Hmmmm Spoelstra? Won multiple championships. Carlisle? Won an NBA championship. Stevens? Eh..... maybe they will be dumb enough to fire him and we can pick him up. It's not his fault that Danny Ainge is a fucking moron and keeps bleeding talent with no return.
I think Stotts has had a much a longer shelf life than most coaches for several reasons: 1. He seemed to get on the bandwagon of modern 3 point shooting offenses quicker than many 2. He's pretty good at coaching 7 foot centers. We're always bargain bin shopping, and a lot of these types pop up. Our 7 footers seem to always significantly outperform expectations. 3. He's got the best track record in the league of developing 3 point shooters. 4. It seems like Paul Allen died right around when we probably would normally fire a head coach, and the whole issue got pushed back. 5. Players obviously love playing for him. We're in a small market that has problems attracting talent. It's nice to have a coach that players like. Dame loves him, which matters a lot. 6. He's ridden on the coattails of Dame and CJ. 7. We've had some seriously shitty injury luck. It's hard to fire a coach when his roster is patched together. And he's actually pretty good at patching together wounded rosters. 8. We had a series of seriously terrible coaches for the decade preceding Stotts. I think there's a lot of institutional memory of how bad really shitty coaches can be. Better the mediocre coach in the hand than the Mo Cheeks in the bush. I go back and forth quite a bit on Stotts. This isn't really a pro/anti-Stotts post. I just think OneSport highlighted a pretty interesting point about his longevity, and it's interesting to think about why. You can argue it's just our GM's incompetence (which is probably another bullet to add there) but there's a lot more to it. It'll be interesting to see if Stotts' luck holds.
Do you mean the recently fired Ryan Saunders? Because that guy has spent 11 years coaching 2 of the most depressing franchises in the league (Wizards, Twolves). He may be a good coach, but I don't want that stink on my team. Or do you mean Flip Saunders? Because that guy hasn't coached a winning team since 2008. Is there another Sanders? Deion Sanders? Barry Sanders? Bernie Sanders? "What we need to do is distribute the ball to the 90% of the team that is not getting any of the shots. And we need better health care for all our people." That's actually not a bad plan....
Out of the last 4 first-in-a-generation champions, all 4 were coached by first time coaches. LAL - Vogel CLE - Lue GSW - Kerr TOR - Nurse
"Only 1 coach of 336 in NBA history that has at least 10 seasons as a head coach with a tenure of 9 consecutive seasons with one team and has ZERO Conference Finals games wins: Terry Stotts." They made some shots.
