Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!.....Ding!..... I was surprised.
Makes sense. The hard working, limited talent, vocal, scrappy gym rat variety probably makes for a better coach on average than the guy that things come easy for or who keeps mostly to himself.
What interesting is you rarely see star players turn into good coaches. It's the journeyman/ role players that tend to succeed.
Exactly true. Rick Adleman, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Scott Skiles, Vinnie Del Negro... all decent players in the gym rat mold, but better coaches. Clyde Drexler? Great player, lousy coach. I expect Blake will probably coach one day. And the Blazers fans will wonder why he won't play Brandon Roy Jr. more.
How many former NBA players turned current NBA head coaches can you name? I'll drop a few PJ, Adelman, Sloan, Nate, Nellie, Dunleavy, Doc, Carlisle
I think both are examples of great players who become lousy coaches, to be honest. Kevin McHale and Bill Laimbeer are probably better representatives of their respective teams.
I meant that Wes was the best player of the group that became good coaches (though Wes might not have been a very good coach... my memory's fuzzy). Without checking stats, I think Unseld was the better player... Riley was certainly the better coach. EDIT: Yeah, Wes was a pretty lousy coach based on record, and is a HOF player, so he's in the latter group of greats who aren't so good at coaching.
