This looks like a very serious coach

The Bobcats weren’t the first team to hire their replacement coach this off season.  That went to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who had some old letterhead with Mike Brown’s name on it, and it was in comic sans so they just had to hurry up and use it.  The Suns snatched up Jeff Hornacek, well they hired him, I’m not sure there was anyone else who was salivating for his services.  The Bobcats have hired Steve Clifford, most recently of the Lakers bench, to be their next head coach.

It was a bit of a surprise as the search had been quiet in the last few days.  There were only a few candidates so far and it wasn’t some pool and finalist structure as we had seen last season.  Ahh, last season, when we all knew that Mike Dunlap would be the answer.  Dunlap was fired a few weeks after the season.  After the dust settled on the exit interviews where the players widely panned him, he was shown the door.  Player development, whatever, it was either a bad hire or a bad firing, just to do it that quickly.  Enter the candidates that everyone talks about:  Brian Shaw (still working with the Pacers), Alvin Gentry (native of the area, fired mid-season with Suns), Kelvin Sampson (Rockets, etc), Nate McMillan, JB Bickerstaff (yikes) and don’t forget Quin Snider from last year.  I don’t know who or how many had interviews but I think I read that both Sampson and Clifford were in town last Tuesday.

Well, that was quick. Mike Dunlap is one and done as the head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats after a disastrous season. He did have some potential, but it was in flashes and overall you’d have to admit he just wasn’t hacking it. However, if Dunlap can get dropped after one abysmal year, Bobcats fans could probably argue the entire team could, as well.

I kid, I kid. The reality is, Dunlap was inexperienced and it showed. However, these Bobcats do have some talent on the roster, and with a likely high lottery pick in the June 2013 NBA Draft, they’ll look to add another elite talent that hopefully can help turn this ship around.

But before they can even begin focusing on the draft, Charlotte needs a legit head coach who can come in and shape this team, and arguably most importantly, give them an identity.

Let’s take a look at the potential coaching candidates and pick the one that is the best fit:

Doug Collins

Collins preaches defense and team offense, and he’d at least get the Bobcats to compete on a regular basis. There would be order and a clear identity under Collins. However, he’s up there in years and he seemed to have lost the 76ers’ attention in 2012.

I had signed off my previous entry by saying I’d be off until either the lottery or the draft. How stupid of me to forget an annual ritual that’s more regular than Angelina Jolie obtaining a small brown foreign baby: a Bobcats coach firing. My initial reaction to the news that Coach Dunlap was let go like a fart in a junkyard was, “Huh.” But after careful reflection, I realized, “Hmm.”

Actually, I think the most puzzling reaction to have is anything strong one way or the other. I’m equally confused by the “good riddance” people and the “that’s not fair” crowd. I also don’t see how this is an indictment of the Rod Higgins/Rich Cho GM tag-team (or whatever’s the opposite of an indictment—a non-indictment? A Paul Kevin Curtis?). The team spent almost no money on Dunlap, and they signed him for just two years. Throwing him to the curb like a stack of Highlights for Children from 1987 isn’t going to cost anything, nor does it represent some grand failure, nor does it mean the team has suddenly turned a corner. It means nothing. It’s like getting offsetting penalties in football or landing on the “Free Parking” square in Monopoly (assuming you’re playing by the letter of the law and not doing the popular “Free Parking = Win the Lottery” version); it’s a totally neutral move.

The Charlotte Bobcats have fired their rookie head coach, Mike Dunlap after only one season.  He came in out of nowhere (St. John’s assistant), said the right things, started hot (7-5), didn’t freak out when things went bad, tripled the win total from the previous season and got fired.

I’m not crying over this.  I don’t completely get it but I’m sort of ok with it.  Not knowing details and honestly, completely spit-balling here, I sort of could see how a one-and-done hire worked for Dunlap.  He never really, truly impressed me as a coach.  I’m not really the one he was aiming to impress, Michael Jordan, Rich Cho and Rod Higgins were, but he never made me think “Wow, this guy has his stuff together and knows where this team is going.”

Dunlap was charged with player development.  I believe he was a place-marker  but a good one, from the beginning.  He wasn’t going to lead this team, in 3 years to the Playoffs.  Coach Dunlap was here to take younger players and give them tools that would lead to success down the road.  He did that and to me, that’s a huge reason to be upset with this firing.  He did what was expected and asked of him, and still lost his job at the end of one crappy season.

Only the Bobcats could make Martell Webster look like an unstoppable offensive force. The career journeyman connected on 4-of-8 3-pointers for 20 points, enabling the Wizards to humiliate the Bobcats, 104-87. The loss extended the Bobcats’ North American Humiliation Tour to 10-straght games on Saturday, thanks to Webster, as well as Trevor Ariza, who jumped off the bench like it was covered with pigeon turds and scored 26 points. Webster and Ariza had plenty of open looks, because the Bobcats were busy trying—and failing—to stop Washington center Nenê, who burned them down low like a Brazilian wax. Nenê’s stats—19/8/4 with 2 blocks—weren’t staggering, but his frequent body checks into Kemba Walker sure were, and the Brazilian’s overall dominance stripped the Bobcats of any hair of a chance in this one (he finished with a game high +26).

This wipeout followed the previous night’s shenanigans in Charlotte, where the Bobcats bowed down to the awesome glory of Hashim Thabeet and his backups, the Oklahoma City Thunder. As expected, Thabeet led his still-developing supporting cast with 4-of-6 shooting, at times showing his impatience with their overall lack of skills and maturity. The good news for the Bobcats was that they improved upon their previous results with the Thunder by 51%; the bad news was that this meant they still lost by 22 points.

“We’re giving heavy minutes to a lot of young guys, and that’s a lot of seeds in the earth that will eventually be harvested,” Bobcats coach Mike Dunlap said after the Clippers peed all over his flowerbed last night, 104-86. Dunlap’s strategy is nice and all, but Charlotte has been nothing but harvesters of sorrow for their drought-stricken fans this year, and last night was no oasis. Every Clippers point seemed to come either via 3-pointer or explosive dunk that left the Bobcats running for cover.

The game’s only bit of irony—a 6-point Bobcats lead after the first quarter—was quickly extinguished midway through the second quarter. “For 20 minutes we played fantastic basketball,” Dunlap said. “We had the lead, but we made some turnovers that they made some dunks off of, and…it carried over into the second half.” He’s perhaps over-simplifying the final 28 minutes a bit, but he definitely identified the turning point. Los Angeles went on a 15-5 run with 6 minutes left in the second quarter to melt Charlotte’s popsicle, and it was a rim-shaking siege of Blake Griffin- and DeAndre Jordan-authored savagery. Meanwhile, Charlotte responded with a turnover five-of-a-kind: traveling (Byron Mullens), bad pass (Kemba Walker), bad pass (Mullens), bad pass (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist), bad pass (Walker), and…bad pass (Mullens again, just missing the bad pass hat trick). Again, though, the Bobcats didn’t so much go cold as they went Bobcat; Charlotte is 29^th in both offensive and defensive efficiency (inexplicably still ahead of Sacramento in both categories—the Kings are the Hummer of NBA efficiency).