How building around a head coach can be advantageous
Are you a struggling franchise in possession of a superstar player? Then chances are changes won’t affect him as much as the head coach of that squad.
For years, coaches around the league have been used as scapegoats for a myriad of reasons. Poor results, bad locker room chemistry, superstar feud, and so on, have led to pink slips, warranted or not. The blame is placed squarely on the shoulders of the man in charge of on-court decisions, which isn’t an uncommon phenomenon in everyday life, despite the sometimes shortsightedness of the situation.
Coaches are responsible for quite a bit, and there certainly are bad apples out there, but NBA teams are still looking at coaches from an upside-down perspective. Your goal shouldn’t be to hire someone to take you from Point A to Point B, your goal should be to build a culture that can be relied upon for well over a decade. Having a revolving door at the coaches office does the opposite of weaving a coach into the DNA of a franchise, thus raising his impact and potential, a word rarely associated with working the sideline.
Coaches, like players, aren’t always finished products, yet they’re held to the standard of such. One of the universally agreed best young coaches in today’s league, Boston’s Brad Stevens, has grown exponentially since taking over the reigns of the Celtics, to the point where he’s routinely on Coach Of the Year shortlists amongst bloggers and journalists. His ability to shape a new culture in Boston after the era of Paul Pierce ended in 2013 has affected players to the point where they need to get with the program, or they’ll be out of there. That sounds harsh, but installing that level of trust on a coach shows that not only does the front office support his decisions, they’re also going to act in his best interest when it comes to basketball. A key element of this includes making sure he has a roster that is tailored to his playing style and philosophy.
That’s not to say Stevens, or any coach given this freedom, isn’t flexible. Quite the contrary. A coach won’t be given a chance to be this vital if he hadn’t proved to the higher ups he is adjustable to new players, and can incorporate them into his schemes, while allowing them to play their game. A dictator won’t get very far anyway in today’s league.
San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich is obviously the example of how well things can go when you have an exceptional mind running your team, who is also awarded the privilege to do things his way. In the end, it comes down to trust. Popovich, general manager R.C. Buford, and Spurs owner Peter Holt are all three on the same page in regards to direction of the team, the manner in which they want to play, and what future plans contain. There are without a doubt disagreements from time to time, but that matters little when the basis of their relationships are built on the knowledge that everyone comes from a good place. Popovich could feel he needed to acquire a player like Courtney Lee, and Buford might overwhelmingly disagree, but both understand, without any hesitation, that neither are trying to undermine the other, and are simply working from a perspective wherein from where they believe the team improves.
The Chicago Bulls, for example, operates in the exact opposite manner and expect their coaches to fall in line with the roster they already have. If Fred Hoiberg resigns or is let go in the summer (which is a possibility increasing by the day), the Bulls will go searching for their seventh head coach since Phil Jackson left in 1998. There, coaches are considered easily replaceable, as the front office’s inflated sense of self-worth frequently hinders culture building. Tom Thibodeau came the closest, but disagreements between himself and general manager Gar Forman eventually led to his dismissal, in large part due to Forman’s ego that has become the norm in Chicago.
When teams look at a coach as limb, instead of as a vital organ, odds are things won’t work out. Teams are slowly beginning to realize this, case in point with Stevens, and to some extent Brett Brown with the Philadelphia 76ers. Brown agreed to be part of The Process, and to his credit, he’s taken everything in stride. With Philly now finding some footing, and likely building on that in the seasons to come, Brown should be on the sidelines for that experience given Philadelphia’s trust in him.
The logic in arguing that it’s easier to replace a coach than a superstar is theoretically true, albeit strictly in a literal sense. It’s easier to hire a new coach than just sign a new superstar, but that says nothing of the quality you’re getting. Coaches can be superstars, but outside of Popovich and Phil Jackson before him, no one is really viewed in that light, which is due to the ideology that coaches never come before stars and how the league frequently had huge coaching turnover rates from season to another.
This seems to finally be a thing of the past. More and more teams are realizing they should avoid re-hashing old coaches who are known to be problematic, such as George Karl (we’ll ignore the Kings, because they’re the Kings) or Isiah Thomas. Instead, NBA teams are looking at coaches from the NCAA or guys who’ve been assistants for years, and who are looking for that one shot to prove themselves.
It’s an interesting development, but for teams to fully maximize the efforts of a new hire, they need to devote themselves entirely to him. This means understanding, and accepting, that the guy in charge now needs to be woven into the fabrics of the infrastructure of the entire organization, to the point where he’s considered vital for their continued success.
Obviously, if the coach proves to not be up for the task, then a pink slip is justified, and this will happen to teams on occasion. But rather than expecting a coach to eventually lose the ears of his players, or prepping new candidates a whole year before they fire their current coach (the Bulls had Hoiberg lined up over a year before Thibodeau was fired), expect the coach to work out by including him at every level, and give him the keys to the armory. That way, should it not work out, the team can go look itself in the mirror and know they did all they could.
