Father and Son

The Panthers have training camp in full swing, and we’re sort of covering it over at PanthersPlanet.com, but training camp doesn’t lead to many stories, other than that whole Jeff Otah deal.  Well the Bobcats have training camp coming up too, which will be less hurried and lockouty this year.  The only interesting thing so far is that Scoop Jardine from Syracuse is going to be invited.

Scoop Jardine isn’t really the story.  The roster is at 13 and the other two spots aren’t likely to be filled by a combo guard coming off a broken foot that was unlikely to be drafted anyway.  Scoop Jardine is likely invited, according to PhillySportsLive.com, because of who he’s friends with.  That’s the issue I have, the blogger is pointing to a photo of Jardine with Michael Jordan’s daughter from Facebook, which might be a stretch but it leads me to a larger problem with the Bobcats:  Nepotism.

I know I’m beating a dead horse here.  I think I’ve hit on this every time an assistant is hired, a front office spot is filled or a low-level roster spot is filled.  It just keeps coming up.  You don’t see the Knicks, Nets, Heat, Thunder or Lakers doing this.  Actually, I doubt the Wizards, Hornets, Clippers or Magic do either.  It’s just so obvious and needless.

No, I don't want the next Bobcats Coach to wear a "?" mask all the time

With apologies to former Boston Celtics coach, Rick Pitino:  ”Bernie Bickerstaff is not coming through that door!  Larry Brown is not going to be walking through that door!  And Sam Vincent isn’t walking through that door!”  Sam can’t walk through that door because he can’t figure out how the handle works, or if it’s a push or a pull.  Actually, the only guy welcome to walk through any door at 333. East Trade is Paul Silas, and that’s because he’s actually still a member of the franchise, in some undefined role.

Paul Silas won’t be coaching the team again next season.  As discussed at length, you can’t keep the CEO of Lehmann Brothers around after the great collapse of 2008 and you can’t keep the head coach of a team that went 7-59 around for another year.  I appreciate what all those names above did for the team in their time.  All, except of course, for Sam “Ham Biscuit” Vincent.  Bernie got things rolling as head coach and general manager and actually never let the team finish in last place.  He was integral to the roots of development that the franchise started out with.  He was around for 4 years, but coached for 3 seasons.  He wasn’t Michael Jordan’s guy, so his contract wasn’t renewed.  He was sent on his way, given a very awkward “retirement” party after the final game of the ’06-’07 season.  Awkward, because he didn’t retire.  He went on to be an assistant coach with both Chicago under Vinny Del Negro and Portland under Nate McMillan and whoever the hell replaced Nate when he got the axe.  

Apparently getting embarrassed in Orlando, Denver and Los Angeles wasn’t enough. The Charlotte Bobcats, missing captain Stephen Jackson, made it a perfect 4-for-4 of disgrace on their road trip, being trampled by the Portland Trail Blazers 93-69. Gerald Henderson led the Bobcats with 16 points, and that’s all you need to say to know it was a bad night.

NBA Head Coaches: Where do they come from?

This article is not an attempt to push Bobcats Coach Larry Brown out the door. It is not a confirmation of any rumors coming out of Philadelphia, New York, or Los Angeles. What I’d like to do over the course of this article, and subsequently two more that will follow, is attempt to describe how NBA Head Coaches “get there”. I will say this about our Coach, Larry Brown, he is 70 years old and his family lives away from him in Philadelphia for most of the year while he works. I can only imagine the strain this is on his family life and recognize that if he does decide to remain the Head Coach of the Bobcats it will not be for “the long haul”. With this recognition, part of the article will look at possible “fits” for our team after Coach Brown decides to leave.

I’ll start with the NBA’s “old” coaches – Rick Adelman, Larry Brown, Phil Jackson, George Karl, Don Nelson, and Jerry Sloan – and look at how they started their careers.

Rick Adelman was a former NBA player that started his coaching career at Chemeketa Community College after his NBA career ended. His first NBA job was with the Portland Trail Blazers as an assistant coach. He was eventually promoted to Head Coach of the Trail Blazers.

Larry Brown was not drafted by the NBA after his playing time ended at UNC, since at 5’9″ he was considered too small to play in the NBA. He played in the NABL, leading the Akron Wingfoots to the AAU National Championship in 1964. He was also selected for the 1964 Olympic Team. His first coaching job was at Davidson College, but he never coached a game for them and instead jumped to the Carolina Cougars of the ABA. So his actual first Head Coaching experience, game coaching, was with a professional team.

Phil Jackson was drafted as a player into the NBA. When his playing days ended, Jackson’s first coaching jobs were in the CBA and with Puerto Rico’s National Superior League (BSN). Jackson was hired as an assistant coach with the Chicago Bulls in 1987, and became Head Coach of the Bulls in 1989.

