Why not? Just because he hasn't won one yet, doesn't mean he never will. Coaches with rings from 1991-2009: Phil Jackson (10) Gregg Popovich (4) Rudy Tomjanovich (2) Pat Riley (1) Larry Brown (1) Doc Rivers (1) Pretty short list. I wouldn't stay away from Brown and Rivers, Rudy T and Riley are retired, PJ and Pop are unavailable. Popovich would be a dream coach for this team, but I would settle for the Rockets version of Adleman.
McHale actually is a pretty decent coach. You just have to ignore him if he wants to have any management input. Adelman or Pop would be fantastic if we could pry one away. Adelman seems more "gettable," since he's not as entrenched there and has a history here. I know Mike Dunleavy is in Clipper hell, but if you remember he was actually better than anyone else at getting our team to run low post plays. Sheed hated him, but he played his most effective offense under him. I'm far from throwing McMillan under a bus, though. Unless this team utterly implodes and looks like it'll miss the playoffs, he's pretty much earned the right to last the season.
+1. What bugs me is, he's going to be gone after this season, I bet. Someone's going to snatch him up. Was it Minnesota where he interviewed this season? They should have grabbed him, but I'm glad they did not. I hope we can hang on to him until he takes over for us. Maybe we will have a similar situation here as the Bulls did in the late 80s. Hire a good assistant(Monty, Phil Jackson), have a decent head coach, head coach leads you to the playoffs but can't quite get over the hump. head coach has a good relationship with star player. Head coach is let go and replaced with assistant. Team wins title. Multiple titles.
From a fun to watch perspective, I'd like D'Antoni. Getting a Jackson, Adelman, Popovich or Sloan (how easy he is forgotten) would be a good call in my book. However, I think they're all pretty unobtainable.
I'd like the Blazers to push the ball more in transition and get more easy scores, but D'Antoni is more run and gun than I think is prudent for a championship team. Adelman I think would be a good fit. Jackson makes me ill. Sloan isn't coming here, and frankly I don't think he's the fit we're looking for. I thought McHale was a good suggestion. He could help G.O., wouldn't stifle the our players, and he understands the value of a good low post option. At the moment I doubt there is a better option available for us than Nate. So far he (and Brandon) have squeezed a lot of wins out of the team. I'm going to have to give him the benefit of the doubt about his policy of bringing along the younger players slowly, one skill set at a time -- which is I guess what he is doing with Greg.
How did this turn into a discussion about Nate? He's NOT getting fired (or so we established in this thread). Neither of these coaches is any better than Nate. I'm hoping Larry Brown will just resign, to the delight of Bobcats' "management" because he costs too much, and THEN we'd have a coach worth replacing Nate with. But haven't the Hornets just looked sad? Chris Paul must be in a permanently bad mood.
Damn. Now there's a good idea. He's currently President of basketball operations for the Pacers, though. Not sure he wants a lot harder job than that.
I think its hilarious that Mike Brown would be fired for this. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when Shaq was in the game Cleveland was -25 in the +/- department, and Bargiani playing as an "perimeter" center had a career game. Its amazingly coincidental that after Shaq showed up to Phoenix last year that the Suns tanked big time. The facts are unless you play slow, walk up ball now, Shaq is going to do you no good. This is on the GM. But unfortunately, the way the NBA works is each GM gets to fire a couple of coaches before they get canned themselves.
