high schools during segregation. Eva Thomas won another state title the next season, the school’s first in the GHSA. After Eva Thomas closed, Dollar was head coach at East Point’s Headland High until taking the Douglass job.
Dollar was one of the state’s more instrumental coaches beyond his own high school teams. In the 1980s, he organized AAU basketball in the state and later coached a Georgia AAU all-star team against the Soviet Union’s national junior team from 1989 to 1991.
Dollar coached Georgia’s team in the Boston Shootout, the premier high school basketball offseason showcase in its time. He founded the Peach State Holiday Basketball Classic, held at Morehouse, Georgia State and other venues, and paired Georgia’s top boys and girls teams against those from across the country.
Dollar learned of the news of his selection into the GACA Hall of Fame in July. He will be inducted posthumously in May in Dalton. Dollar’s final high school record was 651-253, according to the Atlanta Tipoff Club.
Funeral services will be Thursday at 12:30 p.m. at World Changers Church International in College Park.
About the Author
Todd Holcomb has been a contributor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1985. He is currently co-founder and editor of Georgia High School Football Daily.
