New Head Coach Mega Thread

[dougthonus]

Why does Screamin' A act like Kyrie and KD didn't have any input?

He didn't act that way.

In fact, he explicitly said those guys obviously blessed this move and were on board.

[Jvaughn]

Nets just hired Steve Nash to 4 year deal. Where the hell did that come from? Was there even talks that were publicized?

Wow, that's out of left field. Wasn't paying close attention but didn't even know he interviewed.

Sean Marks said they kept it completely in house and made sure the process wasn't leaked.

[MrFortune3]

I have no issue with Nash as the HC. He's been known to be a very bright guy and was seen as a future coach or FO exec. Guys like Kerr and Jackson being successful by going from analyst to HC paves a way for him and to not have it been seen as a reach.

[JohnnyTapwater]

Stephen A really has a problem with NBA teams hiring white coaches or managers. Today he says Nash only got the job because he’s “white privileged” and should of gave the job to Mark Jackson. Who is he to decide which coach they should get?

Every time teams hires a white guy he wants to shame them. He even had a problem when AK got hired as bulls president. This guy is ridiculous and a bit racist. Nets had their reasons to sign Nash, I’m sure being white wasn’t one of them. Same for AK.

While you may be right. It is also white privilege for you to be able to think that without any care in the world.

This is a nuanced topic that really requires objective and unbiased scrutiny without emotion for a stable bridge to be made.

[gardenofsound]

Stephen A really has a problem with NBA teams hiring white coaches or managers. Today he says Nash only got the job because he’s “white privileged” and should of gave the job to Mark Jackson. Who is he to decide which coach they should get?

Every time teams hires a white guy he wants to shame them. He even had a problem when AK got hired as bulls president. This guy is ridiculous and a bit racist. Nets had their reasons to sign Nash, I’m sure being white wasn’t one of them. Same for AK.

While you may be right. It is also white privilege for you to be able to think that without any care in the world.

This is a nuanced topic that really requires objective and unbiased scrutiny without emotion for a stable bridge to be made.

I think Nash is deserving of a HC job given his reputation and his HOF resume as a point guard in this league. If KD and Kyrie pushed for and blessed the Nash hire, then that's who should have been hired (with the full understanding that there are risks inherent to the situation). Ultimately, a coach needs the backing of his/her star players in order to be a successful leader.

Jacque Vaughn is also a deserving HC candidate, though. Vaughn should be on the short list for other teams with HC vacancies, and the Nets should allow him the courtesy of being allowed to interview for said vacancies.

Less than 20% of currently employed NBA coaches are black, while the league is close to 75% black, and there's no shortage of black candidates out there.

The Nets hire of Nash, in isolation, makes total sense and may well be the best move for that franchise. But when you look at those demographic stats in aggregate, is raises the question of why black candidates are not getting hired for the HC role. I believe that question is legitimate.

By the way, here are the black head coaches currently in the league: Doc Rivers, JB Bickerstaff, Dwane Casey, Monty Williams, and Lloyd Pierce.

There are currently four vacancies: Chicago, New Orleans, Indiana, and Philadelphia. We will see who these four end up hiring.

[Jcool0]

Jacque Vaughn is also a deserving HC candidate, though. Vaughn should be on the short list for other teams with HC vacancies, and the Nets should allow him the courtesy of being allowed to interview for said vacancies.

Should he? He never won more then 23 games in Orlando. Going 7-3 with the Nets is okay i guess, but cant really judge much based on a 10 game sample size.

[Southpaw]

Nash went from being an analyst for Champions League soccer on TNT to a head coach of the NBA lol. Not sure how he will be as a coach but he was obviously a great player. I wonder if this is who Durant and Irving wanted?

He's also been a consultant with the Warriors since he retired

He's also been a GM (i think) for Team Canada for a while now. I think he'll be fine, specially because he seems great at building relationships with teammates/players and with KD+Kyrie as your star players, that's extremely important.

[dougthonus]

Jacque Vaughn is also a deserving HC candidate, though. Vaughn should be on the short list for other teams with HC vacancies, and the Nets should allow him the courtesy of being allowed to interview for said vacancies.

Less than 20% of currently employed NBA coaches are black, while the league is close to 75% black, and there's no shortage of black candidates out there.

The Nets hire of Nash, in isolation, makes total sense and may well be the best move for that franchise. But when you look at those demographic stats in aggregate, is raises the question of why black candidates are not getting hired for the HC role. I believe that question is legitimate.

