The great divide keeps growing between college and pro coaching

Sporting News, The, Jan 20, 2003 by Sean Deveney

Let's start with a disclaimer, one brought up by new Hawks coach Terry Stotts when asked whether coaches like his most recent boss, ex-Hawks coach Lon Kruger, who was plucked from the NCAA ranks, can succeed in the NBA. "It's not fair," Stotts says, "to lump a group of people together like that. That's stereo-typing."

True enough, and it's also true that in lumping together the last three guys to come to the NBA from the college level without having worked in the league before--Kruger, ex-Bulls coach Tim Floyd and ex-Wizards coach Leonard Hamilton--you have to consider the very difficult tasks those coaches faced. The situations were daunting, so maybe the 137-365 record the three put together is not surprising.

But, though it may not be fair, the fact is that it probably will be a long time before an NBA team again takes a chance on a college coach, and Kruger is a good example why. No doubt, he is a smart basketball man, and his success at the college level--he brought Florida to a Final Four and won a share of a Big Ten title with Illinois--is proof.

In the NBA, though, the importance of knowing basketball strategy is diminished. What matters most, and it happens to be the one thing Kruger never really figured out, is a coach's ability to communicate with his players, to get them to have confidence in his system and to motivate them.

The Hawks did not play hard for Kruger. The effort was missing, and he did not know how to change that.

When talking about the differences between Stotts and Kruger, Hawks forward Darvin Ham says, "(Stotts) has a great rapport with his players, a good understanding of what's happening with us. He does not get too high or low; he stays even-keeled.

"That was missing with Lon. He was unsure, he was searching for answers, and you could sense it. Terry can basically, look at the game and tell us what we need to do. As a player, you are just on the floor, going through the motions. You have tunnel vision, you can't step away and look. You need that from your coach, to see the lack of effort out there and address that and help you lift your game. We were not getting that enough."

Guard Jason Terry is careful not to criticize Kruger but says one big difference with Stotts is, "You make a mistake, you're going to know about it when it happens, not two or three days later.... Lon's personality did not call for that."

On the floor, the college game is much different than the pro game, but good coaches can make that adjustment. Off the floor, though, the differences between college and pro coaching are widening, and that has league executives thinking twice about hiring a college coach.

There is no way to tell how a coach of a well-run college basketball program will fare when he has to deal with NBA players--or how the personalities will mesh. With guys who have been NBA assistants or players in the past, a team can develop a sense of how he interacts with players and how that will translate into a potential head-coaching job.

That's not to say college coaches have it easier. Their jobs, too, involve forays into players' personal lives, and those can be even more difficult. If a college player is in danger of flunking out and has nothing to fall back on, that situation is more important than dealing with a multimillionaire who is pouting because he wants a contract extension. The point is not whether one is more difficult than the other--just that the two levels have become so vastly different in terms of the type of communication needed.

Just as Kruger was undone by his inability to motivate, Hamilton failed in Washington because he could not get veterans such as Mitch Richmond, Juwan Howard and, especially, Rod Strickland on his side.

Though Floyd was given the impossible task of coaching the post-Michael Jordan Bulls, it's impossible to ignore that the team made no progress during his tenure and the players had no confidence in him. When Floyd was replaced by Bill Cartwright, a 16-year NBA veteran, players supported the move because, as Eddy Curry said, "He is a guy who has been there before, who knows what the NBA is about." The implication was clear--Floyd was an outsider and never really understood the league.

On his way out of Atlanta, Kruger told reporters, "At this level, it's a players game. You don't have the opportunity to affect things as much as you would in college." That concept is yet another factor college coaches are not exactly eager to land pro jobs. Why would Kentucky's Tubby Smith or Michigan State's Tom Izzo, two college guys often mentioned as objects of NBA coaching fancy, want an NBA job?

"What it comes down to," says one Western Conference general manager, "is that there is too much of an unknown now. We don't want to hire them, which is OK because they don't want our jobs anyway."

(s) For a new season of free, fun, salary-cap hoops that allows you to be the owner and general manager of your own team, go to http://fantasygames. sportingnews.com and register for Basic Fantasy Hoops, Season 2.