Mike Brown, Clueless

Ignoring for a moment his reputation for being clueless as an offensive head coach, it’s new Lakers head coach Mike Brown’s staggering lack of understanding of PR that makes me believe he’s destined to fail in Los Angeles.

See the excerpt below, with italics for emphasis:

“We’re not going to run the triangle offense, but we will have bits and pieces of it that will be incorporated,” said Brown, adding that his offense will be tailored to 7-footers Bynum and Gasol, similar to what was run for big men Tim Duncan and David Robinson during his time as an assistant in San Antonio.

Brown was on the Spurs’ staff when they won the 2003 NBA title.

Brown ticked off his top three essentials on both offense and defense.

“If they don’t buy in right away, they will,” he said. “If they don’t, there’s going to be a problem because I’m going to hold people accountable.”

Really, Mike? You’re going to publically announce that you’ll run the offense through a duo that includes the oft-injured Bynum and the unmotivated Gasol? When you have one of the ten best players in NBA history on your roster? When that player – Kobe Bryant – is the key to whether you keep your job or not?

I get not kowtowing to a prickly, aging superstar and I get that you want to come in with the respect of your players – hence the line about accountability and everyone buying in – but you catch many more flies with honey than with vinegar and if there’s one thing we know about NBA superstars it’s that they don’t respond well to veiled threats, especially not from guys with no credibility in the league. Phil Jackson could be a smug bastard and take shots at his players through the media because he had 11 rings. Mike Brown is a nobody in basketball by comparison.

Mike, baby, learn your place. You were hired to be the coach but if you don’t know that Kobe calls the shots, you’re hopeless.

Stability I Can Believe In

Despite beating the Washington Redskins 17-14 and earning their 10th win of the season, the Giants still missed the playoffs after Green Bay defeated Chicago to clinch the final Wild Card berth. And as much as missing the playoffs was a self-inflicted wound for the Giants – after all, those losses to the Eagles and Packers in Weeks 15 and 16 were practically unforgivable – the Giants did what they almost always do: they decided to stay the course. Team owner John Mara’s comments:

“I’m proud of how the players battled through the injuries,” said Mara. “I think that is a testament to the coach. In this society, everybody wants to fire the coach all the time. The Yankees get knocked off in the playoffs, everybody wants to fire the manager.

“Well, we don’t do that here. He’s going to be our coach. Because I believe in the guy, I believe in stability, you can’t build anything if you are constantly making changes and firing people. That is not our culture and it is just not what we believe in. We know this guy is a good coach and we want him to lead us into next season.”

There are a lot of things wrong with the Giants. Their secondary has been a weak spot for nearly 20 consecutive seasons. They haven’t drafted an impact linebacker since unearthing Jessie Armstead in the 8th round of the 1993 draft. The offensive line has shown considerable age and attrition since reaching their high-water mark midway through the 2008 season. And, most notably, their quarterback is owed $97.5M over the next six years despite being overrated, turnover-prone and perennially disappointing. Yet, despite it all, the Giants get one thing right: they generally make smart coaching hires and they stick with coaches that do a good job.

I’m not the passionate Giants fan I was when I was a little boy but I truly appreciate that my team has smart and thoughtful owners. When I look around the NFL, very few organizations are as stable as the Giants. I can be proud of that.

Again?!

Why on earth would Doug Collins want another bite of the apple? He doesn’t have Michael Jordan on the roster this time around and even the #1 pick overall won’t change the fact that the Bulls, as currently constituted, are not among the 10 best teams in the NBA. Moreover, why would the Bulls want him back?

Obviously someone has to coach the Bulls, I’m just surprised the team decided to make the rare double-retread hire. The Bulls get more boring by the day...

D'Antoni From Another Point Of View (UPDATED 5/10/08)

OK, another post about Mike D’Antoni, this time taken from the opposite perspective...

Why would the Knicks want to invest $6M a year for a head coach? As I mentioned yesterday, the Knicks are two years away, at minimum, from cracking .500. The personnel doesn’t fit D’Antoni’s style. The team’s short-term goal is to play the next 164 games with the current roster before the entire team is turned over and they are out from under the weight of salary cap constraints. Is having a good head coach in place for a full two seasons (maybe longer) so important that you’d want to pay $12M for a babysitter before things can even begin to change for the better?

My advice to the Knicks would be to hire Tom Thibodeau away from the Boston Celtics. He’s the assistant coach who has been credited with making the C’s into a top defensive team. His defensive pedigree comes from having been an assistant to Jeff Van Gundy in New York and Houston and he’d certainly come with a cheaper price tag.

The Knicks should be thinking about turning their current young role players – David Lee, Renaldo Balkman, Mardy Collins, Nate Robinson, Wilson Chandler and Randolph Morris – into good defenders. After all, its today’s role players that are the only ones likely to survive the purge in 2010. Thibodeau could help lay the foundation and then the team can go hire a big-name guy if it wants to. D’Antoni’s going to be a giant waste of money. After all, a good coach can’t turn chicken shit into chicken salad.

UPDATE:

The Knicks got Mike D’Antoni to agree to a four year, $24M contract.

The more I think about it, the more I think both sides made a huge mistake. D’Antoni has chosen money over the possibility for a moderate level of success in Chicago and the Knicks have thrown money at a coach whose philosophy doesn’t fit their roster.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and hiring a solid, up-and-coming defensive-minded disciplinarian at a fraction of the cost, the Knicks have decided to make a splashy move with D’Antoni. Will he survive his four years in New York? Will they fire him before his contract is up? Will the team be close to turning the corner as his contract is expiring? I just don’t see why the Knicks chose him. It’s not like having a brand-name coach is going to improve the team’s horrendous situation.

The Phoenix Suns are absolute morons for letting D’Antoni leave. The Chicago Bulls are absolute morons for letting D’Antoni slip through their fingers. The New York Knicks are absolute morons for throwing money at a problem that requires discipline and outside-the-box thought. Finally, Mike D’Antoni is an absolute moron for taking a $24M contract that will make him richer than he could’ve imagined five years ago when he was coaching in Italy but will leave him exposed to arguably the worst team in NBA.

Go (Mid)west, D'Antoni

There’s nothing wrong with doing something for the money, as long as you know that’s what you’re doing it for. But if you have a choice between doing something for the money and doing something you might enjoy – and financial hardship isn’t an issue for you – then how could you ever pick money over happiness, especially if you don’t even need the money?

This article makes it seem like Mike D’Antoni is genuinely intrigued by the prospect of coaching the Chicago Bulls because they have some players that could fit his up-tempo style. The article also makes it seem like D’Antoni might instead choose the Knicks job because the Knicks might throw a $6M annual salary his way.

Look, the Bulls need more than D’Antoni to be a legitimate candidate to make it out of the Eastern Conference. Right now they look like a second-round kind of a team. But shouldn’t D’Antoni be able to realize that $3M in Chicago would be better than $6M in New York? At least the Bulls could make the playoffs. He’s been coaching long enough that the extra $3M shouldn’t make that much difference, right? Why be insanely rich and miserable coaching a lousy team when you can still quite rich and a little happier with a mediocre team?

That being said, I’d rather the Knicks hire D’Antoni than either of the other choices that are supposedly being considered. Avery Johnson needs a year off and Mark Jackson needs to have a job in the game before we turn over a team to a guy that’s been a player and a broadcaster and nothing else...