I’m amazed that any NBA team would hire a guy with absolutely no coaching experience. I know the Pacers hired Larry Bird with no experience and that worked out. I can’t think of any others off hand.
Will Jason Kidd be successful as a head coach? I’m not sure of his commitment to coaching. If he was really serious then why didn’t he pay his dues as an assistant coach first?
Is this guy going to be gone within a season or two? What kind of talent does he have to work with? Can the Nets win?
I keep thinking of Phil Jackson. That guy was serious about becoming a coach. Several years coaching in the CBA and then Jackson was hired as assistant coach, under Doug Collins, for the Bulls. The guy earned the right to be a head coach.
Because the Nets hired him as their head coach. I imagine most guys would start off as a head coach if they could convince a team to hire them, but they usually can’t do it. He’s not the first guy to become a head coach with no coaching experience, but it’s uncommon and it’s even rarer for a guy to retire and then become a head coach the next week. So nobody really knows what’s going to happen here.
Brook Lopez is really good and so is Deron Williams, at least if he plays like he did in the second half of the season and not like he did in the first half, when it looked like the Nets had just given a huge contract to a guy who was in decline. And Joe Johnson is good. Most of the guys around them struggle to score, and without some big moves I don’t think they have much money to work with. So that could turn into a problem. They were the fourth-best team in the conference this year and they’re likely to stay around that level unless there are some real changes. Their new owner thought they were going to be better than that. But they have a lot of guys who can’t score to save their lives.
You have the right to be a coach if someone hires you. The Warriors hired Mark Jackson a few years ago and he had no coaching experience, and that seems to be working out very well.
Mark Jackson was on TV for a bit, which has most definitely been used as a platform as an entry (or re-entry) into coaching.
I’m skeptical but optimistic for JKidd. Of course with their roster, they’re not going to get much higher than they finished this year (at least next season).
From a purely X’s and O’s standpoint, I think almost any veteran NBA point guard is qualified to be a coach. And Kidd will certainly be able to command automatic respect (initially, anyway) from every player on the roster, since they know he was a Hall of Fame caliber player himself. So, MAYBE this will work out fine.
Even so, I can’t figure out what the Nets management had in mind with this hire. PJ Carlesimo, for all his faults, did a very good job with the Nets last season. If you’re going to fire him, you should have a DEFINITE and SPECIFIC upgrade in mind. If the Nets knew for a fact that, say, Phil Jackson was available and wanted the job, fine! Hire him and pay him top dollar.
But to fire Carlesimo before you know who you’re going to replace him with, and then bring in an untested coach? Not smart.
Unless Kidd is a disaster (by some accounts, he’s prickly and demanding), he can expect to land somewhere between the #3 and #6 seed in the East for at least the next couple seasons. The Nets are capped out and barring a one-sided trade, won’t be able to improve much.
So, best case scenario is probably the #3 seed and getting to the second round.
And that’s probably their best case scenario regardless of who the coach is. I guess Nets management doesn’t believe that, but I think that’s the situation unless the better teams get decimated by injuries or other problems. When Prokhorov bought this team he wanted to make a big splash and have a championship-contending team when they moved to Brooklyn. Instead they have a good but capped out team, so maybe it helps that Kidd is a sexier and more exciting hire.
That’s the real truth of things: players win games, and coaches lose them. A great coach can get the most out of the talent on the roster, but that’s all. A bad coach gets less out of the talent he has (cough::Vinnie Del Negro::cough).
Either way, you’re only as good as your players.
Hiring Kidd will definitely get them more ink and buzz than bringing back Carlesimo would have, that’s true. The Nets are still forging their new identity and trying to compete with the Knicks.