Derek is from my city, Little Rock and played for the UALR Trojans. Glad to see my hometown guy make good. He’s had an amazing career since playing for Parkview High.
What an opportunity to learn coaching from the very best. Phil will surround him with experienced assistants to handle the administrative duties. Derek can teach these players the triangle offense and hopefully Phil will be teaching in practice too. I’ve heard Derek was a natural leader on the Lakers. He should know how to motivate this team. He’ll make a bunch of mistakes too. Thats part of learning.
I have no idea how this will work out. It may take three seasons to build a competitive team from the ground up. James Dolan may fire everybody after the first losing season. Hard to predict what Dolan might do.
I think the experience training under Phil is a win, win for Derek. He walks away with a great coaching education and hefty paycheck regardless of what Dolan does with the team.
Does anyone think Phil has any chance of succeeding with an inexperienced coach?
I’m a little puzzled by this trend of sending ex players directly to head coaching jobs. It seems odd that they don’t serve as assistant coaches first. It is a more intuitive path for learning the job.
Derek will need a lot of Phil’s hands on help for this to have any chance of working. I’d guess Phil is well aware of that. I’m not a Knicks fan, but will be interested to see how they do next season.