wco81 wrote:If the players are talented enough, the teams will hire translators. Probably also help bring over family so the player isn't on his own in a strange country.
MLB has been doing it for decades with Latin players who only spoke English and more recently with Asian players who only speak Japanese or Korean.
A coach has to communicate to his players, most of whom only speak English.
Here in Europe every single team has players from different countries and the common language is English, don't think that Spanish teams speak Spanish, that's not the case anymore. Long time ago there were only two foreign players in every team (most of them American) and the "official" language would be Spanish, Italian or whatever and an assistant coach would translate instructions for these foreign players, but right now you have to deal with players for 6-7 different nationalities so every coach relies on English.
The main barrier here is that head-coach is a way different role in Europe and NBA, coaches in Europe are way more into X's and O's while coaches in NBA have an army of assistant coaches to deal with X's and O's so they must focus on "personalities management", they need soft skills to lead their teams while in Europe the approach is more like "I'm the law and that's what we're gonna do". I'm not saying NBA coaches have no clue about X's and O's nor European coaches can't deal with difficult players, but they are more like NCAA coaches and we all know how the NCAA-NBA transition went for most of them. If an European coach wants to make it to the NBA as head-coach there's addtional work to make as the role is quite different.
Finally, unpopular opinion, until the players get comfortable with the amount of black head coaches in NBA these doors will probably be closed, I think the players would be pissed if the find more foreing coaches than black coaches (most of them ex-players).
