Re: Flip's Agenda - #1. New Coach
Posted: Wed May 28, 2014 9:01 pm
Not sure if this is the right place to post this but thought it was pretty interesting coming from David Aldridge who I respect as a journalist. It is from his blog on NBA.com:.
"I told you when I wrote about ex-Warriors coach Mark Jackson two weeks ago: When it comes to acts of personnel lunacy by many of today's NBA owners, the skin color of the people they cashier doesn't matter.
Today's latest: Grizzlies owner Robert Pera. If you can figure out what the hell he's doing, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
A year ago, Pera signed off on letting the franchise's all-time winningest coach, Lionel Hollins, walk. Memphis never made a serious effort to re-sign him. Last week, Pera fired the guy that decided not to bring Hollins back, team CEO Jason Levien, who'd help broker the deal that got Pera the team in the first place, along with the team's well-respected assistant general manager, Stu Lash.
Now, Pera came within a day or so of losing the coach that replaced Hollins and won 50 games this season, Dave Joerger. Pera seemingly dared Joerger to make a deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves to become their new coach -- until, at the 11th hour, suddenly realizing Joerger was indeed going to leave, somehow begged him to stay, committing to a new contract and other as yet unnamed goodies.
Pera admitted during a Twitter chat with Grizzlies fans Sunday that he had never spoken with Joerger, who's been there for almost a year, one-on-one before this weekend. "I think he's a great coach," Pera told one fan.
Again: The owner of the Grizzlies had not spoken one-on-one with the coach of the Grizzlies, who was hired June 25, 2013 until May 24, 2014.
And, just generally, it's been my experience over the years that teams don't let coaches they think are "great" talk with other teams in their same conference about coaching vacancies. Pera insisted in the chat that he had not yet spoken to the Timberwolves about potential compensation if he were to let Joerger out of his deal, but the Wolves, knowing leverage when they had it, were playing hardball -- no picks, no cash -- and if I knew that, the Grizzlies surely did.
Pera told another fan who wanted to know why things changed so quickly with Joerger: "I think Dave is a great coach. But, personnel has to want to be in Memphis. I know now Dave 100% wants to be here."
Do you think that, maybe, giving Joerger permission to talk to the Wolves may have affected whether he was 100 percent committed to the Grizzlies?
But, hey, Pera's Twitter chat had the hashtag #FactsOnly. So it must have been on the up and up.
I know that I sound flip. I'm not trying to be. I am, though, extremely worried about what these new-jack owners are doing with their teams.
The Warriors, to be kind, stunk for two decades. Mark Jackson comes in and, for the first time since 1992, takes them to back-to-back playoff berths. After all that, he's shown the door. Among the (leaked) reasons: He was stubborn. He didn't want Jerry West at practice. He moved an assistant coach's parking spot. And his team lost some games to teams they should have beaten at home.
The Warriors were 51-31 this season.
The Grizzlies were 50-32, with a rookie coach, a rash of injuries to key players -- including Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and Tony Allen. They turned a profit for the first time in years. Their ticket revenues were up more than 50 percent from two years ago. They made some smart personnel moves this season, bringing in Courtney Lee, Nick Calathes and James Johnson at key stretches to shore up the roster.
And Pera decimated the front office as its reward, leaving only former ESPN.com columnist John Hollinger, the Grizzlies' vice president of basketball operations, in his current post. Pera then restored former general manager Chris Wallace -- whom, it will be said again here for the billionth time, built the roster Pera now enjoys -- to his old job, on an interim basis, having exiled him for the Levien regime.
For a couple of days thereafter, a heretofore unknown lawyer, David Mincberg, who'd been brought into the organization by Levien -- Mincberg was also working as general counsel for D.C. United, the Major League Soccer franchise for which Levien is Managing Partner -- seemed to have stepped into the void and assumed some sort of larger role, having befriended and worked for Pera over the past year.
But when word leaked that the Grizzlies might be looking at replacing Joerger with former Warriors and Kings coach Eric Musselman, with whom Mincberg had become friendly over the last year, the Grizzlies quickly stomped that fire out. Memphis said Mincberg was only a scout and would not be in any kind of significant front-office role going forward.
This is madness, as Sir Lawrence Oliver said about something completely different in Marathon Man.
Lash, a former player agent who did good work for Denver before coming to Memphis, is taking the high road.
"I don't really have anything to say other than I'm thankful for the opportunity the Grizzlies gave me and I'm focused on future opportunities," he texted Sunday.
