He's Smart Choice for Head Coach

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">OAKLAND ? This is Final Four week, so the popularity of Warriors assistant coach Keith Smart is reaching its annual zenith. By the time the two finalists tip off on Monday night, Smart will have talked to upward of probably 100 media outlets about his 16-foot jumper from the left baseline that beat Syracuse by a point in the 1987 final, clinching the last of Bobby Knight's three titles at Indiana.

What remains to be seen is whether that kind of interest will translate from the media world into the corridors of power at an NBA franchise or an NCAA program in need of a head coach.

With colleges already spinning the coaching carousel, these last few weeks of the Warriors' season isn't just a time for players to burnish their rsums in an attempt to land a better position next year ? it's also a time for up-and-coming assistants like Smart to keep an eye on the horizon.

"I think Keith Smart is a tremendous coach, and I think someday he'll be a great coach in the NBA," said fellow Warriors assistant John MacLeod, whose NBA career dates back to 1973. "He's got a lot of strengths. He's got a good knowledge of the game, he's got a great work ethic, he's excited about being a coach. He has the energy to get through an NBA season. Those are all good things."

Smart declined to discuss his future ? "You'll have to talk to my lawyer," he quipped Wednesday when asked about the possibility of pursuing a college job after spending the past 18 years in the professional basketball milieu ? lest it give the impression that he was actively courting another job while still working in his current role.

But his name came up in connection with the Indiana job before Kelvin Sampson was hired on Wednesday, and as an erudite and widely respected NBA assistant, the 41-year-old Smart wouldn't be a stretch to see in the mix for a high-profile job.

"He's a great players' coach," said Minnesota's Ricky Davis, who played for Smart when the latter took over as interim coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003. "He gets into guys' heads and gets the confidence up. He's just something. It would be great to have a coach like that, that makes you want to run through a wall for him."

Mickael Pietrus might do more than that. The Warriors swingman, who has worked intensively with Smart over the past two seasons to refine his raw jump shot, calls the coach "my replacement for my dad. He always makes sure he takes care of me on the floor and makes sure I do the right thing. That's why I like him as a coach, but more I like him as a dad."

In football, the hot head-coaching candidates are usually the top assistants with other successful teams ? hence the defection of Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel from New England last summer. But in the NBA that's not necessarily so.

After all, Smart has been Montgomery's de facto lead assistant this season, and that job opened up only after its former occupant, Terry Stotts, became the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks last summer. </div>

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