By the way, here are the black head coaches currently in the league: Doc Rivers, JB Bickerstaff, Dwane Casey, Monty Williams, and Lloyd Pierce.

The one thing I'll say about this is that many people seem to believe because 75% of the players are black that 75% of the coaches should be black and 75% of the GMs should be black while ignoring that playing in the NBA is not the most common set of experience for either of those jobs.

Only 5 current NBA coaches have more than fringe NBA experience. If you figure that other avenue for coaching account for the vast majority of NBA coaching jobs, then you figure that those areas have a much higher percentage of white people in them than black people, you'll end up on the notion that it probably makes sense that there are more white coaches than black ones.

I don't think the number should be along the lines of the population split, as there are absolutely more blacks involved in many of those areas than the general population (certainly for coaching, maybe not for GM type jobs which often come from all kinds of weird places), but a racial split with no systemic bias is probably somewhere between 30-50% of the coaches being black if I were to guess.

This isn't to say the NBA does or does not have a systemic bias problem, but when people quote the 75% players thing they aren't really looking at it in a fully objective way and don't have a reasonable target in mind. There's no reason that should be the measuring stick for a non biased outcome.

[gardenofsound]

Jacque Vaughn is also a deserving HC candidate, though. Vaughn should be on the short list for other teams with HC vacancies, and the Nets should allow him the courtesy of being allowed to interview for said vacancies.

Should he? He never won more then 23 games in Orlando. Going 7-3 with the Nets is okay i guess, but cant really judge much based on a 10 game sample size.

Ten years as an assistant, HC, and scout after a long playing career. Coached under Popovich, then HC'ed for a tanking Magic, then scouted, then assistant in BKN under Atkinson before his interim role.

Having a bad record for a team that's clearly tanking, to me, is not a red flag.

[chefo]

I think people miss the irony that asking for 'quotas' based on ANY personal characteristic rather than merit is a very, very slippery slope.

Ok, how about we have a representative racial quota for players--13% black, 62% white, 17% Hispanic, 5% Asian. Would anybody sign up to watch that? Or how about the NBA mandates that 5% of players need to be LGBT?

Or better yet, how about the NBA mandate that the players be equally distributed according to height? I mean, the league is really, really prejudiced against short people. The average guy in the US is what? 5'9? That's to say, half are shorter than that. That preference for tall guys is also inherently racist, if you think about it, because it discriminates against Latinos and Asians who are a good 3 inches shorter on average than whites and 2 inches shorter than African Americans.

Or, we should have the NBA mandate that we should also distribute according to arm length. I feel greatly oppressed because as a -2.5 height to reach, my chance of making millions of $ putting an inflated, leather-bound object through a hoop was denied to me, despite the fact that I had a 35' vertical and could shoot better than probably half of the players in the league. I mean, the only one of my (T-Rex) kind to make it in the NBA seems to be JJ Reddick. That's what? 1 out of 450? The average height to reach is 0, which is to say the minus, which is half of us, are greatly oppressed by this preference for guys with long arms.

The NBA is entertainment. It needs to put the best possible product on the floor. If that means 3/4 Black players and 3/4 white coaches, that's what they'll do.

And one last point to make with regards to the above--the league's audience is much broader and more racially diverse and I would argue that the NBA under Stern and Silver has done wonders to make a select group of 450 dudes / year insanely wealthy over the last 30 years. 30 years ago an average NBA player made as much $ as a doctor. Now they make more than anybody but the CEO's of Fortune 500 companies. The reason the NBA has been so good at it is because they've made it a point to not alienate anybody who's a potential customer. The NBA is not a black league per say, no matter what people in the media say--it just happens so that most the best players on the planet happen to be black and therefore fully deserve to be in the spot they are in. If somehow, over the next generation, Asians find some secret sauce to where they can dominate in hoops, you'd better believe it that the league will become 3/4 Asian.

If a black coach is the most deserving candidate--fire away and hire him. But to see people complain about the Nets hiring the coach hand-picked by Durant and Kyrie is just bizarre. There were a couple of front-page articles today about how the hiring of Nash shows how racist the NBA is with regards to coaches which were performing mental gymnastics worthy of the Olympics to try to prove the above. It's simplistic, low-resolution thinking at its most naïve, and straight-up race-baiting at its worst.

