Jack’s Blog

Yesterday’s blog talked about professional football coaches getting fired.  Also about them getting hired.  One thought on hiring is to bring in a (very) successful college head coach.  There is a great debate about whether a college guy can make it in the professional ranks, that the pro game is so different than its college counterpart (and vice versa).  History goes against the college guys.  Fewer are successful when they make the jump than are career pro coaches.

One reason for the poor success rate is that, usually, the college coach who moves to the pros gets to take on a bad job.  The good teams can’t afford to take a chance on a college guy because if he were to fail, heads would roll.  A losing franchise can take a shot because, hey, nothing else has worked.  Why not give a big college winner a shot?  Mostly, though, losing franchises are losing - year after year - because of circumstances a mere coaching change won’t fix.

In the early ’80s Larry Shyatt, Scott Duncan (currently head and assistant coach, respectively, for the undefeated Wyoming Cowboys) and I started an annual self-improvement clinic for (basketball) assistants.  Our original group was limited to about five or six of us.  One of the coaches in our group was Jeff Van Gundy who, when he began attending the clinic, was as a graduate assistant for Rick Pitino at Providence.  He was elevated to full-time status the following year (when Pitino left to coach the Knicks) and then moved to Rutgers (when the PC staff was let go after one year).  After the Scarlet Knights gig, he became an assistant coach with the New York Knicks under Stu Jackson, a former Pitino assistant at Providence, who got the Knicks’ job when Rick left for Kentucky.  Follow all that?  Coaches always seem to be on the move, either to improve their position (usually through contacts), to stay just ahead of the posse, or because they got canned.  Note: Stu Jackson is currently vice president of the NBA.  A main part of his job is to levy fines.  I wonder if he misses coaching?

The purpose for that diatribe was to let the reader know that Jeff Van Gundy does have college coaching experience.  OK, back to the story.  After years of these clinics, we would bring in other coaches to hear some fresh ideas.  One year, Tom Crean came to share the philosophy and toughness drills of his program, Michigan State.  A question was brought up about what they did following a home game.  Tom explained how, once the post-game press conference ended, he would bring whatever recruits and parents had been at the game (mostly local recruits on unofficial visits) to the coaches’ office so they could visit with Tom Izzo.

Upon hearing this, Van Gundy, who by this time, was the head coach of the Knicks, leaned over to me and said, “Man, that’s why I could never go back to college.  When the game’s over, I just want to get the hell out of there.”  I said, as if he didn’t remember, that recruiting was all about relationships and stuff like that got everybody closer.  Then I asked him something I could never understand about coaching in the pros.  “How do you coach guys somebody else picked for you?  I guess that’s why the guys with clout were taking the dual position of head coach/general manager.  Everybody knows the better your players are in college, the better the team is.”

His response shocked me.  “I would never want to be both coach and GM.”  He went on.  “I don’t have the time to check out all the guys who are going to be drafted.  There are seniors, underclassmen and foreign guys.  Plus, all those free agents.  No, thank you.  Coaching is so time consuming as it is.  Now, it’s essential to have a great relationship with your front office, so they bring in players you can coach, your type of guys.  Most of the guys who get fired in our business don’t lose their jobs because they weren’t good coaches.”

I consider myself to be a fairly wise person.  After speaking with Jeff Van Gundy, I learned something I’d never realized prior.  The college coaching profession and the professional version are almost completely different entities.  And that goes football as well as basketball.

This quote by Chip Bell sums up that day for me:

“Effective questioning brings insight, which fuels curiosity, which cultivates wisdom.”

If someone wondered if Oregon’s football team, which is playing for the national championship, has rabid fan support, consider this story excerpted from my book, Life’s A Joke, (available for purchase by sending a check for $10, which includes shipping, to 365 Sandpiper Ct, Fresno, CA 93730).

My graduate assistant year at the University of Oregon was 1975-76 and our basketball team was known as the Kamikaze Kids.  The squad was made of of long-time NBA players Ronnie Lee and Greg Ballard as well as Stu Jackson, currently VP of the NBA and (former) Ducks’ head coach, Ernie Kent.  Dave Merchant was our other grad assistant and he and I lived in poverty although he was a little better off than I was since his wife, Carol, had a good job as a hairdresser.

