Waiting for Next Year is reporting that Tom Izzo plans to take the Cavs coaching job. If this turns out to be true, and those guys deserve credit for being out ahead on this story, then we are all witnessing the death of the Cavs as a viable NBA franchise.
Izzo is a very good college coach – but that’s what he is, a college coach. While the basics of the game are the same on the NBA level, it’s simply just not the same game.
Consider this from Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen, who wrote about Billy Donovan possibly moving to the NBA three years ago:
It takes NBA coaches years to develop the understanding and respect necessary to connect with players and earn their trust toward a common goal. … To become a successful NBA head coach, Donovan would have to take a costly step backward and enter the league as an assistant. He would need many seasons of deprogramming to unlearn much of what made him successful at Florida. Put it this way: The NCAA and NBA both have rule books as thick as bibles, but that’s the only thing they share in common. …How can any college coach who is used to wielding power over his players be expected to succeed overnight in an NBA world where he’ll be granted little or no power over his players? … If Donovan jumped to a veteran team, his players would quickly realize that they knew more about the pro game than their coach. That would not end nicely. … The NBA season is so much longer, and the games are so much more complicated strategically, that any college coach would need at least one season to work his way up.
Does that sound like something we want to go through as Cavs fans? Wait 2 to 3 years for Izzo to figure out the NBA game, assuming he does?
How about this from Steve Aschburner at NBA.com:
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ reported interest in Michigan State coach Tom Izzo as a replacement for Mike Brown, their recently fired head coach, elicited differing views from the two fellows who hold that job with The Finals teams.
A number of successful college coaches haven’t achieved similar results when they’ve moved to the NBA, including Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Mike Montgomery, Tim Floyd and (going back a ways) Jerry Tarkanian. Lakers coach Phil Jackson was asked: Why?
“It’s not an easy job,” Jackson said, “and when it’s 200-some days depending on how far you go into the playoffs, it’s a pretty arduous task as far as dealing with the stars of all ranges … It’s a long march and that gets difficult. The game itself – 82 games is a big difference from 30 or whatever you coach in college.”
“If you look at it historically, they’ve all had bad jobs,” Boston Doc Rivers said. “They’ve all had bad talent on their team. I think the first one that gets good players will be a good coach in our league. … There are a lot of college coaches that would be very good NBA coaches.”
Now Rivers makes a valid point. Bad teams hire more coaches than good teams. But maybe good teams are that way because they know not to hire a college coach. But he overlooks the cases where, after firing the college-bred coach, a team improved the following year. Consider:
- Boston was 12-22 (works out to 28 wins) when they fired Rick Pitino; they went 49-33 the following year.
- New Jersey was 3-17 (12 projected wins) when they fired John Calipari; they won 31 games the next year.
- Chicago was 4-21 (13 projected wins) when they fired Tim Floyd; 30 wins the following season.
- San Antonio was 9-11 (36 projected wins) when Jerry Tarkanian was let go; 55 wins the following year.
- Washington was 19-63 in Leonard Hamilton’s only season; they won 37 games the next season.
- Philadelphia was 21-31 (33 projected wins) when they let Randy Ayers go; 43 wins the following year.
- Oklahoma City was 1-12 (6 projected wins) when they fired PJ Carlesimo; they won 50 games the following year.
- Golden State was 34-48 under Mike Montgomery; the following year they won 42 games.
Clearly, none of these teams turned into NBA champions after dropping the college coach. But they all did improve, which takes the air out of the argument that the coaches failed simply because they did not have any talent. A lot of the failings fall on the coaches’ shoulders.
Look, we want this to work out if it happens. We all want the Cavs to succeed. The past five years have been a lot of fun, we’re really not keen to return to the days of John Lucas, Randy Wittman and the rest.
But if Dan Gilbert is going to start running this team with his heart, rather than his head, we may all be in trouble.
Red Right 88 