The NBA coaching carousel has come to a complete halt, with the five previously open coaching vacancies all filled up. The Bulls, Thunder, Magic, Pelicans and Nuggets now have their men, but were the coaches they selected the best possible fit with their respective teams?
Let’s take a look at all five teams and, from a scale of one to five, evaluate their new coach’s fit with the team based on his established coaching style, his team’s composition and his team’s needs.
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[sc:NBAArticles ]How the Five New NBA Coaches Fit with their New Teams
Fred Hoiberg – Chicago Bulls
The Fit: 5/5
[sc:NBA240banner ]We’ve already discussed Hoiberg’s hiring and discussed in some detail why he will be the Coach of the Year next season. The cliff notes version of that argument is twofold:
- Hoiberg will greatly improve the Bulls on offense, which was the team’s Achilles heel for most of Thibadeau’s tenure. Hoiberg certainly has some nice pieces in Chicago – with Nikola Mirotic, Doug McDermott and Jimmy Butler – to construct a pace-and-space offense more in line with the modern NBA.
- Hoiberg has a much better relationship with the front office than Thibs, and isn’t the grinding taskmaster that Thibs by all accounts was. Simply not being Tom Thibadeau is a step in the right direction for Hoiberg.
The Bulls’ success next season will still be highly reliant on health – to Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol – but the coaching transition in Chicago figures to be very smooth, on and off the court.
Billy Donovan – Oklahoma City Thunder
The Fit: 4/5
It seemed counterintuitive for the win-now Thunder – who must deal with the speculation regarding Kevin Durant’s impending free agency all year long – to go with a completely untested college coach to lead them through arguably the most critical season in the franchise’s history in OKC.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find a coach in any level with better credentials than Billy Donovan, who is one of the most decorated college coaches in the modern era. He’ll be under pressure to deliver the goods in the hopes of convincing Durant to stay, but his coaching style looks suited to delivering immediate success for this Thunder team.
He knows how to coach defense and prefers an aggressive style, which will fit the athletic-as-hell Thunder’s strengths to a T. He also values more balanced scoring in his teams – no Florida player ever averaged 19 or more points during Donovan’s reign – which should ease the burden on the Russell Westbrook-Durant duo.
Scott Skiles – Orlando Magic
The Fit: 4/5
The Orlando Magic have drafted all these young, interesting pieces – Victor Oladipo, Elfrid Payton, Aaron Gordon – in the last few years, but they haven’t formed any discernible style of play, and they haven’t won too many games. Well, new head coach Scott Skiles is just the man to address those two concerns.
Skiles is a drill sergeant in the Thibs mold who preaches defense and effort and gets the best out of his players. His teams, while not the most exciting to watch, have a defined identity: super hard-nosed, grinding and very solid defensively.
Oladipo, Payton and Gordon all can’t shoot, but they give 100 percent effort and they defend like hell, which Skiles will love. And with those Magic stars still just a couple of years removed from college, they won’t be so quick to revolt under Skiles’s grating management style.
Skiles teams usually peak in his second season, but this is a good fit and his presence will lead to significant improvement next season.
Alvin Gentry – New Orleans Pelicans
The Fit: 3/5
Everyone is quick to praise Steve Kerr for his amazing achievement of winning the title in his very first year as head coach. But Alvin Gentry was the architect of that incredibly efficient Warriors offense that finished second to the Los Angeles Clippers in offensive rating by the slimmest of margins.
Gentry had a transformational player in Stephen Curry to mold that great offense, and he’ll have another – maybe even better – great player in Anthony Davis to build around in the Bayou.
But scoring wasn’t really the Pelicans’ problem under Monty Williams. The Pellies finished in the top 10 in offensive rating last season with Davis transforming into a top five player. Their main area of concern was on the defensive end, where they finished in the bottom 10 in the league.
Gentry should turn this team, with all its very talented offensive tools, into a top five offense in no time. But it’s still a significant question mark whether he – or an assistant he can hire – can make the changes to improve his team on the other end of the court.
Mike Malone – Denver Nuggets
The Fit: 2/5
Mike Malone filled the last remaining coaching vacancy by getting the Denver Nuggets post, but it remains a little confusing as to why the Nuggets – after surveying what remains of the coaching market – decided to go with Malone.
Malone doesn’t really strike anyone as the coach with the style to mesh with Denver’s famous fast-paced, run-and-gun attack. Malone’s Kings were middle of the pack in terms of pace in his one-plus seasons in Sacramento.
To Malone’s credit, though, he was slowly turning the Kings around and was actually getting along with DeMarcus Cousins – two highly improbable things – before getting canned in December. An argument could also be made that he was simply playing to his team’s strengths, which was feeding Cousins in the post.
Malone has already said his Nuggets are going to play a faster pace next season, and he could very well succeed. But it’s just a little odd that instead of getting someone with actual experience in such a system (Mike D’Antoni, anyone?), the Nuggets turned to the unknown quantity.
Create a betting account now and get ready to venture into the unknown with these new coaches during the next NBA season.
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