A spirited discussion with a general manager nearly a decade ago helped me form a trusty philosophy for evaluating NBA coaches.
This was not long after LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in July 2010, which many around the league view as the launch of the NBA’s player empowerment era.
I declared that buy-in from players meant far more for coaches in the modern game than strategic acumen. The GM reminded me that nothing was more important to a coach’s success than talent but agreed with the rest of the premise.
I’ve made a habit of reciting these rankings (and cheekily claiming them as my own) ever since. The No. 1 variable for any new coach’s odds of success is the quality of the roster. No. 2 is player belief in the coach’s knowledge, messaging and system, and in-game mastery of Xs and Os is a distant third.
This is not to say that game management doesn’t matter in the NBA. It will always be a big deal — no one knows it better right now than Mike Budenholzer, Milwaukee’s under-fire head coach — and it will almost certainly rank as Steve Nash’s biggest weakness as a rookie coach with the Brooklyn Nets next season. Nash, after all, is new to coaching.
Yet there are moves that can offset what an inexperienced coach lacks in that area. The Nets can surround Nash with sharp, well-traveled assistant coaches to help him with the nuances of in-game adjustments, substitution patterns, drawing up plays on the fly and other coaching “feel” matters as he learns them. It’s the Larry Bird Model that crystallized 20 years ago, when Bird helped steer the Indiana Pacers into the 2000 NBA Finals as an unseasoned head coach with top-shelf offensive (Rick Carlisle) and defensive coordinators (Dick Harter) flanking him.
Tactical experts like Carlisle and Harter are much easier to find than a coach who, before his first practice, holds deep respect from Kevin Durant. Nash and Duran first bonded after being introduced by Adam Harrington, who is now a Nets assistant coach but played with Nash in Dallas and began training Durant during the 2013-14 season, when Durant won the MVP Award with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Nash and Durant then worked together, albeit in brief spurts, throughout Durant’s three seasons with the Golden State Warriors, when Nash would drop by the Warriors’ practice gym in his role as a part-time consultant in player development. It was impossible to miss that Nash was more apt to work with the 7-foot Durant than guards Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
“My Yoda,” Durant called Nash in those days.
Yet when Nash landed the Nets’ job last week, another relationship came into focus: Nash’s ties to Nets general manager Sean Marks. Even though I covered Nash at close range for much of his NBA career, I didn’t realize how close he and Marks had grown during their brief stint as teammates in Phoenix — or how far back the bond stretched. Nash and Marks have known each other for more than 20 years, starting out as international basketball rivals representing Canada and New Zealand.
Those are the primary reasons Nash landed the Nets job before anyone even knew he was interested. Nash’s new boss has seen firsthand the way that, as a player, he could galvanize a team and make everyone around him, even a 15th man like Marks, feel good.
“He’s going to be great,” said Alvin Gentry, who coached Nash and Marks as an assistant with Phoenix, then took over as the Suns’ head coach before an unexpected run to the Western Conference finals in 2010.
“Steve is tremendous with people,” Gentry continued. “He will get along great with players, and he has a great demeanor for coaching — great competitor, but always under control.”
Even so, last week’s fiery debate after the Nets hired Nash, as a white coach with zero coaching experience, was understandable — and needed. Even if you agreed with TNT’s Charles Barkley that criticism of the Nets was overwrought, there is a long-standing diversity issue in the NBA’s coaching and front-office ranks.
There are only five Black head coaches in a league with a player pool that is an estimated 80% Black, although four teams have coaching vacancies — including New Orleans, which fired Gentry last month. There are also just seven Black front-office executives with varying degrees of lead decision-making power: Cleveland’s Koby Altman, Detroit’s Troy Weaver, Philadelphia’s Elton Brand, Phoenix’s James Jones, Sacramento’s Joe Dumars, San Antonio’s Brian Wright and Toronto’s Masai Ujiri.
Only Ujiri, of that group, holds the title of team president.
The numbers are abysmal. They would be disheartening even if this league, and this country, were not in the midst of a national reckoning on race. The NBA may grade well in diversity studies when measured against the other major North American sports leagues, but it is not enough for this league to outpace the NFL and Major League Baseball.
So maybe it is time for the NBA to consider crafting its own version of the NFL’s “Rooney Rule” — something stronger at the league level to help nonwhite coaching and front-office candidates and to address the failings Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged in June.
“There is no doubt there is more we can do internally, the league and our teams, and in terms of hiring practices,” Silver said.
I nonetheless share Barkley’s view that Nash got this job, above all, because he’s Steve Nash. He got it because of the exclusive connections he established with two of the Nets’ foremost power brokers. I don’t believe, as my former ESPN colleague Stephen A. Smith said, that his hiring is an example of white privilege.
Who else could the Nets have considered who has such deep buy-in from Marks and, most crucially, Durant? It puts Nash on good footing in the climb to earn the same support from the mercurial Kyrie Irving, as well as from Joe Tsai, the new Nets owner.
The Nets, though, will surely be asked to explain their hiring process in greater detail Wednesday, when Nash is formally introduced as their new coach in a virtual news conference — and they have to know the questions won’t stop there.
Several significant challenges loom for Nash beyond mastering all the in-game ins and outs, like dealing with the intense news media demands that come with any coaching job in New York. Nash’s maiden coaching foray also comes with lofty expectations, as Durant will probably be back from an extended injury absence, and the Nets will be expected to contend immediately.
The long, stressful hours of a head coach’s life figure to be another shock to the system after Nash spent the first five seasons of his retirement juggling various part-time basketball and soccer jobs that, above all, allowed him to be a largely full-time father to his five children.
Yet there is no ambiguity about Task No. 1: Nash must forge a winning connection with Irving.
“Guys,” Gentry emphasized, “will love playing for Steve.”
They sure loved playing alongside him, but Nash — after transforming himself from a lightly recruited collegian to a two-time NBA MVP Award winner — will have to prove himself all over again from the bench. No matter how you rank the keys to success, coaching tends to be a different game.
c.2020 New York Times News Service
