Where is the new breed of young coaches?

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">George Karl is back in the NBA, and apparently, New York general manager Isiah Thomas is holding the door open for Phil Jackson to return as well.

If not this season, then next season the Zen Master will be given every chance to return to his former team where he won an NBA championship and follow in the footsteps of his late, great mentor, Red Holzman.

Nowhere else is the mystique of the messiah coach stronger than in the NBA, where general managers and owners believe that the right man can lead a bunch of misguided athletes to a championship.

Many university presidents flaunt their institutions shamelessly in ridiculous efforts to attract the next great big-time college football coach, and men such as Joe Gibbs and Bill Parcells will always be able to find work in the NFL. Still, the NBA goes a step further in its lust for coaches, to the point where it recycles the messiahs, giving them chance after chance.

This is not a knock on Karl. He's a hard-nosed, old-school coach who's a good teacher for today's players. He has a proven record of turning around programs, having revamped teams in Cleveland, Seattle and Milwaukee.

But I've got to wonder: Is the coaching pool so limited that GMs feel the need to recycle fossils such as Hubie Brown, Larry Brown, Rudy Tomjanovich and Jackson?

Where are the whiz kids?</div>

<font size="1">Full Story courtesy of Percy Allen and the Seattle Times.</font>

 

It does seem to be a prerequisite these days that a head coach must have a senior citizen's card.
Teams can't afford to sit on the bottom for long financially, as the crowds and merchandise sales dip, so they try for someone "proven". Very hard to prove yourself when you aren't given the chance though

 

There is a good point in there made by Terry Stotts. It's a catch 22 - a young coach wants a chance to gain experience and take in the life of an NBA coach, but at the same time can't afford to lose a lot of games in the cutthroat financial world that is the NBA.

For every Lawrence Frank, there are ten Michael Coopers.

 

someone tell coach carter to stop with the slamball and get into the NBA

 

Its because the older ones are more experienced, I know i'd rather have an older more experienced coach on my team than a young one with not as much.

 

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting NTC187:</div><div class="quote_post">Its because the older ones are more experienced, I know i'd rather have an older more experienced coach on my team than a young one with not as much.</div>

That's all well and good, but where do you think these experienced coaches came from? They were all given their opportunities 10-15 years ago, what's going to happen another 10 years down the track?

 

I think this is a great question.

In my opinion, I think there's probably a large number of qualified young coaching candidates out there, but in this day and age, you don't see as many GMs taking chances on an up and coming younger coach.

I think the reason you see this is because nowadays a GM can lose his job with no questions asked. I don't think they are given the time and leeway that they used to be afforded in the past. GMs often would rather make the safest move possible, because they don't want their job in jeopardy.

New Jersey was put in a situation after they fired Byron Scott that seemed to make them somewhat uncomfortable. They promoted Lawrence Frank to interim coach. Their purpose of doing that was probably to fill the role until they found a proven veteran coach for the job. They had a slight problem, because the team responded to Frank, and started playing better than they had in years. Everybody knew that Frank deserved the job full-time, but the Nets still seemed skeptical and waited a very long time to finally drop the interim tag, and offer him a contract.

In Boston, after Jim O'Brien quit, most expected young assistant Lester Conner to take over as interim coach. Conner was the lead assistant, and was also the one who'd take over if OB was ejected. Instead, it was handed to the older, more-experienced John Carroll. I honestly think that the Celtics purposely avoided Conner because they were scared of having the same situation that the Nets had.

GMs know that they are permanently skating on thin ice with the media, fans, and upper management, so the last thing they want is to be almost forced into hiring a coach that isn't their hand-picked selection, let alone take the chance on a young inexperienced coach.

"'High Risk' is not in our vocabulary"- NBA GMs

 

theres alot of good coaches gms just have to give them the opporutnity, and letem stay on the team for more time. liek nate mcmillian he stayed with the team for a while and now he's getting the results.