The End of the Dual Role Coach is Near
The situation involving Jimmy Butler and his desire to be traded has been highly bizarre to say the least. Butler has made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of returning to the Minnesota Timberwolves after his contract expires, but head coach and President of Basketball Operations, Tom Thibodeau definitely does not want to trade him. On the other hand, owner, Glen Taylor notified other teams at an NBA Board of Governors meeting that Butler is on the trade block. However, he is allowing Thibodeau and his front office staff to handle the negotiations and their demands have been unreasonable. For example, Philadelphia had reportedly checked in to gauge Minnesota’s trade price and Thibodeau asked for the Sixers to give up Ben Simmons, which Philadelphia turned down. The current dysfunction in Minnesota surrounding Butler’s trade request is a sign that the end may be near for Thibodeau in one way or another. With that in mind, Thibodeau may also serve as a cautionary tale to owners, making them much more hesitant to hire coaches in the dual role of coach and GM to the point where Thibodeau may very well could be the unofficial last one to do both jobs at the same time. Technically, Gregg Popovich still has personnel power with the San Antonio Spurs to go with his coaching duties. However, reports suggest that he retains veto power over personnel moves, but he rarely uses it because he has pretty much fully entrusted R.C. Buford to build the roster to the point where Buford has an equivalent sounding job title to that of Popovich. This means that even Popovich, one of the greatest coaches in NBA history, has had to basically give up the dual role for the betterment of the franchise. Therefore, it’s not likely that any individual can effectively serve as both the head coach and the key decision-maker on personnel and history backs this up.
Using Pro Sports Transactions’ list of past NBA executives, I searched for dual role coaches in the modern CBA era that coached at least two seasons after the 1999 lockout and also had prior experience as only a head coach. This search returned the following eight coaches.
As you can see from the table above, seven of the eight coaches listed were worse when they carried the dual role to a fairly significant degree, as the average win percentage drop from these seven was just over 16%. Doc Rivers’ record in the dual role is misleading about his actual performance because his tenure with the Clippers is the only time in his career where he took over an established playoff team. Just before the start of last season, he was stripped of his personnel powers and the following table covering the Clippers’ performance in their time with Chris Paul on the roster can provide some insight into why he had to be relieved of his front office authority.
To put it simply, Rivers with full control of basketball operations essentially built a more expensive version of the team that he inherited from Vinny Del Negro with only a marginal improvement at best. The Clippers were going to be a capped out team anyway because Blake Griffin’s max contract extension was about to kick in and they were intent on re-signing Paul to a full max contract. However, Rivers, like most coaches, was inexperienced with the various nuances of the salary cap and he awkwardly navigated the Clippers’ luxury tax situation to the point where the team has been hard capped with limited roster maneuverability since the summer of 2016, even though Paul, Griffin and DeAndre Jordan are now with other teams and Rivers stepped down as President of Basketball Operations before last season. From here, it’s evident that it’s not a wise idea to give someone both titles because most often, they are simply less successful than they were before, some to disastrous degrees. If it’s fairly clear that coaches are usually ineffective with a dual role, then why do owners continue to give them this much responsibility and authority?
More often than not, the answer is simply because the owner in question is usually really bad. The list of owners that hired dual role coaches in the modern CBA era consists of some of the league’s most notoriously bad owners like Donald Sterling, James Dolan and Glen Taylor to name a few. On the other hand, Peter Holt and Mickey Arison from the Spurs and Heat, respectively, have won titles with dual role coaches and have overseen two of the most competent front offices in the league. However, both Popovich and Pat Riley were hired before some variation of the current CBA was put in place, so they were able to get a slight head start and build contending teams under much simpler rules. Every dual role coach since 1999 has not had nearly as much as success because the owners that hired them didn’t fully understand the difficulties involved with navigating all of the different complexities of the cap. This leaves these coaches in a situation where they are basically set up to fail. Therefore, the dual role is essentially a way for bad owners to distract their fan base in the short-term by bringing in a name brand coach that they wouldn’t have been able to attract otherwise and also shift blame for the franchise’s ineptitude by having that person do an additional job that they are not at all qualified to do.
With this in mind, Tom Thibodeau should be the last dual role coach because it’s proven time and again that it’s just too difficult for one person to do two jobs at a high enough level to build a sustainable winning franchise. However, as long as there are still bad owners in the league, the possibility still exists that another coach will be set up to fail by taking on a dual role. If this happens, fans have to see this kind of move for what it is. It’s a reveal that their owner can’t effectively operate an NBA franchise and though the situation may seem bleak, fans have to do what they can to change their situation by consistently voicing their displeasure with ownership. Otherwise, these fans will be left in a no-win situation where they can only hope that something changes, even though they know it won’t. After all, the owner can’t be fired, but fans have to do all they can to try to make that happen.