[Jcool0]

Jacque Vaughn is also a deserving HC candidate, though. Vaughn should be on the short list for other teams with HC vacancies, and the Nets should allow him the courtesy of being allowed to interview for said vacancies.

Should he? He never won more then 23 games in Orlando. Going 7-3 with the Nets is okay i guess, but cant really judge much based on a 10 game sample size.

Ten years as an assistant, HC, and scout after a long playing career. Coached under Popovich, then HC'ed for a tanking Magic, then scouted, then assistant in BKN under Atkinson before his interim role.

Having a bad record for a team that's clearly tanking, to me, is not a red flag.

i mean you could say similar things about Jim Boylen.

[beeshma]

Billups may be looking for a head coaching job. Obviously he has some of the key skills needed to be successful, but i don’t know much about his experience. He’s done some TV work, has he also done front office work?

[gardenofsound]

Should he? He never won more then 23 games in Orlando. Going 7-3 with the Nets is okay i guess, but cant really judge much based on a 10 game sample size.

Ten years as an assistant, HC, and scout after a long playing career. Coached under Popovich, then HC'ed for a tanking Magic, then scouted, then assistant in BKN under Atkinson before his interim role.

Having a bad record for a team that's clearly tanking, to me, is not a red flag.

i mean you could say similar things about Jim Boylen.

Everything is case by case, as said before, but the aggregate suggests a story. Again, Steve Nash, to me, is qualified based on his playing career, just as a guy like Rajon Rondo (or Lebron James, if he chooses to) will also be qualified. These guys are/were coaches on the floor.

Boylen doesn't have the playing resume of Jacque Vaughn. Boylen's tenure in Chicago was a failure because of his toxic personality, stubbornness, and somewhat outdated schemes. Some of these issues reared their head when he coached University of Utah.

In short, Boylen eroded the respect of his players and the league as a whole. Vaughn commands respect, and that speaks volumes.

Players--even, or maybe especially role players--command respect of teams because they've been through the grind as players, and they truly understand what it means to be out there on the court playing for your job.

[gardenofsound]

Billups may be looking for a head coaching job. Obviously he has some of the key skills needed to be successful, but i don’t know much about his experience. He’s done some TV work, has he also done front office work?

He hasn't, but I would love for the Bulls to at least interview him. He was a very cerebral player and went through ups and downs in this league to build himself into the great player he became. He's a leader, and players around the league would take notice.

[BigJimFinn]

Jacque Vaughn is also a deserving HC candidate, though. Vaughn should be on the short list for other teams with HC vacancies, and the Nets should allow him the courtesy of being allowed to interview for said vacancies.

Less than 20% of currently employed NBA coaches are black, while the league is close to 75% black, and there's no shortage of black candidates out there.

The Nets hire of Nash, in isolation, makes total sense and may well be the best move for that franchise. But when you look at those demographic stats in aggregate, is raises the question of why black candidates are not getting hired for the HC role. I believe that question is legitimate.

By the way, here are the black head coaches currently in the league: Doc Rivers, JB Bickerstaff, Dwane Casey, Monty Williams, and Lloyd Pierce.

The one thing I'll say about this is that many people seem to believe because 75% of the players are black that 75% of the coaches should be black and 75% of the GMs should be black while ignoring that playing in the NBA is not the most common set of experience for either of those jobs.

Only 5 current NBA coaches have more than fringe NBA experience. If you figure that other avenue for coaching account for the vast majority of NBA coaching jobs, then you figure that those areas have a much higher percentage of white people in them than black people, you'll end up on the notion that it probably makes sense that there are more white coaches than black ones.

I don't think the number should be along the lines of the population split, as there are absolutely more blacks involved in many of those areas than the general population (certainly for coaching, maybe not for GM type jobs which often come from all kinds of weird places), but a racial split with no systemic bias is probably somewhere between 30-50% of the coaches being black if I were to guess.

This isn't to say the NBA does or does not have a systemic bias problem, but when people quote the 75% players thing they aren't really looking at it in a fully objective way and don't have a reasonable target in mind. There's no reason that should be the measuring stick for a non biased outcome.

The bolded would be the part that would need to get "fixed" first. In any field of endeavor, to find the very best you need a large population on lower levels of the pyramid on the different paths that may lead to NBA coaching positions. What are the ratios for example for US college and high school coaches? Who get the intern-level jobs as video assistants and team managers?