It is hard to win in this league. A lot of things have to go right for a team to win 50 games in a season. In short, it is a major accomplishment.
Letting Hollins go still makes no sense, given that his no-nonsense approach was the template for Memphis' success his last four seasons there. True: Memphis was horrible on offense under Hollins. But the Grizz choked the life out of opponents with their outstanding combination of perimeter defensive chops (unleashing Allen on any and all opposing ballhandlers and/or shooting threats) and paint protection, and Gasol, last year's Defensive Player of the Year, anchoring the middle.
It wasn't pretty, but it worked, and the Grizzlies got to the Western Conference finals last year.
Then, for reasons never fully explained -- though Occam's Razor Thinking suggests Pera simply didn't want to pay what Hollins wanted -- the Grizzlies barely lifted a finger trying to retain him. No, Hollins didn't want to make the Rudy Gay trade, but you don't fire a coach because he doesn't want to move one of his best players (you think Tom Thibodeau wanted to trade Luol Deng?).
In came Joerger, who'd been hired by Marc Iavaroni and survived after Iavaroni was fired as coach in 2009. It was clear that Pera and Levien were more comfortable with Joerger than Hollins.
But that apparently changed, and quickly, at least at Pera's end.
Who knows why? Did Pera get mad at his coach when Joerger objected to Pera's infamous desire to play one-on-one against Allen at the start of training camp last fall? The coach, from what I'm told, rather correctly thought it was a bad idea for Pera -- who, I get it, loves playing ball -- to get out on the court with an actual, you know, NBA player, who could get hurt doing such things. The Spurs' name came up. As in, the Spurs wouldn't do this kind of nonsense.
(You may recall Pera then challenged Michael Jordan to play one-on-one, and that Jordan found the idea, as he told the Charlotte Observer, "comical.")
The Grizzlies got out of the gate slowly this season, not unexpectedly given the injuries and with Joerger learning the ropes. But the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported last week that Pera wanted to fire Joerger early in the season, only to be talked out of it by Levien.
A league source says Pera pushed the coaching staff hard to play Ed Davis all season, and became angry when Joerger gave Davis just 1:28 of burn in a 108-90 Grizzlies win in November that upped Memphis' record to 3-3. Pera, according to the source, indeed wanted to move on Joerger at the time, but cooler heads prevailed.
The Grizzlies got healthy, Joerger went back to using some of the old stuff Hollins used -- and after starting 10-15, Memphis went 40-17 the rest of the regular season, had a 3-2 first-round series lead on Oklahoma City with Allen driving Kevin Durant batty.
Only a monster night from Durant in Game 6 -- and a dubious suspension of Zach Randolph in Game 7, after throwing a sort-of punch that landed in Thunder rookie Stephen Adams' neck -- allowed OKC to oust Memphis. By any fair measure, the Grizzlies had an extremely successful season.
Pera still turned on Levien and Lash. Levien had put together the group of investors that stepped in in 2012 when the stock in Pera's Ubiquiti Networks, as Forbes Magazine put it, "tanked," and the NBA began to get nervous about Pera's ability to make the numbers work.
Venture capitalist Steve Kaplan and health care executive Daniel Straus each put in $25 million. Several local owners who had previously invested in the team with the team's late former owner, Michael Heisley, again ponied up, as did former NBA players Penny Hardaway and Elliot Perry. Justin Timberlake and Ashley Manning, wife of Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, each contributed $5 million. (Memphis sports reporter George Lapides first reported the team's numerous investor list in 2012.)
Now, though, Pera has Ubiquiti flush again -- according to Forbes, the company has almost tripled in value over the last year. And he convinced Joerger to come back -- which really isn't a hardship, given that he's got $4 million coming to him whether he finishes the two years left on his contract.
Joerger, though, is ready to give it another try.
"Dave's no dummy," an associate said. "He's not going to stay in a (bleep)storm unless he realized that what was in the past is going to stay there."
And Pera is ready, as he told one fan in his TweetFest, to be more hands-on in his running of the team.
"We are so close ... I can feel it," Pera told the fan. "I think we just need to be tighter as a team between Dave, myself, FO, players."
Again: it's Pera's team. He bought it and he can be as involved as he wants. He can play HORSE with Tony Allen every day after practice, I guess. But the teams that have won consistently over the years in this league have had owners who hire good people, let them do their jobs, and get out of the way. Sunday, Peter Holt said, "I'm really just a fan now. Because I've done my job." Those are words to emulate."
