a Greater Glory

Being an athlete who excels in professional sports is tough, maybe one of the most difficult things in the world.  That is why there are so few of them.  But something that may be even more difficult than being a professional athlete, is being the coach of those professional athletes.  In no other job are you criticized for the failure of your team and then forgotten about when your team does well.  Being the coach of a professional team is a job that requires you to shoulder the blame when things aren’t going well and then step into the background when your team is doing well. Coaches must love to coach and must be willing to do just that, coach.

While coaching is important, it seems that we have now entered a time in professional sports where a coach can no longer coach or attempt to bring about change on a team.  Typically when a coaching change is made it is a chance for players to hear another person’s voice and allow for the new coach to do some things differently, but how often is to often to change? A New York Times article highlighted the short leash that NBA coaches are on, that article can be read here.

Since when did coaching in any major sport become something that changes when the weather patterns do?  An interesting study although extremely time consuming would be to look at the number of coaching changes that have occurred in the major sports (football, baseball, basketball, and hockey) over the past five years. For basketball Jerry Sloan has been coaching since 1988. During that time there have been over 225 coaching changes.  Did you read that number??? That means that there is on average 11 job changes every season.  Remember, there are only 30 teams in the NBA so that is a little over a 1/3 of the teams every season.

By no way am I saying that every coach should be kept, but the firing of Michael Curry that occurred yesterday is a bit frustrating. Curry wasn’t a great coach after only getting the team to a 39-43 record, but look at what he was given.  He had to deal with Allen Iverson in a mid-season trade that was anything but beneficial to the Pistons. Joe Dumars is quickly becoming the Matt Millen of the NBA with 5 coaches now in 9 years.  Dumars needs to make sure he gets it right with this next coach.  Typically, the most successful franchises are the ones who “stay the course”.  In the NFL you have the Pittsburgh Steelers, MLB you have the NY Yankees, in the NBA you have the Utah Jazz.  Does consistency mean you will win and make the playoffs every year?  Of course not, but there is something to be said about consistency.  All I am asking is that given the current state of our country, economy, and speed of life, one would think that consistency and staying the course would be appropriate and important.