Looking at those 5 black head coaches, 2 of them have not played in the NBA, further weakening the player quota argument.
Looking at the 8 head coaches still in the playoffs, there is 1 NBA player and 1 high-level international player, the rest having marginal or non-existent pro playing careers. Note also that those two former top players are the oldest of the bunch. Again, playing career does not seem to be a good predictor of success.

There is a significant number of European and African players in the league, but no European or African head coaches. That might change fairly soon, but the reason would not be a quota. On the other side, should Erik Spoelstra, top 5 coach to me, be disqualified because there are no Pino players in the league? I would also hope and expect to see a female NBA head coach in my lifetime, rather than a female player. I agree with Doug and chefo that quota arguments are indefensible in competitive fields where differentiation by merit can happen quite naturally (not saying at all that merit would have in reality been the only driver in NBA recruitment, merely that it is feasible and should become more and more common, and as a result I would again hope and expect for more diversity).

[dougthonus]

The bolded would be the part that would need to get "fixed" first. In any field of endeavor, to find the very best you need a large population on lower levels of the pyramid on the different paths that may lead to NBA coaching positions. What are the ratios for example for US college and high school coaches? Who get the intern-level jobs as video assistants and team managers?

I'm not sure what fixed in this context even means, because I don't know why the expectation would be that a fair grouping of these roles would be significantly different than the overall racial distribution of the country. Presumably, blacks overall, have more interest in basketball careers than some other races, but that is probably only going to swing that distribution from maybe 14% of their population makeup to maybe 30% of interest not 14% to 75%. Though that's obviously only a guess. Blacks make up 75% of the playing careers due to athletic and physical advantages not due to interest. I don't suspect one race over another has some inherent advantage in the role of assistant coach or video editor.

[rtblues]

Wouldn't it be strange if the NHL had mostly all-black coaches and executives?

[dougthonus]

Ten years as an assistant, HC, and scout after a long playing career. Coached under Popovich, then HC'ed for a tanking Magic, then scouted, then assistant in BKN under Atkinson before his interim role.

Having a bad record for a team that's clearly tanking, to me, is not a red flag.

This isn't to say Vaughn should or shouldn't be a head coach candidate. However, nothing in which you say should make someone an automatic candidate either. It should be based on his reputation and believed quality under those different roles he had. Maybe Vaughn is absolutely a high flyer in those areas or maybe not. There are probably literally over 100 coaches in the NBA with 10+ years of experience as an assistant.

Obviously Vaughn is at least viable given he had a head coaching gig before and was made interim, so he passed this bar at some point in his career though I'm not sure that makes him one of the four best candidates for the four open roles. Jim Boylen has a similar resume to Vaughn at this point except he's not a few years removed from his colossal failure with a deck stacked against him in his one opportunity.

[BigJimFinn]

The bolded would be the part that would need to get "fixed" first. In any field of endeavor, to find the very best you need a large population on lower levels of the pyramid on the different paths that may lead to NBA coaching positions. What are the ratios for example for US college and high school coaches? Who get the intern-level jobs as video assistants and team managers?

I'm not sure what fixed in this context even means, because I don't know why the expectation would be that a fair grouping of these roles would be significantly different than the overall racial distribution of the country. Presumably, blacks overall, have more interest in basketball careers than some other races, but that is probably only going to swing that distribution from maybe 14% of their population makeup to maybe 30% of interest not 14% to 75%. Though that's obviously only a guess. Blacks make up 75% of the playing careers due to athletic and physical advantages not due to interest. I don't suspect one race over another has some inherent advantage in the role of assistant coach or video editor.

That's why I put it in quotes. If those paths from the ground level on were recruited with equal opportunity and based on the general level of engagement in basketball, I would expect the % of African-Americans be somewhat higher than their % of US population, but not dramatically and not anywhere near the ratio of top-level players, in line with your guess. I have no data or personal experience on this, but I would tend to suspect there may be residual racial bias still affecting that ground-level recruitment in the US. As you say, there is no reason to believe in any inherent advantage for working those roles, but that hardly guarantees equal opportunity recruitment. For the NBA, the ratios of US population are no longer even relevant for player-quota arguments, when the player population has become truly international and probably close to fairly representative of player quality around the world.

And back to the original issue, I see several reasons to criticise the Steve Nash appointment, racism not being one of them.

[HomoSapien]

It’s hard for me to buy the criticism of the Nets hiring. Steve Nash is one of the brightest minds to ever step on the basketball court. He’s also got a cerebral personality that seems suited for coaching. I think it’s a great swing.