Should College Coaches Be Involved With USA Basketball?
Leading the United States men’s national team to an easy FIBA World Cup gold medal earlier this month should have heaped even further praise upon the team’s legendary head coach, Mike Krzyzewski.
Instead, it’s had the opposite effect, which has suddenly sparked some fairly intense debate on whether college coaches should be involved with USA Basketball at all.
Kentucky head coach John Calipari recently griped to Krzyzewski’s Team USA assistant, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim, about perceived advantages that Krzyzewski might gain for other main job as Duke’s head coach.
Calipari’s complaints were strange both for singling Krzyzewski out without saying the same about Boeheim and Syracuse and because he quickly backed off his comments once they were divulged by Boeheim.
"“It’s a concern he has raised before,” Boeheim said of Calipari. “He thinks it’s an advantage.”But Boeheim — a current college head coach who moonlights on Team USA’s staff would be expected to do — fired back at Calipari, saying, “[Calipari] got the No. 1 recruit in the country. It’s a little bit disingenuous of him. I like John. We get along fine. He feels Mike is getting an advantage. You could make that argument. But Duke isn’t getting any better players than they ever have.”After those remarks, Calipari tweeted, “If – and I emphasize if – they gained any advantage, because of that work, I don’t begrudge them in the least.”"
Around the same time as the Boeheim-Calipari exchange on Krzyzewski was a hard-hitting article by Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski condemning specifically Krzyzewski’s association with USA Basketball, as well as that of other college coaches like Boeheim, Florida’s Billy Donovan (an under-19 Team USA head coach), and Donovan’s under-19 team assistants, Virginia’s Tony Bennett and VCU’s Shaka Smart.
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Depending on who you believe, coaching with USA Basketball may or may not help.
CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander points out that although Krzyzewski’s ties to USA Basketball go as back as 1979 and he’s been Team USA’s head coach for the past eight years, Calipari has landed one of the nation’s top two recruiting classes (according to 247sports.com’s annual team rankings) in each of the six years since he arrived in Kentucky.
Conversely, Krzyzewski’s Duke program has accomplished the same just twice, while ranking third, eighth, 19thand 22nd in the other four years over that time.
Additionally, Krzyzweski also didn’t say a word about Calipari setting up a two-day NBA scouting combine at Kentucky.
On the flip side, Wojnarowski noted that many within the basketball community believe that without USA Basketball, Krzyzewski would never have signed former Duke star Jabari Parker, who later became the second overall pick in the this year’s NBA draft.
While both sides of that dispute persist, perhaps there’s another perspective that should be considered.
As long as Team USA now consists of NBA players, and as long as the younger USA Basketball teams develop the types of players who plan to ultimately play in the NBA, maybe some of the NBA’s rising, young assistant coaches should get the opportunities with USA Basketball that the likes of Krzyzewski, Boeheim, Donovan, Bennett and Smart receive now.
It might make more sense for some of the younger NBA stars participating with Team USA to be coached solely by assistants in the very league they’re playing in now — alongside top NBA coaches such as Chicago Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau, who splits duty as a Team USA assistant — rather than by college coaches (even if they’re some great ones, like Krzyzewski or Boeheim).
That scenario would also give some valuable, additional coaching experience with some of the NBA’s best talent to assistants who are currently being groomed to be the next good NBA head coaches.
It’s doubtful that other NBA coaches would quip about such an arrangement the way Calipari did with Krzyzewski, and it would put to rest further discord over whether USA Basketball connections give college coaches any unfair recruiting advantages.
But maybe the disadvantages aren’t so much in what Calipari or Wojnarowski felt college coaches like Krzyzewski gain, but in the opportunities that aren’t being given with USA Basketball to some NBA assistants who might like to have the same chances to coach their own, while trying to enhance their own coaching resumes.