Star players have poor track records as coaches
MORGANTOWN – You might have noticed something as these NCAA basketball conference tournaments have come to an end over the weekend.
Certainly, WVU athletic director Wren Baker has.
Being a star player does not necessarily translate into being a successful coach.
Think about it for a moment. This weekend you saw Jerry Stackhouse at Vanderbilt and Juwan Howard at Michigan lose their jobs.
Both in their day were star players at high profile schools, Howard at Michigan and Stackhouse at North Carolina.
It is a lesson, it seems, that Baker has incorporated into what his definition of a good coach is and one would expect that he will not shoot for the stars in his search for the ultimate successor to Bob Huggins.
His willingness to stick with Neal Brown, hardly a household name as a football player, giving him time to mature into a coach who found success and then handing him an extension on his contract showed that, as did his hire of Mark Kellogg as his women’s basketball coach.
It’s interesting to delve into the whys and wherefores of the coaching profession and understand why it is that the stars don’t necessarily become the best coaches.
Think about it for a minute. Go back to the WVU Big East days and think of maybe the two best players to come out of the Big East …. Patrick Ewing at Georgetown and Chris Mullin at St. John’s.
Georgetown tried to capture the magic Ewing gave them as a player and wound up with a coach who had a 75-109 record at the school. Ditto Mullin, whom St. John’s hired and his record was 59-73.
This is not just a basketball thing. It holds true throughout the wide world of sports, both collegiately and professionally.
Ted Williams tried managing in baseball, didn’t work out. Joe DiMaggio never managed, Willie Mays never managed, Willie Stargell never managed. Pete Rose managed and you saw what that got him.
This year’s Hall of Fame class in Cooperstown inducts one former manager – Jim Leyland, the former Pittsburgh Pirates manager. As a player, Leyland never got out of the low minor leagues and was mostly a .200 hitting catcher there.
Who else is in the Hall of Fame? The likes of the Dodgers’ Walter Alston, who had one major league at bat and struck out; Baltimore’s Earl Weaver, Cincinnati’s Sparky Anderson, who had one major league season and retired with the lowest batting average of any player to start 150 games in a season; Los Angeles’ Tommy Lasorda, who pitcher 26 games over three years in the major leagues, compiling an 0-4 record with a 6.20 earned run average.
Football is a little different. You’d think star quarterbacks would make good coaches in football, having to understand both offense and defense, but it doesn’t work out that way.
There have been only five Hall of Fame quarterbacks to coach in the NFL and all of them – Sammy Baugh, Bob Wakefield, Norm Van Brocklin, Otto Graham and Bart Starr – had losing records. Starr was the only one to reach the postseason.
A couple of months ago, CBS缅北禁地.com put out a list of the 10 greatest NFL coaches.
Here is the list: 1. Bill Belichick; 2. Vince Lombardi; 3. Don Shula; 4. George Halas; 5. Paul Brown; 6. Chuck Noll; 7. Bill Walsh; 8. Tom Landry; 9. Joe Gibbs; 10. Curly Lambeau.
Not counting Halas and Lambeau, who were pioneers, the best player was probably Tom Landry out of Texas, who became an All-NFL defensive back in his seven-year career. Belichick, Lombardi, Brown, Walsh and Gibbs never played in the NFL.
The truth is, that playing ability and coaching ability do not in any way lead from one to the other.
Being able to run, jump or be strong and flexible are nowhere on any coaching job application.
It is a different world and being a son of a coach often is an asset for a future coach in that he sees the overall picture of the coaching world from a wider perspective than someone who simply has played the game.
Bob Huggins, of course, was one of the most vivid examples of that.
Great players, especially in this day and age, have a lot working against them becoming great coaches, when there is so much money involved that a player retires a millionaire and doesn’t need to turn to coaching to make a living.
The resume of player to coach is more along the lines of a good player but one who has actually had limited ability, having to rely on his grit and wits to be able to perform. You think of Huggins or Bobby Knight or Mike Krzyzewski in those terms.
Perhaps the best example is former Mountaineer Joe Mazzulla, who lived off his desire and smarts to compete at the highest level on the court, who was willing to spend an apprenticeship at a low level before bursting on the scene as head coach of the Boston Celtics in the NBA.
Lessons learned in driving yourself, in playing while injured, in taking team meetings seriously and in studying the mechanics of the game, all of which leads to a coaching philosophy, are what makes a great coach.
In his search for a coach, Wren Baker need not look into the won-lost record of an applicant but dig into why he was able to produce that record. You have to look into so many areas other than the Xs and Os that make up the person, because one suspects if a psychologist would do a work up after studying the best coaches he would find certain qualities that are consistent throughout.
A coach himself is a driven psychologist, analyst, a salesman, friend/father and leader all wrapped up in one package; someone who seeks his own perfection while passing it on to the team he puts together in the image of the offense and defense he wishes to run.
It is someone who has to be able to run his home and his basketball or football or baseball team at the same time while each is making demands upon his time and attention; someone who can convince a parent that he will not only coach but adopt their child while convincing that player that he will be not only be a coach but a parent to them.
At the Big 12 level, Baker has to find someone who knows not only success, but what goes into creating success on the court, but that same someone can’t be immersed either in his own success over his team’s or in thinking of his recruits as players rather than people.
To date, Baker’s words have rung true to the proper approach, but this men’s basketball hire figures to be the single most important thing he will do during his first five or so years on the job.
The program is in no shape to weather a mistake here. It is a complicated hire, a hire that begs for a complete makeover of what WVU has had over the past few years to get back to its normal place in the upper levels of the sport.