Bulls stuck with dip into shallow pool of coaches
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If you throw away some pants because they don't look good on you, do you replace them by buying the exact same pants again?
When you fire Scott Skiles, search for his replacement for several months and then come up with Rick Carlisle as a lead candidate, what's the point? Carlisle's screaming had better sound different than Skiles' because the Bulls' ears are well-schooled in tuning that noise out.
The Bulls have interviewed Carlisle, and according to Yahoo! Sports, they also are considering Michigan State coach Tom Izzo. He's a little guy who never has been an NBA head coach. That does not scream ''respect'' to NBA players.
This Bulls coaching search is showing something: The pool for head coaches stinks.
So far, the mix of names we've heard has included Larry Brown, who's 67; Jeff Van Gundy, who supposedly wants to sit out next season; and several NBA assistants who haven't done this before. Yes, and Carlisle, the Skiles duplicate, and Izzo, who would follow Tim Floyd's path to the Bulls.
A big part of the job for a manager in any business is to be prepared with a short list of candidates in case the most important positions come open. Yet Paxson seems to be going in six directions.
The Bulls should try to lure Van Gundy, and if that doesn't work, then go with Brown.
But these NBA coaches are starting to bounce around from team to team in the same way average NFL quarterbacks do it. It's a carousel, really, and to go with anyone not on it is to take a big chance.
Izzo is a great college coach. But will Larry Hughes care?
And Izzo is awfully emotional on the sideline and seems worn out at the end of every season. The NBA season is much longer. Izzo is too sensitive to criticism, too.
College coaches are used to being in complete control over every detail of their program, including their players' attention spans.
In college, you bring in players to fit your coach. In the NBA, it works in reverse.
''I'm not counting out any [opening] because you can't,'' Izzo told Yahoo! Sports. ''College or pro. I go back and forth on [coaching in the NBA]. I still think it's the ultimate level.''
The reason college coaches don't usually do well in the pros isn't that the NBA is a higher level, but a different game entirely.
I wouldn't hire a college coach. But if the Bulls do, then Izzo is the right one. Or maybe Mike Krzyzewski, a Chicagoan who will be spending the summer winning the gold medal with a bunch of NBA stars on the U.S. Olympic team.
Paxson has talked about conducting a patient search. He has built the team with too much darn patience, too. It sounds like a smart approach, a cautious one that doesn't take chances. But when you're driving 40 mph in the right lane down the Dan Ryan, others are going to pass you by.
He built this team using patience. But when it was time to make the big move, caution in trying to hang on to the pieces of his creation turned into paralysis.
Pau Gasol had 36 points and 16 rebounds in the Los Angeles Lakers' first playoff game Sunday. The Bulls didn't trade for him.
Meanwhile, finding any coach to match this team would be tough, even if there were good, established candidates available. Skiles rode the carousel to the Milwaukee job, then talked about the Kobe Bryant rumors early in the season. The talk of Bryant coming to the Bulls became a distraction, he said, that he didn't handle well.
Well, it's nice that he was blaming himself, if that's what that was. But the Bulls' problems were directly related to Skiles' style. When he first came to the Bulls, the team was young and didn't know better than to listen to him. The team grew, the players either got rich or turned down big contracts and began playing to get bigger ones, and the inevitable happened:
They tuned Skiles out.
The problem was that Skiles wasn't just the team's coach, but also its only leader. And what the Bulls are now is a team without a leader, without enough talent, without a star, yet with a knowledge that ignoring a coach pays off.
Skiles was fired.
Bringing in Carlisle, who was tuned out by a lower class of player in Indiana, would be just the right punishment for the Bulls players. But it wouldn't work. Someone has to develop Joakim Noah, since he's one of the few Bulls not to have reached his ceiling yet.
Put your money on Carlisle. He's a tough guy, a Paxson guy, the kind of guy Chicago loves.
But the Bulls already tried on these pants.