Will be interesting to see what happens in Memphis going forward.
"I told you when I wrote about ex-Warriors coach Mark Jackson two weeks ago: When it comes to acts of personnel lunacy by many of today's NBA owners, the skin color of the people they cashier doesn't matter.
Today's latest: Grizzlies owner Robert Pera. If you can figure out what the hell he's doing, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
A year ago, Pera signed off on letting the franchise's all-time winningest coach, Lionel Hollins, walk. Memphis never made a serious effort to re-sign him. Last week, Pera fired the guy that decided not to bring Hollins back, team CEO Jason Levien, who'd help broker the deal that got Pera the team in the first place, along with the team's well-respected assistant general manager, Stu Lash.
Now, Pera came within a day or so of losing the coach that replaced Hollins and won 50 games this season, Dave Joerger. Pera seemingly dared Joerger to make a deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves to become their new coach -- until, at the 11th hour, suddenly realizing Joerger was indeed going to leave, somehow begged him to stay, committing to a new contract and other as yet unnamed goodies.
Pera admitted during a Twitter chat with Grizzlies fans Sunday that he had never spoken with Joerger, who's been there for almost a year, one-on-one before this weekend. "I think he's a great coach," Pera told one fan.
Again: The owner of the Grizzlies had not spoken one-on-one with the coach of the Grizzlies, who was hired June 25, 2013 until May 24, 2014.
And, just generally, it's been my experience over the years that teams don't let coaches they think are "great" talk with other teams in their same conference about coaching vacancies. Pera insisted in the chat that he had not yet spoken to the Timberwolves about potential compensation if he were to let Joerger out of his deal, but the Wolves, knowing leverage when they had it, were playing hardball -- no picks, no cash -- and if I knew that, the Grizzlies surely did.
Pera told another fan who wanted to know why things changed so quickly with Joerger: "I think Dave is a great coach. But, personnel has to want to be in Memphis. I know now Dave 100% wants to be here."
Do you think that, maybe, giving Joerger permission to talk to the Wolves may have affected whether he was 100 percent committed to the Grizzlies?
But, hey, Pera's Twitter chat had the hashtag #FactsOnly. So it must have been on the up and up.
I know that I sound flip. I'm not trying to be. I am, though, extremely worried about what these new-jack owners are doing with their teams.
The Warriors, to be kind, stunk for two decades. Mark Jackson comes in and, for the first time since 1992, takes them to back-to-back playoff berths. After all that, he's shown the door. Among the (leaked) reasons: He was stubborn. He didn't want Jerry West at practice. He moved an assistant coach's parking spot. And his team lost some games to teams they should have beaten at home.
The Warriors were 51-31 this season.
The Grizzlies were 50-32, with a rookie coach, a rash of injuries to key players -- including Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and Tony Allen. They turned a profit for the first time in years. Their ticket revenues were up more than 50 percent from two years ago. They made some smart personnel moves this season, bringing in Courtney Lee, Nick Calathes and James Johnson at key stretches to shore up the roster.
And Pera decimated the front office as its reward, leaving only former ESPN.com columnist John Hollinger, the Grizzlies' vice president of basketball operations, in his current post. Pera then restored former general manager Chris Wallace -- whom, it will be said again here for the billionth time, built the roster Pera now enjoys -- to his old job, on an interim basis, having exiled him for the Levien regime.
For a couple of days thereafter, a heretofore unknown lawyer, David Mincberg, who'd been brought into the organization by Levien -- Mincberg was also working as general counsel for D.C. United, the Major League Soccer franchise for which Levien is Managing Partner -- seemed to have stepped into the void and assumed some sort of larger role, having befriended and worked for Pera over the past year.
But when word leaked that the Grizzlies might be looking at replacing Joerger with former Warriors and Kings coach Eric Musselman, with whom Mincberg had become friendly over the last year, the Grizzlies quickly stomped that fire out. Memphis said Mincberg was only a scout and would not be in any kind of significant front-office role going forward.
This is madness, as Sir Lawrence Oliver said about something completely different in Marathon Man.
Lash, a former player agent who did good work for Denver before coming to Memphis, is taking the high road.
"I don't really have anything to say other than I'm thankful for the opportunity the Grizzlies gave me and I'm focused on future opportunities," he texted Sunday.
It is hard to win in this league. A lot of things have to go right for a team to win 50 games in a season. In short, it is a major accomplishment.
