The NBA coaching institution strikes back

After a dry 2017 summer with no NBA head coaching changes, things got back to normal in 2018. Nine teams have hired new head coaches this summer, seven of those coming in the Eastern Conference.

If there’s one unifying theme in the hirings, it’s that the profession of coaching has struck back.

All changes now appear to be complete, barring a late dismissal or retirement. Three of the nine openings occurred during the season — this after a 2016-17 with no coach firings — but each of those teams waited until the offseason to make permanent assignments. The other six came open as coaches were dismissed after seasons ended. In at least one of these cases — Mike Budenholzer and the Atlanta Hawks — it appeared to be the coach breaking up with the team instead of the opposite.

What’s notable is that all nine of the head coaches hired this summer come from the ranks of NBA coaching.

This may not seem surprising, but consider how many recent head coaches we’ve seen come from other avenues. There have been head coaches who came straight out of playing in the NBA with no actual coaching experience, like Derek Fisher and Jason Kidd. There have been college coaches like Brad Stevens and Fred Hoiberg. There are have been international coaches — well, one international coach — like David Blatt. There have been retired players who made their mark in front offices like Kevin McHale and, to some extent, Steve Kerr. There have been retired players with broadcast TV experience but no coaching experience, like Mark Jackson and, to some extent, Steve Kerr. (Kerr is a success story for both the front office-to-sidelines and the broadcast-to-sidelines pipelines.)

NBA head coaches are usually either assistant NBA coaches or former NBA head coaches, but there are always exceptions. What’s notable about the 2018 merry-go-round is that there were no exceptions.

In fact, the number of new hires who were head coaches of other NBA teams in the 2017-18 season is remarkable. Mike Budenholzer went from the Hawks to the Bucks. Dwane Casey was unemployed for only weeks, going from the Raptors to the Pistons. David Fizdale was fired early last season by the Grizzlies and hired by the Knicks. Steve Clifford was dismissed by the Hornets at the end of the season and got right back into it by taking over the Magic.

The five other teams all hired coaches who were NBA assistants last year, two of whom with recent interim head coaching experience. The Grizzlies hired J.B. Bickerstaff, who spent most of the season as Memphis’s interim head man a couple years after doing the same for the Rockets. James Borrego was Orlando’s interim head coach in 2015 before heading back to the Spurs’ bench. The Hornets brought him as the new head coach this summer.

The Raptors stayed internal by promoting assistant coach Nick Nurse to the big job. The Hawks, facing a rebuild, hired assistant coach Lloyd Pierce from the 76ers. And the Suns, who’d fired Earl Watson all the way back in October after three regular season games, hired Jazz assistant Igor Kokoskov, himself a former Phoenix assistant.

Nine hirings, all marked with long NBA coaching resumés.

Frankly, few top candidates even seemed in strong contention. Even most unorthodox candidates are actually finding their way into the traditional pipeline. Becky Hammon, who has now been an NBA assistant coach for four years, drew a lot of attention after being interviewed for the Bucks job. But she’s in the NBA coaching pipeline.

The same applies to Jerry Stackhouse, who has been serving as a head coach in the G League until this summer, when he was a top candidate for a couple of jobs. (He eventually took a lead assistant job with the Grizzlies).

There is seemingly no expectation for players to jump straight from the court to the lead chair on the sidelines at this point. Perhaps Fisher’s disastrous rein in New York and Kidd’s two bad break-ups have quenched that thirst. Note, too, that Luke Walton spent a couple of seasons as an assistant in Golden State before his star turn running the Lakers.

Sarunas Jasikevicius received a long look from the Raptors, following the Blatt mold somewhat. (Jasikevicius, a legend in European and world basketball, did briefly play in the NBA.) Jay Wright and Tom Izzo were the focus of rumors, at the very least. But in the end, the jobs went to the NBA professionals, not outsider candidates.

It’s interesting that every team went in this direction. The availability of Casey, Budenholzer, Fizdale, and Clifford — all highly respected, somewhat accomplished NBA head coaches who had simply worn out their seats with their old teams — shaped the offseason hiring spree, certainly. But given Kerr and Stevens’ enormous success and the lasting impression of Gregg Popovich, hired out of the front office more than two decades ago, it’s a surprise that teams are going with those who have paid their dues instead of trying something outside the box.

Perhaps the memories of the experiments gone wrong — like Fisher, like the litany of failed college coaches, like Blatt to some extent — are stronger than the belief in any outsider candidates right now. But some team will cut against the grain again soon, and it’ll be interesting to see how that coach’s success or failure shifts the paradigm in hiring.

(One final note, a positive: four of the nine hired this summer are coaches of color, something the NBA has been struggling with in recent years. Two of those, Pierce and Bickerstaff, are first-time NBA head coaches who did not play in the NBA — a huge blind spot in NBA coaching over the past decade plus. This is progress in the form of expanded opportunity.)