The reason I say poverty is that Oregon didn’t pay their GA’s, so we were forced to work part-time jobs.  One day after practice Dave was giving me a ride home in his old beat-up clunker that he bought for about $200.  The car sometimes ran and sometimes didn’t, and was badly dented, but it was all he could afford for a second car - and it did (barely) beat walking.

We were stopped at a traffic light when, in the lane to the right of us, a brand new white Mercedes pulled up alongside.  During that time period, our players were somewhat deified by the Eugene community (imagine what it’s like now for the football guys).  We glanced over at the occupants of the Mercedes and saw none other than one of our reserves driving the luxury vehicle and, looking past him, we saw the wife of one of our big boosters.  She was a member of a smaller “support” group, the Daisy Ducks, which was composed of a number of women in town.

Apparently, this lady’s husband was out of town on business while she remained in town attending to some business of her own.  Our player looked at us with a smug Cheshire grin that spoke volumes and then eyed Dave’s car.  He casually took a gander at the one was operating, looked back at us and smiled again.

Although we were somewhat surprised, in reality, it wasn’t all that shocking.  However, that wasn’t the worst part of the story.  When the light turned green, the player waved and took off while Dave put his foot on the gas - and his car stalled.

As the saying goes:

“To the victor go the spoils.”

 

Any coach, whether the head coach or a manager who hopes to be one some day, is always proud of a former player when he makes it to the NBA.  The same holds true for any other walk of life.  Those mentoring the young glow when their proteges do something worthy of positive recognition.  

A guy we had on our 1975-76 University of Oregon NIT team has made it to the big-time (the NBA), although not as a player (a knee injury during his final year in college did him in).  The young man I’m referring to (even though he’s in his mid-50’s) is Stu Jackson, the small forward on our UO squad, adoringly called the Kamikaze Kids.  Stu’s high school career was capped off when he was voted MVP of the prestigious Dapper Dan Tournament which was a contest between an all-star team made up of seniors from Pennsylvania against an all-star team of seniors from the rest of the 49 states & DC.  Stu, since he was born and raised in Reading, PA, participated for the PA All-Stars and caught the eye of numerous college recruiters.  

Today, Stu’s title is Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations for the NBA.  Part of his job description is that he’s in charge of discipline.  It’s a grueling job (these are the best of the best, often with ego to match their talent - occasionally, the ego may even surpass their talent).  They are true competitors who hate to lose.  So, when a game reaches the height of frustration (naturally, this occurs during playoff time and guys realize their team’s digging a hole too deep to get out of, or, worse, about to be eliminated), often, the player starts looking for things to get him motivated, to unleash his pent-up frustration.

That’s why, especially at this time of year, Stu’s office gets bombarded with phone calls and texts, video clips, faxes to defend their player or, at the very least, relating what the oppostion did to cause the melt-down.  As even the most casual observer can attest, the different series have be gliding toward MMA and this is where Stu steps in.  Although he doesn’t administer the final decision (David Stern does that), his recommendation, based on hours upon hours of video study and interviews with the offended parties, should that be necessary, carries a great deal of weight with the commissioner.

Even the most casual of observers has seen that this year’s playoffs (certainly seem to) have had a greater edge to them.  There have been more suspensions thusfar in the first and second rounds that even an eternal optomist would have to admit there is a fear that the pure basketball many of us love to witness, will be scrapped due to all that’s been allowed so far.  Undoubtedly, the greatest problem Stu and his staff have to oversee is whether to suspend a player.  The fines/loss of pay can be really steep, but that’s not usually the bigest beef the players and coaches have.  That honor would go to “how long is so-and-so going to miss?

Therein lies the problem.  The verdict seems like it would be simple.  Set some standards and rules and get the officials to enforce it.  The trouble officials have is the game is so quick, as much as they want to be objective, the speed of the players and the game is overwhelming, the objectivity is replaced by what the referee thought he saw.  Now the officials can go to the monitor to check fouls - so they can give “flagrant one,” “flagrant two” or decide whether the infraction merits a suspension (and for how long).  Some examples?