Letting Hollins go still makes no sense, given that his no-nonsense approach was the template for Memphis' success his last four seasons there. True: Memphis was horrible on offense under Hollins. But the Grizz choked the life out of opponents with their outstanding combination of perimeter defensive chops (unleashing Allen on any and all opposing ballhandlers and/or shooting threats) and paint protection, and Gasol, last year's Defensive Player of the Year, anchoring the middle.
It wasn't pretty, but it worked, and the Grizzlies got to the Western Conference finals last year.
Then, for reasons never fully explained -- though Occam's Razor Thinking suggests Pera simply didn't want to pay what Hollins wanted -- the Grizzlies barely lifted a finger trying to retain him. No, Hollins didn't want to make the Rudy Gay trade, but you don't fire a coach because he doesn't want to move one of his best players (you think Tom Thibodeau wanted to trade Luol Deng?).
In came Joerger, who'd been hired by Marc Iavaroni and survived after Iavaroni was fired as coach in 2009. It was clear that Pera and Levien were more comfortable with Joerger than Hollins.
But that apparently changed, and quickly, at least at Pera's end.
Who knows why? Did Pera get mad at his coach when Joerger objected to Pera's infamous desire to play one-on-one against Allen at the start of training camp last fall? The coach, from what I'm told, rather correctly thought it was a bad idea for Pera -- who, I get it, loves playing ball -- to get out on the court with an actual, you know, NBA player, who could get hurt doing such things. The Spurs' name came up. As in, the Spurs wouldn't do this kind of nonsense.
(You may recall Pera then challenged Michael Jordan to play one-on-one, and that Jordan found the idea, as he told the Charlotte Observer, "comical.")
The Grizzlies got out of the gate slowly this season, not unexpectedly given the injuries and with Joerger learning the ropes. But the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported last week that Pera wanted to fire Joerger early in the season, only to be talked out of it by Levien.
A league source says Pera pushed the coaching staff hard to play Ed Davis all season, and became angry when Joerger gave Davis just 1:28 of burn in a 108-90 Grizzlies win in November that upped Memphis' record to 3-3. Pera, according to the source, indeed wanted to move on Joerger at the time, but cooler heads prevailed.
The Grizzlies got healthy, Joerger went back to using some of the old stuff Hollins used -- and after starting 10-15, Memphis went 40-17 the rest of the regular season, had a 3-2 first-round series lead on Oklahoma City with Allen driving Kevin Durant batty.
Only a monster night from Durant in Game 6 -- and a dubious suspension of Zach Randolph in Game 7, after throwing a sort-of punch that landed in Thunder rookie Stephen Adams' neck -- allowed OKC to oust Memphis. By any fair measure, the Grizzlies had an extremely successful season.
Pera still turned on Levien and Lash. Levien had put together the group of investors that stepped in in 2012 when the stock in Pera's Ubiquiti Networks, as Forbes Magazine put it, "tanked," and the NBA began to get nervous about Pera's ability to make the numbers work.
Venture capitalist Steve Kaplan and health care executive Daniel Straus each put in $25 million. Several local owners who had previously invested in the team with the team's late former owner, Michael Heisley, again ponied up, as did former NBA players Penny Hardaway and Elliot Perry. Justin Timberlake and Ashley Manning, wife of Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, each contributed $5 million. (Memphis sports reporter George Lapides first reported the team's numerous investor list in 2012.)
Now, though, Pera has Ubiquiti flush again -- according to Forbes, the company has almost tripled in value over the last year. And he convinced Joerger to come back -- which really isn't a hardship, given that he's got $4 million coming to him whether he finishes the two years left on his contract.
Joerger, though, is ready to give it another try.
"Dave's no dummy," an associate said. "He's not going to stay in a (bleep)storm unless he realized that what was in the past is going to stay there."
And Pera is ready, as he told one fan in his TweetFest, to be more hands-on in his running of the team.
"We are so close ... I can feel it," Pera told the fan. "I think we just need to be tighter as a team between Dave, myself, FO, players."
Again: it's Pera's team. He bought it and he can be as involved as he wants. He can play HORSE with Tony Allen every day after practice, I guess. But the teams that have won consistently over the years in this league have had owners who hire good people, let them do their jobs, and get out of the way. Sunday, Peter Holt said, "I'm really just a fan now. Because I've done my job." Those are words to emulate."
Will be interesting to see what happens in Memphis going forward.