George Karl was also a former NBA player, although drafted by the ABA San Antonio Spurs; then when the Spurs joined the NBA, Karl played with the team two years in the NBA. Karl started his coaching career as an assistant with the Spurs and had his first Head Coaching job in the CBA with the Montana Golden Nuggets.

Jerry Sloan is also a former NBA player. When his playing career ended Sloan was hired as a scout for the Chicago Bulls. One year later he was promoted and was a Bulls assistant coach. His first Head Coaching job was also with the Bulls in 1979.

Don Nelson was also drafted to play in the NBA. Nelson was the only one of these six to “jump” directly into a Head Coaching position in the NBA when their career ended. He became the GM and Head Coach of the Milwaukee Bucks soon after retiring at the end of the 1975/76 season.

It is interesting that five of these six “old coaches” are former NBA players; Larry Brown is the exception. It would take too long to go through all thirty of the NBA Head Coaches so I’ll try to “group” the other twenty-four.

The remaining twenty-four NBA Head Coaches fall into distinct categories: 15 of the 24 are former NBA players. Of the nine Head Coaches left, Jay Triano (Raptors Head Coach) was actually drafted by the Lakers but never played in the NBA, so I leave him as a “unique”. Triano did play for the Canadian National Team and later Coached that team. That leaves us with eight Head Coaches not NBA players. The other unique Head Coach, Eric Spoelstra, played professional basketball in Germany for two years. Gregg Popovich, like Larry Brown, played AAU, but with the Air Force overseas. Five of those seven – Jeff Bower, Stan Van Gundy, Alvin Gentry, Gregg Popovich, and Flip Saunders – started their careers as college assistant coaches. The one remaining non-NBA player Head Coach, Mike Brown, started as a scout/video coordinator with an NBA team. For this compilation I left Eddie Jordan in since his replacement with the 76ers has not been named.

One aspect of becoming an NBA Head Coach I’ll touch on, though it is beyond the scope of this article to do it full justice, are relationships that are built with-in the “Coaching fraternity”. I’ll use Mike Brown as my example.

Coach Brown is one of the ten Head Coaches that did not play in the NBA. Brown played College basketball at the University of San Diego. Brown started his NBA career as the video coordinator, and then scout with the Denver Nuggets. Bernie Bickerstaff was the GM, and took over as Head Coach of the Nuggets during the time Mike Brown was there. Brown then went to the Wizards for three years as an assistant coach, and later scout, for Bernie Bickerstaff. In 2000 Brown was hired as an assistant coach with the Spurs and Head Coach Gregg Popovich. After the Spurs won the NBA Champioship in 2003 Brown was hired as the associate head coach to Rick Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers. Brown helped the Pacers to the Eastern Conference finals in 2004, and was then hired to be Head Coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2005. Many of these NBA Head Coaches (Nelson and Doc Rivers are the exceptions since their first jobs were as NBA Head Coaches) spent time working for presant NBA Head Coaches, and I’m sure received recommendations from those coaches. Some of these relationships, the one between Hawks Head Coach Mike Woodson and Bobcats Head Coach Larry Brown, go back many years. It helps to have long-built friendships/working relationships if you want to become an NBA Head Coach.

So what exactly did I learn from this exercise? It was of no particular surprise to me that 67% of the NBA Head Coaches are former NBA players. Fifteen of the twenty former NBA Head Coach/players played guard at the NBA level (75%). The chance of getting one of these thirty jobs is definitely enhanced if you are a former player, and further enhanced if you played guard in the NBA. Nine of the ten non-NBA player Head Coaches played guard at the College level. Jeff Bower is the only NBA Head Coach that did not play College basketball, or I can’t find a record of him playing in College (so correct me if I’m wrong). A staggering number of NBA Head Coaches (24-30 or 80%) played Guard at the College or NBA level.

The other thing I found interesting, while looking at these coaches, was that five of the 30 played at UNC or NC State, and Alvin Gentry played at Appalachian State. Twenty percent of the NBA Head Coaches are products of college careers in North Carolina.

This gives us an idea of from where NBA Head Coaches come. The second part of this three-part series will look at “candidates” who might become NBA Head Coaches. That article will explore former NBA Head Coaches not currently with a team, NBADL Head Coaches that might make the jump, former players that have a desire to coach in the NBA, and current NBA assistant coaches being discussed as Head Coaching candidates.