So far in the playoffs, we’ve seen Dwight Howard intentionally throw an elbow to an opponent’s privates (suspension - the committee is made up of all people who have “privates” and for those of us who do, it’s impossible not to wince every time that replay is shown), Kendrick Perkins throw an elbow (no suspension; I imagine Perkins doesn’t see what all the fuss is about, since his favorite move to collect the vast number of offensive reounds he does is to put each one of his oversized hands in his opponent’s back and shove), elbow by Kobe (to bad boy Ron Artest’s throat - flagrant one, no suspension - now, c’mon, you didn’t think for a second that Kobe was going to be disallowed to play in a nationally televised game in the playoffs? on a weekend?  That decision would be grounds for a suspension.

We’ve also seen Rafer Alston slap Eddie House “upside the head” after House went by Rafer and gave him slight provocation with a quick elbow to the gut - just after hitting a three, the culmination of his en fuego night, torching “Skip to my Lou” for 30-something.  For a guy like Rafer (who, like Stu Jackson, was on a team in which I was a member of the staff), from the streets of NY, a quick hand slap is a natural reaction to a small gesture, intentionally or unintentionally, trying to say, “OK, you’re having a monster game, that kind of behavior is unacceptable.”  As noted, I know Rafer Alston and he would never go after an opponent - in the playoffs - right in front of a ref, and with so many cameras to catch what he was doing.  He likes to play and loves to win too much to put something like that on the line.

There have been three other calls that I thought, after seeing the replays, were pretty obvious, yet the league saw two of them completely opposite from how I did.  The one I agreed with was Derek Fisher’s lowering of his shoulder and laying a perfectly formed body block on Luis Scola (who never thought something like that was coming), which dropped the Magic big man like a sack of potatoes. We heard, ad nauseum, especially by the commentators who played or coached in the NBA, that play was simply to send a message.  Wouldn’t a text or an email be nearly as quick?  Scola had been trash talking to a couple of Celtics as these guys enjoy getting on each others cases and into each other’s heads.

Two calls the refs missed and I don’t care how many angles you show to me (because I’ve seen enough with what’s been shown) are the non-suspendable play Rajon Rondo made vs. the Bulls and the truly hard, playoff or not, foul that Ron Artest took on Pau Gasol.

First, Rondo’s intentional, and no one will ever convince me otherwise, foul on Brad Miller as Miller drove to the basket.  Chicago had run an out-of-bounds play on their offensive side of the court.  Possibly it was a “read” by Miller, but I tend to think that it might have been a set play with the pass going to Miller as one of, maybe three, options.  He drove strong to the hoop, knowing that had he scored, the Bulls would have locked up the victory.  Rondo came across and just open-handed cuffed Miller across the face.  Stu Jackson read a statement that said Rondo was not to be suspended because, as -paraphrasing Stu, “Rondo came across to help because of a blown defensive assignment.  He fouled Miller, but was making a legitimate play on the ball” (the language the rule book uses in discussing how to decide what call to make).  There was no play on the ball!  Sorry, Stu, you were a clutch, gutty, talented college small forward, but you blew this one - or someone higher up did.  Miller is 6′10″ and was stretching his arm out in an attempt to score.  Rondo caught him flush across the jaw, nowhere near the ball, making it, to me, an obvious, “I’m putting this guy on the line - he’s going to have to shoot free throws and let’s see if he can, after what I just did to his teeth.”

Then, second round action, in the game that followed Kobe’s elbow to Artest’s throat and Fisher (oh, by the way, the President of the NBA’s player association) lowering the boom on Scola, saw a strong drive to the bucket by Gasol and Artest came across and made a hard foul, but definitely made a play on the ball.  Automatic ejection and a flagrant two foul call.  Check the rule book.  Knee-jerk reaction by the refs?  Why so adamant so quickly, when others have done worse but don’t have to suffer the same consequences?  Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that it’s Ron Artest?  Bet on it. 

It’s the old line that your mother told you when you were young:

“You don’t get a second chance to make a first impresion.”

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