Continuity can be an important key for coaches
Mike Monroe
Scott Skiles brings his Milwaukee Bucks to the AT&T Center for tonight's game against the Spurs little more than a year after Chicago general manager John Paxson played Ebenezer Scrooge to his Bob Cratchit and fired him as coach of the Bulls on Christmas Eve 2007.
Skiles is in his third incarnation as an NBA head coach, and when you look at his record, you see a pattern that suggests the greatest deterrent to his job security has been his ability to engender hope that surpasses reasonable expectations.
Skiles was 116-79 in Phoenix, with playoff appearances in both of the seasons he coached to the finish. But he was fired during the All-Star break in 2002 when his team was 25-26. This was after the 2000-01 season when the Suns went 51-31. Management had followed a first-round playoff ouster by trading Jason Kidd for Stephon Marbury, then wondered why the Suns struggled.
Skiles' crime in Chicago? Leading the Bulls to a first-round elimination of the defending champion Heat in the 2007 playoffs after going 49-33 in the regular season. Bulls management, thinking Chicago finally was ready for a return to success in the post-Jordan era, fingered Skiles as the villain of a 9-16 start last season, so he got the ‘Bah, humbug' treatment.
I have always believed Skiles was perfectly suited to be a success as an NBA coach. The fact he has not been given more than three full seasons in either of his two previous coaching jobs seems a prime example of the folly of impatience in the pro sports boardroom.
Gregg Popovich has been coaching the Spurs since 1996, which makes him No. 2 on the NBA's stability list behind Utah's Jerry Sloan, who recently celebrated his 20th anniversary on the Jazz bench.
Popovich knows the value of continuity for any sports program. As each of six coaches has been fired this season, he has shaken his head in wonderment at the impulsiveness on display.
“In our league, one of the most important things for a team, and for a coach,” said Popovich, “is to be lucky enough to have a patient owner; to have someone who realizes it might take a while and not want to go the American instant gratification route.
“A lot of coaches fall into that hole, and so do teams, where decisions are made too early — knee-jerk kinds of decisions.”
What might the Suns have done had management not blown up the roster after their first-round playoff ouster in 2001 and fired Skiles when he became another of the coaches deemed unworthy of Marbury's acceptance? We'll never know, but Popovich has an idea.
“There are a good number of coaches who, if given one more year, or two more years, would have turned the corner and had a program set up the way they needed to have it set up to win,” Popovich said.
“Scott Skiles is a good example. He's a of a coach and has the kind of system that can be respected for a very long time — a la Jerry Sloan's style. But people are just too quick on the trigger.”
Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili never have played for a coach other than Popovich, who leans on what he calls the corporate knowledge of players who know the Spurs way of winning.
Spurs point guard Jacque Vaughn has seen both sides. He played for the Jazz, and Sloan, then in Atlanta, where he experienced the instability of the in-season change.
“I think all players love some sort of familiarity,” he said.
durrr....Skiles was 116-79 in Phoenix, with playoff appearances in both of the seasons he coached to the finish. But he was fired during the All-Star break in 2002 when his team was 25-26. This was after the 2000-01 season when the Suns went 51-31. Management had followed a first-round playoff ouster by trading Jason Kidd for Stephon Marbury, then wondered why the Suns struggled
Thats the great Colangelo that Ploto told us made such a fantastic signing in Jason Kapono for the mle...
the big three have had many coaches... just ONE on the NBA though....
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