The Larry Brown impact:

It is difficult to discuss the impact Head Coach Larry Brown has had on the Charlotte Bobcats without some discussion about the kind of team he inherited. The Bobcats had two Head Coaches before Coach Brown arrived in Charlotte, Bernie Bickerstaff and Sam Vincent.

Bernie Bickerstaff was hired as the first Head Coach, and also as the General Manager, for the new Charlotte franchise. The Bobcats became known as an overachieving group of players that steadily increased their wins with Coach Bickerstaff at the helm. I dislike “faulty logic” and will point out what I’m about to say is just that, faulty logic, to evaluate what Coach Bickerstaff accomplished with the Bobcats.

The ‘Cats won only 18 games their first year but increased their wins by eight games their second year and by seven their third year to a total of 33 victories, the last year Bernie coached the team. If those win increases continued over the next three years the team would have had 39, 44, and finally 48 wins this season. I doubt anyone believes that Coach Bickerstaff could have maintained those increases, and there is the fault in the logic. Michael Jordan was brought in as a minority owner and head of player operations for the last year Bernie coached the team. The prevailing belief, and a “best guess”, is that Jordan felt the team had reached a peak with Bickerstaff as the head coach and it was time to make a change.

Bickerstaff remained, for one year, as the ‘Cats GM, but Jordan was now calling the player personnel shots. The first coaching hire for Jordon was a then-assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, Sam Vincent. The team winning total actually decreased by one, to 32 wins, in the only season Vincent coached the Bobcats. It was an arguably better team than Bickerstaff had coached, since the Bobcats aquired a very talented offensive player in Jason Richardson. The team, under Vincent’s leadership, seemed disorganized and frustrated. Even the most “laid-back” player on the team at the time, Emeka Okafor, had issues with Coach Vincent. The Vincent experiment failed after one year.

The next season, 2008-09, Larry Brown was brought in by Jordan to coach the team. Brown had been asked to coach the team the year before, the Sam Vincent year, but turned the offer down and remained a consultant with the Philadelphia 76ers. Brown accepted the second offer to coach the team, and in him the Bobcats hired a Hall of Fame coach to repair the damage left from Vincent.

Coach Brown has many reputations attached with him. Turning around teams is one of those, “gypsy” is another. But one thing that is difficult to argue against concerning Coach Brown is his reputation as one of the best teaching coaches in basketball. Brown demands that his players “play the right way”. He expects players to play hard for 48 minutes, to play defense, and to share the basketball. This is easier-said-than-done with a group of players that readily admitted they’d never been coached before he arrived. Some players did not respond well to Coach Browns’ style and roster changes, another thing for which Brown is renowned, were inevitable. Trades were made and the roster began to take the shape of “Larry Brown” type players – players that played the “right way” in Coach Browns’ vision.

Jason Richardson was traded to the Suns for Raja Bell and Boris Diaw and the roster continued to slowly begin to reflect Coach Browns’ philosophy. The results from the first year after Brown arriving were a franchise high 35 wins. Trades continued (I will not talk about all of them) as Brown worked to retool the roster more to his liking. The results of all these transactions is difficult to argue against, since the Bobcats won 44 games his second year as Head Coach and find themselves in the play offs for the first time in their short history. It appears that Coach Brown’s reputation as a “turn-around” specialist is well-deserved. The players needed his expertise, the fans needed a team they could get behind, and the organization needed the respect teams gain from making the play offs. It is obvious that the decision by now-principle owner Jordan to bring Coach Brown in as the Head Coach was the correct decision. But the other “stigma” attached to Larry Brown now comes into play, that of the basketball “gypsy”.

Conversations coupled with rumors have already started about Coach Brown and his next “destination” as Head Coach. It has been reported that Coach Brown has received permission to leave the team, and the year remaining on his contract, at the end of this season, because his family still lives in Philadelphia and prefers not to move to Charlotte. We will not know if this is true until the season ends, but for now Coach Brown and the players seem focused on their first-round play off series against the Orlando Magic.

I’ll have, I hope, a three part series regarding who our next Head Coach might be if Coach Brown decides to leave after this season. But for now I’d like to thank him and our players for all their hard work this season, and wish them the best in the play offs.

Yahoo.com is reporting that Bernie bickerstaff will be leaving the Charlotte Bobcats bench at the end of this season. This has long been suspected, but Michael Jordan has now verified that it is indeed going to happen.

Bernie Bickerstaff will not return as coach of the Charlotte Bobcats  next season, but will be invited to stay with the organization.

Part-owner Michael Jordan said Tuesday that Bickerstaff, who also serves as general manager, will finish the season and remains an "integral part" of the franchise. Charlotte is 23-41 and last in the Southeast Division.

Bobcats fans seem really giddy at the thought of having a new coach on the bench next season

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