Quote:
Originally Posted by Déjà Bru
This kind of thing is so stupid in professional sports (and in college sports and, soon, high school sports). ...
Yes, I know that these people know what they are getting into. Some of them are lucky to latch on and have long careers with one organization. At the least, each stop is an item on their resume with frequent job-hopping no drawback to prospective employers.
But I could not hack this nonsense, personally. To put my heart and soul into something, and to also achieve the pinnacle of success, only to be forgotten and dismissed a mere two years later? Keep it. I'll stick to any profession which consistently values competence and commitment.
|
I would imagine that with a lot of these guys who start out as assistant coaches, it's a nice living and they get to fully immerse themselves - "put their heart and soul" - into something they love. And then if they're lucky enough to get called into the fraternity of head coaches, that inevitability of sooner or later being "forgotten and dismissed" is assuaged by the fortune in "parting gifts" they typically take with them... with the worst-case scenario typically being that they are in better shape financially and can return to the lower-profile, less-stressful, role of an assistant coach where than can still dig deeply into the X's & O's that they love, and whose input is even more valuable by that point.
In Coach Bud's case, I believe he is still owed $16m, so he can take a year or two off and/or climb into the broadcast booth, hold out for an elite head coaching job if that's what he wants. Plenty of options, and they'll never take away the fact that he's an NBA champion coach.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not disagreeing with you. Absent add'l info that's not yet public, I think it's pretty dumb that the Bucks fired him. I just think there's a flip side to this.
Oh, and with regards to this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Déjà Bru
The guy was one of two things two years ago:
1) He was brilliant and indispensable to the team's success (whereas now he is incompetent and disposable), or
2) He was a relative non-factor in the team's success with the players due all the credit (whereas now he is the culprit and has to go).
|
... with the exception of some coaches who are/were clearly lacking in their abilities and/or just not a good fit for a particular situation, nearly all coaches fit somewhere in-between #1 and #2. IMO, of the Mount Rushmore of coaches, maybe they weren't replaceable by
any other NBA coach, but they were
not at all indispensable. They were, rather,
sufficiently competent and
right place, right time. That said, I'll acknowledge that there's a certain aura that comes with winning an NBA title, and that counts for something simply because folks
believe it to be so, even if the reality is that there's very little difference - if any (other than style) - in the relative coaching abilities of, say, Doc Rivers, Del Harris, Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Jerry Sloan, Phil Jackson... YMMV
