Jason Kidd did the Nets a favor by showing he doesn’t fully appreciate being the head coach of their franchise. Now general manager Billy King and owner Mikhail Prokhorov can find someone who will. If you’re asking me, the name at the top of their list should be Patrick Ewing.
Somehow it’s fashionable in the NBA to hire head coaches with no previous experience. Mark Jackson went from the broadcast booth to Golden State three years ago. Kidd became the Nets coach last year after ending his Hall of Fame caliber playing career. Steve Kerr went from broadcasting to coaching this year and Derek Fisher was named the Knicks head coach less than a month after Oklahoma City was bounced from the playoffs, ending his 17-year playing career.
Credit the advent of social media for a lot of that. Somebody mentions Kerr is on Phil Jackson’s radar to coach the Knicks and after months of tweets, sports talk radio and internet blogs, Golden State decides to give Kerr a $25 million contract over five years. Same for Fisher, whose average of $5 million per year is more than he made in his final year as a player ($3.4 million). Good for them. If franchises are worth $2 billion, coaches can command that kind of salary.
But lost in all this is the old model that said players had to get coaching experience as an assistant before they would ever be considered qualified to become a head coach. That’s what Ewing was told and that’s what he did. He has been an assistant coach in the league since 2003, which makes him ready and qualified to be the Nets head coach.
Look, the Nets can hire George Karl or Lionel Hollins or even Mark Jackson, and few could argue the choice. They all have enjoyed success as head coaches. But by hiring Kidd last year, the Nets have shown they’re not afraid to think outside the box and give someone a chance to prove his worth. Ewing deserves that chance.
His Hall of Fame career as a player speaks for itself. If you question that because he never won an NBA title, then you don’t really know basketball. He played under John Thompson at Georgetown and for Rick Pitino, Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy with the Knicks. And he is currently the associate head coach with the Charlotte Hornets. He has interviewed for head coaching vacancies in Charlotte and Detroit, but hasn’t gotten the promotion every assistant coach wants.
His biggest shortcoming seems to be that he wasn’t a point guard. For some reason, that seems to be part of the criteria these days.
“They don’t think that big men can do as good a job as point guards, I guess,” Ewing said during a recent interview on CBS Sports radio. “They fail to realize that, yes, a point guard is the leader of the team on the offensive end, but the center is the leader of the team on the defensive end. We have to do the same thing on the defensive end that the guards do on the offensive end.”
Ewing hoped he might get a call from Phil Jackson when the Knicks were looking to replace Mike Woodson. But Fisher, with no coaching experience and no previous ties to the organization, got the job. Now the Nets should counter by hiring Ewing.
It would be the kind of big, bold back-page move the Nets need to make after being betrayed by Kidd within a week of the opening of free agency on July 1. Who knows whether Ewing, 51, will be a great or even good head coach? But the same can be questioned about Kerr and Fisher.
What we do know about Ewing is this: He gave all he had as a player. He has dealt with the New York media. He has learned his craft as an assistant coach; and something tells me he’ll appreciate being the Nets head coach a lot more than Jason Kidd did.