Happy Wednesday

Who Wants To Be An NBA Coach?

We’ve all heard the cliches a million times. Coaches are hired to be fired. There’s a coaching carousel. This year the NBA coaching churn seems to be much more active, mostly because some of the most successful coaches of recent vintage find themselves on the unemployment line.

In the last couple of weeks Nick Nurse, Mike Budenholzer, Monty Williams and Doc Rivers have all gotten the ax. Who knows if Joe Mazzulla is next. Now, of course I don’t know what’s going on internally with these teams - it’s certainly plausible that each one of these firings was justifiable - but it’s noteworthy that among the fallen are 2 that have coached championship squads within the last 5 years, along with 1 that led his team to the NBA finals only 2 years ago.

Now, take a look at the 3 coaches with the longest current tenure - Gregg Popovich with San Antonio, Eric Spoelstra with Miami, and Steve Kerr with Golden State. What do they have in common? They lead what are arguably the 3 most stable franchises in the sport. There’s no panic after a down season or two, and team leadership shows patience and confidence. You can make the chicken or the egg argument, and yes the teams have traditionally been filled with championship level talent, but you rarely feel a sense of panic coming from these teams and that helps them easily ride out down periods. And this doesn’t just apply to management. Number 4 on the coaching seniority list is Michael Malone in Denver. He says that at different times the front office was looking to trade either Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Jr., but Malone put the kibosh on that. Patience has paid off.

And here is the irony. The Bucks, Suns, and 76ers are all in win-now situations so they are all in the market for established coaches to bring them to the next level. Each of those teams has been connected to at least one of the group Nurse, Budenholzer, Williams, or Rivers. It would be hilarious if when all is said and done three of these men wind up filling the jobs for those three teams. Coach A isn’t a good enough coach to lead Team B to the promised land, but he’s the perfect man to bring a title to Team C. The carousel continues to go round and round.

Dodgers Pride Night

A clear sign of how bleak things have been turning has been the frequent blowbacks when teams have been staging Pride Nights. Much was written about the depressingly high number of NHL players who refused to wear Pride sweaters this past season. And earlier this week the Dodgers initially capitulated to bigotry before reversing course and ultimately choosing to do the right thing.

The initial plans for the club’s Pride Night next month included honoring the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence, a charitable organization that has been in existence since the late 70s and has a long history of literal lifesaving work. They have raised millions of dollars over the years to help combat AIDS, just one of the many reasons why the Dodgers had planned on giving them a Community Hero award.

As part of their image the members dress up as nuns, which has drawn the ire of Catholic organizations. The Dodgers honor attracted a lot of criticism, mainly from Catholic League President and notorious bigot Bill Donohue who called the Sisters a hate group and the Dodgers caved under pressure, disinviting the Sisters. That led to even more intense criticism, with other major LBGTQ organizations threatening to boycott the evening in solidarity. After a couple of days the Dodgers reinvited the Sisters, an invitation which they graciously accepted.

When all was said and done the Dodgers did the right thing but this whole series of events could have been avoided had they shown a little more backbone from the getgo. A hateful man such as Donohue was going to criticize the event regardless of who was and wasn’t invited. It’s noble to show solidarity with the community, but to be a true ally it’s important to stand up to bullying wherever it occurs. Let this be a lesson to other franchises; be prepared for the criticism and don’t back down.

In Search Of

When I look back on TV from my younger days there are few shows that made a deeper impression on me than In Search Of With Leonard Nimoy. It could get very WTF? at times, and at other times it frightened young me.

It premiered in 1977, an odd time in Nimoy’s career. Several years after the end of Star Trek and a couple of years before the film series began, he was clearly uncomfortable with the Spock legacy and the accompanying typecasting. Yet this was an ideal showcase for his fame. His commanding voice lent an air of authority to the often absurd show content, and of course his Spock image added a layer of mystery to his persona.

The elevator pitch for the series was that it was an attempt to explain the inexplicable, sometimes tackling what would be described as strange phenomena, other times investigating myths and legends. One week they might explore what happened to Amelia Earhart. The next week they might explore such pressing questions as, are ghosts real? Are UFOs real? And what about the curse of King Tut’s tomb?

And of course the show got a lot of mileage out of Bigfoot/Loch Ness Monster/Abominable Snowman. I can’t tell you how many times I saw the grainy super-8 footage of Sasquatch walking through the forest, or the 1 photo of the Loch Ness Monster that is clearly not a periscope, no sir. The show clearly catered to the easily gullible, 10 year olds, or gullible 10 year olds. I don’t know how many people actually believed the Bigfoot myth - let’s be honest, if such a creature actually existed there would be much more physical evidence other than footprints. Someone would have eventually discovered a Sasquatch carcass, or at the very least droppings. Yet that was a cottage industry for a while. I’ll admit that as a child this one fooled me - one episode focused on the so-called full moon effect; supposedly violent crimes and ER visits increase when there’s a full moon. The script actually speculated that since the moon controls tides and the human body is mostly made up of water, well, draw your own conclusions. Yes, there was a time in my life in which I fell for that “logic.”

There was one topic that really had an effect on young me and that was the impending invasion of the killer bees. I even got so worried that I was intending to enroll in a northern college so that I would be safely situated in a climate too cold for the bees to survive. After several decades of hindsight it’s safe to say that the danger was a tad overstated.

It should also be noted that the Bermuda Triangle was a favorite topic of the show’s producers. Is the Triangle even a thing anymore? I always got a kick out of the maps that would show the shape & size of the Triangle. Basically it would expand to include any place where a ship or plane had ever vanished; it wasn’t close to a triangle shape. I can understand people worrying about supernatural connections a couple of centuries ago; with the knowledge we have now concerning currents it is very silly in the modern age to think there’s some nefarious mystical force at play.

‘Melo

For a guy with such a long list of accomplishments Carmelo Anthony is a surprisingly polarizing figure. Anthony, who was an unsigned free agent this past season, made it official and announced his retirement from the game earlier this week.

Anthony was one of the most successful college basketball stars from the one-and-done era, leading Syracuse to its only championship in his sole season with the Orange. He went on to be the #3 pick in the historic 2003 NBA Draft (sorry Darko) and began a significant run with Denver and New York before hitting the have ball will travel portion of his career.

One of the greatest pure scorers the game has ever seen, he retires as the #9 scorer in lead history, a 10-time all-star, a member of the 75th anniversary team, and as one of the leaders of multiple gold medal winning USA Basketball squads. Yet for some reason this wasn’t good enough for a lot of people. He only made it as far as the conference finals once during his stardom era. Is his reputation a victim of Ringz Culture? Maybe, but those Nuggets and Knicks teams he led seldom had strong enough supporting casts to be championship caliber. It is true that his iso focused style wasn’t always the most aesthetically pleasing, and it grew increasingly anachronistic later in his career - that’s also part of the reason why he was such an outstanding international player; his game really fit the style of FIBA play.

There’s already a lot of discussion over whether he’s worthy of a number retirement ceremony at MSG, and let’s just say that it’s a bit heated. Whether his jersey gets raised to the rafters or not, (and he is certain to receive that honor in Denver, although the twist is that he and Nikola Jokic both donned #15, so it will need to be a Bill Dickey/Yogi Berra situation) he was one of the most memorable players of his era. He wasn’t quite LeBron or Wade, to name two of his draft mates, but a slot in Springfield awaits. Happy trails.

Say Goodnight Gracie

That’s all for now, see you all on Friday and thanks for reading.