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Saturday, January 31, 2004
NBA coaches caught in crossfire
By ART THIEL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Following the resignation this week of Jim O'Brien of the Boston Celtics, the question arose in the P-I sports department: Who is the longest-tenured coach in the NBA's Eastern Conference?
Answer: The Atlanta Hawks' Terry Stotts, at 102 games.
Well, hit me with a ton of Shaq free throws.
Sonics fans may recall Stotts as the lanky assistant whose cheek George Karl would occasionally use to strike the match for a victory cigar. It didn't occur to many observers back then that he was head-coaching material. Now he's the gray eminence of the East.
At the moment, anyway.
As of this writing, he and the Hawks are 14-33 and in imminent danger of making this column as old-news as him.
Always a volatile occupation, the NBA coach now has a shorter professional life than rationales for invading Iraq. Most Eastern Conference coaches have more overall experience than Stotts -- Lenny Wilkens, Larry Brown and Paul Silas, to name a few. But almost none of them were in the same job any further back than April.
In fact, fewer teams (12) have kept their coach from nine months ago than have changed coaches (17). ESPN calculated that as of midweek, coach Gregg Popovich's 571 consecutive games with San Antonio equaled the total of all Eastern Conference coaches with their current clubs.
The usual advice for people in precarious situations is to rent, never buy. The NBA takes it another step: Use the drive-up window, never sit down to dinner.
Surprising as O'Brien's resignation was, it was the New Jersey Nets' firing of Byron Scott that pushed absurdity beyond the view of the Hubble telescope.
Scott took the Nets to the past two NBA Finals and was leading the Atlantic Division this season when he was offed by Nets boss Rod Thorn. The apparent problem was that he couldn't get along with his superstar player, Jason Kidd, whose reputation as a coach-killer goes all the way back to his days at Cal under Lou Campanelli.
Same thing happened in Seattle with Paul Westphal and Gary Payton. But while the coach-killing superstar has been a part of the NBA life for decades, there are other theories that attempt to explain the casualty rate.
In the East, it is said the proliferation of wretchedness gives nearly every team the hope that one move may enable it to vault into the playoffs. But Don Nelson chose not to buy the theory, at least based on geography.
After his Mavericks beat the Sonics in dramatic fashion Tuesday at KeyArena for Dallas' ninth consecutive win, Nelson suggested that the conference was irrelevant.
"Hey, I almost went two weeks ago," he said, fighting a grin. "If I had (been fired), my successor would have started with nine straight wins."
Nelson referred to widespread speculation that he was in trouble following the Mavs' relatively slow seasonal start. But they are tied with defending NBA champion San Antonio for second in the Midwest, and are easily one of the top six teams in the league.
Tuesday they managed to win on the road against a team that probably played its cockeyed style about as well as it can be played.
"The Sonics made the shots we dreaded they would," Nelson said, shaking his head. "They rained threes on us."
Yet Nelson demonstrated why he's one of the best when he drew up a plan for a game-winning shot that needed just a tick less than the 1.6 seconds remaining on the clock, and had the play executed perfectly.
He knew that a loss to the Sonics would have rendered semi-moot the win streak, at least in terms of speculation from a public demanding great things.
"The expectation levels are so high, and there's so much pressure to win right now," Nelson said.
"Everyone demands the quick fix on the talk shows, and everyone wants to kill the coach. Some of the owners even listen to that (stuff)."
Besides the vastly increased media scrutiny over every result, owners hope that some obscure young coach, such as Golden State's Eric Musselman or Denver's Jeff Bzdelik, will not only be eager and cheap but magical, free of the high maintenance of Karl or other longtime vets.
Few coaches of sub-elite teams dare accept or admit the obvious -- that the franchise is set up to win next year or down the road. Once that postponed gratification is understood by players, they no longer see the incentive to set screens, dive on the floor or take charges, virtues that win games but do nothing to pad the stats that become vital at contract time.
Since most players most of the time are in, or within one season of, their contractual walk years, the slim chance for significant team success reduces their incentive to care about what the coach says. The better players will be eligible for free agency sooner than the team can become a serious contender.
That is close to the dilemma faced by Nate McMillan. The Sonics coach's natural competitiveness demands that he win each game, even though ownership and management know the team is at least two years away from serious contention. That threshold will be reached more quickly if young players get time, which is usually a poor way to win a given night's exercise.
That's why McMillan often sounds as if he's of two minds -- seemingly dismayed to the point of quitting, and alternately pleased about some signs of progress. He's obligated to play some of the stiffs he's been saddled with by management, yet even if he succeeds, it puts him further away from the high lottery pick who would give the team the potential to win big.
Since the NBA system is largely a creation of its collective bargaining agreement and its presence in a culture of instant gratification, McMillan and his peers have no easy remedy. Unfortunately for them, an easy remedy is available to teams afraid of either trading, or overspending into payroll taxes -- firing the coach.
Given McMillan's unique history with the Sonics, that's unlikely here. That doesn't mean he can't recognize the futility of his enterprise. Whether he would depart on his own is probably a question even he can't answer now.
The bigger question is why anyone would want a job with Terry Stotts as a paradigm for industry success.
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