Steve Clifford Extended By Charlotte Hornets

The Charlotte Hornets have agreed to extend head coach Steve Clifford

Well, it seems as though the Charlotte Hornets need not fear about Steve Clifford’s potential departure, after all.

According to Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer, the Hornets reached an agreement early Tuesday morning to extend Clifford for the next three seasons.

This new development comes just one week after Clifford was a rumored candidate to fill the Houston Rockets’ head coaching vacancy. Clifford on the Rockets’ radar served to be an ultimatum for the Charlotte Hornets, who were given the choices to either extend or lose Clifford, who is now in his third attempt to get the Charlotte Hornets back into the playoffs.

At this point in time, the monetary figures of the extension haven’t been disclosed, but the new contract is guaranteed through the 2018-19 season.

In the NBA, coaching does matter — a lot, actually — and Clifford is the poster boy for that claim. In 2012-13, he came to the Bobcats, a franchise that was the laughingstock of the entire league, and with the help of then-newcomer Al Jefferson, willed Charlotte to an incredible second half of the season and an eventual playoff berth. They were swept in the first round, of course, by the Miami Heat, but if Jefferson had stayed healthy, that series could’ve gone quite differently.

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For many Hornets fans, it’s been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster with Clifford. After that first year’s success, the newly-branded Charlotte Hornets had all the momentum in the world going forward, a new star on the roster in Lance Stephenson, and a promising nucleus of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kemba Walker, and Al Jefferson. When that same nucleus failed to make the playoffs last season under Clifford’s leadership, there was an ever-vocal army of Hornets fans calling for the head coach to be fired. Now that the Hornets are winning again (they’re seventh in the East right now), people are back on board.

The Hornets — as much as their offense has improved this year — are still a defense-first team. Charlotte has creative offensive players on the roster, the likes of Jeremy Lamb, Kemba Walker, Al Jefferson, Nicolas Batum, Jeremy Lin, etc., but offense will always waiver — for any team; during those times, it’s defense that will be the separating factor, hence the reason Clifford is so indispensable for this Charlotte team. His schemes have proven to be effective, even with a roster packed with less-than-stellar individual defenders.

With this move to extend Clifford, it seems more and more likely that Charlotte tries to hang on its other pieces that will be up-for-grabs this summer, Al Jefferson, Nicolas Batum, and potentially swingman Marvin Williams. This Hornets team has looked fantastic in its recent showings, which included a 23-point comeback win vs. the Sacramento Kings on Monday night in perhaps one of the best Hornets games of all time. This group, right now, is doing what it’s supposed to do, and we’ll see if that’s enough for Rich Cho when the offseason comes around.

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If the Hornets can maintain this high level of play and make the playoffs this year, the move to re-sign Steve Clifford will be more justifiable.

So with that, good luck to you Coach Clifford; you’ve got a lot to prove.