Nobody is ever owed a thing in professional sports, a lesson that’s been hammered home for as long as there have been men taking money to play games from men who pay them to play those games.
Babe Ruth wanted to manage the Yankees. You can argue there never has been an athlete who ever has earned more completely the right to at least try his hand at a job than Ruth managing the Yankees, who he put on the map, who he pushed on their way to being … well, the Yankees.
Ruth never got a sniff.
Pro sports is a ruthless business, and it can be an unfair and unfeeling one, too. We see that every spring when NBA jobs open up — and in the case of this spring, good jobs, jobs that aren’t necessarily dead-end jobs, jobs where the right man will find enough talent to win right away — and Patrick Ewing goes another year without being given a chance to coach.
Ewing’s son and namesake, frustrated at seeing Jason Kidd walk right from a player’s uniform to a head coach’s suit, took to Twitter this week to express his anger:
“For real … I’m mad J Kidd got a head coaching job [days] after retiring n my pops been coaching 10 years n barely gets a look,” he tweeted. “That being said I hope j Kidd does great I’m glad the Nets brought him back. I love the Knicks but the best offer they had [for my father] was NBDL HC?”
This isn’t simply a Knicks issue, though it’s true the Knicks’ job has opened at least three times in the years since the elder Ewing committed himself to learning the trade as an assistant, putting in the kind of time Kidd (and Mark Jackson, and Doc Rivers, and Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson) never had to put in.
“I don’t think Patrick is owed a job,” Jeff Van Gundy, one of the men who employed Ewing as an assistant, said a few months ago. “But I do think there are a lot of NBA teams who are missing the boat by not giving this man an opportunity. I think he would be a great — not a good, a great — head coach. But he needs someone to give him the shot.”
Would Ewing be a great coach? It’s the same answer we have to give for Kidd: It’s impossible to know. And it’s the same question you ask about any coach. Did anyone in 1982 really believe the Lakers had hired themselves a Hall of Famer when they elevated Pat Riley to replace Paul Westhead? Was there universal acclaim in 1989 when the Bulls fired Doug Collins and replaced him with his oddball hippie assistant Phil Jackson?
We know now those were smart hires because they worked out. But the point is, they were given a chance. So were the likes of Kurt Rambis and Marc Iavaroni, to name two — playing contemporaries of Ewing, fellow big men, both given the chance to fail on their own watch and their own merit.
And nobody is willing to give Patrick a shot, not even his alleged friend, Michael Jordan, who last year wandered far outside the envelope to hire Mike Dunlap and this year made a similarly bold choice in Steve Clifford, before hiring Ewing to work — again — as an assistant.
All due respect to Clifford, who did win 86 games as a head coach at Adelphi 15 years ago, but if Jordan were going to take a flier, he couldn’t have done it with one of the greatest players of all time? Maybe it would be a fiasco. Maybe Patrick isn’t cut out for the job. It sure would be nice to find out one way or another.
Whack Back at Vac
Jerry Jacobs: What I like about Coach Jason Kidd is that he can always suit up and show the stumbling Nets how it’s done.
Vac: Let’s just hope if that happens it looks a little better than when Bob Cousy tried the same trick in 1969-70. Older Knicks fans know what I mean.
Paul Avrin: I hate the Heat. I was rooting so hard for Indiana to beat them. Everyone I know who is a basketball fan, mostly Knick fans, hates the Heat and wants them to lose. I don’t know who you talk to.
Vac: Plenty of response, about 65 percent echoing this, which I’m delighted to see. Though two years ago I’m pretty sure it would’ve been 85 percent.
@donstohrerjr: Anthony Young, look out, here comes Shaun Marcum
@MikeVacc: I think 1977 Jerry Koosman may be looking over his shoulder soon, too.
Ken Schlapp: I always find it amazing how badly baseball is vilified by steroid issues and football has gotten a pass. The difference is that baseball would continue without it and if they truly cracked down on steroids in football, there would be nobody left to play in the NFL. Our world is full of double standards.
Vac: Nobody writes poems about football, which probably is one of the reasons we hold baseball to a higher standard. Foolishly.
Vac’s Whacks
I’m going to assume the pop-up that fell untouched between Reid Brignac and David Adams the other night in Anaheim probably will be treated with significantly less hysterical social debate than the one that plunked between Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez a few years back.
* If we were ever somehow able to stage a game between the 20-inning Mets of last Saturday and the 18-inning Yankees of Thursday, there might not be an active baseball fan left in all of New York City by the time they were done.
* Doc Emrick is so good he had half of America hoping the Bruins and the Blackhawks would go to nine overtimes the other night just so he could keep talking long into the night.
* Watching Bartolo Colon in action the other night, I sort of find it hard to believe he used to pay regular visits to Biogenesis. Now the Shoney’s across the street is another matter …