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NBA: Same Coaching Carousel, Different Criteria

By Jameson Miller

Jan 23, 2015; Dallas, TX, USA; ESPN broadcaster Jeff Van Gundy before the game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Chicago Bulls at the American Airlines Center. The Bulls defeated the Mavericks 102-98. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 23, 2015; Dallas, TX, USA; ESPN broadcaster Jeff Van Gundy before the game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Chicago Bulls at the American Airlines Center. The Bulls defeated the Mavericks 102-98. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports /
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Leaving well enough alone has never been a strong suit of NBA owners. It’s an understandable viewpoint—after all, if you’re successful enough to own an NBA franchise, chances are you didn’t get there by playing it safe and following any kind of status quo.

That is, unless you inherited the team by the sheer biological coincidence of being the son or daughter of someone who obtained their wealth through the more traditional channels of bootstrap capitalism.

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There are perhaps no greater victims of the restless nature of NBA owners (and fan bases) than the head coaches they employ.

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Unable to simply spend their way to championships in a salary-capped league, many owners throw their financial weight around by cycling through coaches, general managers, vice presidents and players at warp speed, paying their various underlings to play for other teams, live in other cities or just simply … go away.

One of the favorite clichés of professional sports commentary is saying that these leagues are “results-oriented” or “make-or-miss.”

While these designations certainly fall in line with the ethos that spurred the Detroit Pistons to throw a wad of bills at Josh Smith’s face as he cleaned out his desk, or emboldened the Cleveland Cavaliers to pull the plug on Mike Brown 2.0 after only one season, the lens through which these results are being viewed has shifted.

It’s no longer enough for a coach to simply rack up a ho-hum franchise record in regular-season victories. Just ask Vinny Del Negro, who led the Los Angeles Clippers to a franchise-record 56 wins just two seasons ago, only to see his contract not get renewed on the heels of a disappointing first-round loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.

Speaking of the Grizzlies, the very same year they put the kibosh on L.A.’s title hopes as well as Del Negro’s tenure there, Memphis also won a franchise-record 56 games and went on to advance to the Western Conference Finals … yet head coach Lionel Hollins was still allowed to walk at season’s end due to philosophical differences with management.

Even more fascinating than the dismissals of these coaches is the way we as fans and observers reacted to them. We claimed to see beyond the box scores, identifying Del Negro’s lack of leadership or Hollins outmoded approach as valid justification.

Though it may be a bit myopic to say we’re in the midst of a sea change in the metrics teams use to evaluate head coaching performances, it does seem that there have been plenty of recent, high-profile examples of organizations taking a more nuanced approach to defining success and failure outside of the typical win-loss count.

Take, for example, Monty Williams’ ouster in New Orleans. Though Williams led the Pelicans to 45 wins and a playoff berth last season (seemingly satisfying a preseason mandate set forth by ownership), it wasn’t enough to dissuade Pelicans’ brass from deciding to go in a different direction once the team was eliminated from the playoffs.

While there were a host of issues at play in New Orleans’ decision to part ways with their coach—ranging from possible rifts between Williams, ownership and general manager Dell Demps, to grumblings about the coach’s lack of offensive inventiveness, to bizarre rumors about a potential Joe Dumars coup in the offing—there seemed to be a general belief that Williams would not be the one to lead the Pelicans and their incumbent superstar Anthony Davis to long-term glory, regardless of meeting short term goals and benchmarks and showing tangible, incremental progress on the court.

Similarly, Scott Brooks’ firing in Oklahoma City was difficult to link to any shortcomings in more traditional criteria like win-loss records (last season’s injury-riddled atrocity notwithstanding) and offensive and defensive efficiency. Rather, there seemed to be some kind of difficult to quantify quality that Brooks lacked that ultimately led to his dismissal.

But even trying to put what that shortcoming was into words results in a slew of “umms,” “likes,” “ya knows?” and nonsensical hand gestures while trying to pluck the abstract explanation out of thin air.

On the contrary, Jeff Van Gundy has some very concrete reasons to offer up for why Brooks should never have lost the job in the first place. In a recent interview with The Oklahoman’s Darnell Mayberry, Van Gundy gave a ringing endorsement of the job Brooks did while pacing the Thunder sidelines:

"I just can’t say enough great things about Scott. I thought with his body of work, I was shocked that he wasn’t given a contract extension. To me, Scott Brooks is the type of personality; he and Billy have very, very similar personal qualities and personal character. Scott to me is a great competitor, he’s really smart and he’s great with people. And I thought this year was his finest hour as a coach. I just think he did a great job in all his years. But this year, keeping it together, organized, energized, competitive, it was Coach of the Year stuff. It really was."

Van Gundy’s comments aren’t surprising in the least, but they do reopen a discussion about how organizations go about evaluating coaching performance, and whether or not a coach is judged solely on merit, as opposed to uncontrollable external factors.

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    • The “why now?” argument was well-trodden territory in the wake of Brooks’ firing, and it’s certainly a fair point to make. If ownership was planning on going a different direction, why wait until after the season?

    After all, there’s no way Oklahoma City’s powers that be could have fairly judged Scott’s performance last season based on the team’s record in light of the absurd amount of bad health luck they endured.

    In light of Brooks’ firing, fans were challenged to hold in mind the seemingly disparate notions that Scott didn’t necessarily deserve to be fired, yet the Thunder made the right choice in letting him go.

    As the NBA continues to evolve away from the glorification of raw statistics and empty numbers, front offices will also continue to refine how they assess coaching performance, adding further nuance to their decision making process and further divorcing short-term success from long-term assessments.

    Whether or not this results in an increase in patience from owners or simply redirects their impatience onto new targets remains to be seen.

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