As Larry Bird declared on Thursday, he didn't fire Frank Vogel, he chose to not renew his contract. Obviously, this is semantics. The effect is the same. That said, the fact that Vogel's contract had expired is a relevant piece of information in two ways.
The reason Larry Bird couldn’t bring Frank Vogel back to the Pacers
Vogel’s performance was secondary to the larger issue of his contract being up. Turns out that detail is actually relevant.
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Teams -- especially small-market teams like the Pacers -- are loathe to pay people millions of dollars to go away. Oh, these teams still fire coaches at an alarming rate, and eat lots of salary in doing so. But they don't like to do it. Some teams in this situation may be more patient with a coach to whom they have outstanding commitments. Decisions on whether to bring said coach back have a financial element. "Do we need change so badly that we should pay this coach $3 million to disappear and a new coach $3 million to clean up the mess?" That was not in play for Bird. As such, that may have made losing Vogel more palatable to the folks who sign Bird's considerable checks.
More importantly, because Vogel wasn’t under contract, bringing him back would have committed the Pacers to paying the coach for multiple years. Unlike players trying to prove themselves, coaches don’t take one-year deals. The minimum term for a coach with Vogel’s stature would be three years, and given his record of success in Indiana, that might be the short end. If Bird wanted to give Vogel one more year to adapt to the franchise’s expressed vision for the Pacers, he’d have had to commit to at least three more years of salary.
If Bird was on the fence about whether Vogel could adapt as required -- and it’s clear Bird at the very least doubted it was possible -- then he could not offer a new contract. It would be irresponsible to hedge on a coach, give him a multi-year deal anyway and then tear it up a year into the deal.
Consider what happened in Houston: the Rockets gave Kevin McHale a three-year guaranteed extension in Dec. 2014 that was worth a reported $4 million per season and kicked in for the start of the 2015-16 season. McHale got fired 11 games into that season. The Rockets gave McHale $4 million to run training camp, coach 11 games and spend the rest of the year taking pot shots at James Harden from the comfort of his recliner. They'll be paying McHale about $4 million for each of the next two seasons, and they'll be paying a new coach some similar amount of money. (Or lots more, if it's Jeff Van Gundy.) That's a big waste of money!
Houston has the revenue to ignore such an outlay. The Pacers wouldn't go broke over such a deal, to be sure. (Elsewise the Kings would be in Chapter 11 by now.) But it's not a smart financial move to commit to something or someone you aren't committed to. By refusing to give Vogel one more chance, Bird is being pragmatic on behalf of the franchise.
Sure, Bird's demands of Vogel to turn this defense-first roster into a fleet scoring machine are absurd. If you crack wise about Vivek Ranadive for prioritizing aesthetics over effectiveness, sling some insults Larry Legend's way as well. Bird's centerpiece star, Paul George, wasn't interested in playing power forward after trying it for a couple of weeks. Vogel did the best he could to implement small lineups with a fairly big roster (including Myles Turner, the team's next star, who was drafted by Bird).
Bird made demands of Vogel, Vogel did what he could with the ingredients at hand and didn’t meet expectations. It’s absolutely worth asking if the expectations were absurd. But Bird didn’t think so, and because of that and the contract situation, there was no responsible way in which he could bring Vogel back. C’est la vie.
